Who plays VR Dungeon Knight?!

I saw my son kick up a Steam game the other day, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to have some fun since I hadn't ever talked with him on Steam before. 

who else has the friendly necromancer blogspot in their description?

He cuts deep with those comments. I've taught him well. But he's got a point there, who else plays freaking Dungeon Knight VR?

Zero players online . . .

Apparently I'm it . . . at least anymore. There are 273 people in the official VR Dungeon Knight discord, so I'm definitely not the only player EVER.  It's far too good of a game to be the only player EVER.

The problem is that the developer was one single, solitary guy, and back on August 19th, 2022, he announced that amidst burnout and depression he was calling it quits on the "in development" game, noting that there were enough bugs in it that he wasn't confident calling it a full release. He also said that he was happy about the game in general though since it had become the VR Co-op Dungeon Crawler he dreamt of.

Where does that leave me, a guy who just bought the game in 2022? Well, it leaves me playing a solo VR dungeon crawler with an interesting progression system and some unique side systems. This is now my fourth VR dungeon crawler game. I started with In Death Unchained, then tried Vanishing Realms, then Karnage Chronicles, and now VR Dungeon Knight. It's a genre that interests me. From all appearances, Ancient Dungeon VR is next for me to explore. (Gonna be honest though . . . I hate the Minecraft look)

Right out the gate in VR Dungeon Knight, I ran into my first bug in the tutorial.  The enemy monster is buried in the floor.  Yeah, that's a sad first impression.

that bump in the floor is the top of the enemy's head

Just want to say that as far as VR tutorials go, this is a pretty great attempt.  Most VR games don't give you NEAR this much tutorial, so I have to give it up for the attempt. By the end of the tutorial you'll have learned how to climb, swim, swing a sword, shoot an arrow, cast a spell, and dodge a trap. Great!

I was kind of freaking out at first because the little wizard guide looked an awful lot like a squashed-small version of Merle Ambrose and the voice over sounded an awful lot like my old friend Damon Brown, who would make the marketing videos for KingsIsle. (It was close enough that I contacted him just to see . . . it's not him.)

I swear that's merle ambrose . . .

It's surprising how many weapons there are in the game, and I think the poor single dev bit off way more than he could chew here. It would have been so much better if all he had focused on was a couple weapons, and just got those polished and feeling good. The bow is incredibly difficult to use and the aiming just doesn't feel right.  The magic staves feel like they're shooting in slow motion. The magic books are strange.  The guns have awful reloading. In fact, the only thing that really feels good is a sword and shield, but the sword and shield suffer from exactly the same thing that most swords in VR RPGs suffer from . . . realism, messy combat where you can get inside the monster, and just generally feeling unsatisfying.

That all said, sword and shield is exactly what I would play in this game. It feels the most natural.

The inventory system isn't nearly as good as it is in Vanishing Realms or Karnage Chronicles. You basically have 4 slots that snap around your body. 3 at your waist and 1 on your back . . . although I couldn't get the back slot to ever work. I don't get it.

After you successfully navigate a dungeon, you enter a results room and earn "chests" based on your performance.  If you complete one of the three main objectives, you get to enter a bonus room and claim its prizes as well.

Seven rooms cleared! Yay!

These bonus chests are then used to unlock random weapon upgrades in your armory, which is a pretty neat mechanic, but since there are so many weapons, you can end up with a powerful weapon that is really hard (or that you just don't like) to use. 

As you delve dungeon you'll also be leveling up, when you do, you are allowed to assign points to dexterity, strength, or intelligence, but leveling each comes with a detriment to some other aspect of your player, so it feels . . . strange.

The dungeons themselves are randomly generated rooms, and that's pretty neat, but what isn't neat is once you aggro one enemy, you aggro them all.  They all come charging at you at once, which is kind of lame. I guess it does get combat over quickly so then you can spend your time hacking open crates, which, in typical Diablo flair, is extremely satisfying.

All in all, there are some interesting features here and I think I would like to spend some more time playing this game, but as far as gameplay, In Death Unchained and Karnage Chronicles have my vote for best VR RPG . . . so far.

I'll be hunting, and if you know of a good one, leave me a note in the comments below.

Happy Dueling!