I've been playing a lot of a new VR game that came out just a month ago called Dungeons of Eternity. I've owned the game for just over a week and a half now, and yup, I've been having a lot of fun with it! Max level for the game is 50 currently, and I'm level 20 and rising. My total time spent in the game according to the Oculus Move app is over 12 hours. It's a "medium priced" VR game at $29.99, but I can say my enjoyment per dollar spent just keeps going up.
I have a little list of pros and cons about the game, but before I get into any of that, let me just talk you about what the game is all about. As the story goes, your people have found another planet in space that has a sprawling network of underground dungeons. It's your job to go down to these dungeons and raid them for their spoils, using the weapons and items you find there. In fact, part of your training tutorial is to teach you how to fight using "the old ways" of magic, bows, swords, and five other weapon types.
Currently sporting a Hammer and Dagger combo with a Chrono Staff on my back
From your medieval-themed spaceship above this planet you've all dubbed "Eternity" (you know, because it has an eternal network of dungeons on it), you choose random dungeons from within 4 environment types to beam down into.
Beam me to the Occult Tunnels, Scotty.
While in the dungeons you loot chests that provide you with gold, cosmetics, and weapon blueprints that you can take back to your spaceship and use a 3D printer-type-machine to "fabricate" new weapons. So there you have it, Dungeons of Eternity is a weird blend of sci-fi and fantasy. All that said, let's be honest, it's 95% a fantasy game.
There are three types of dungeons for you to explore on the planet of Eternity: Dungeon Raids, Crystal Hunts, and Soul Harvests.
Dungeon Raids
The typical dungeon raids are really all about making your way through a randomly generated dungeon full of enemies and gathering as many loot chests as you possibly can while trekking to the final room where you'll find a broken down drone. Once you activate the drone in the final room you have to fight off waves of enemies until they drop a total of three batteries, which you slot in the drone. Once that's done, just stand in the drone's light and you're whisked off to the results screen and back to your space ship.
Powering up a drone in a dungeon raid
You'll want to do these dungeons to unlock as many cosmetics and weapon upgrades as you can. When you start the game, you have a choice of around 4 skin colors and a couple selections of "how homeless do I want to look." As you do dungeon after dungeon you start to unlock not only more skin colors, but eye colors, tooth shapes, hair styles, hair colors, armor dyes, and your standard array of gear: chest, legs, boots, accessory, gloves, etc. At level 20 now, I look significantly less homeless than when I was level 1.
More chests also mean more chances at weapon upgrades. I'm currently rocking a rare quality hammer and throwing dagger along with a chrono staff to stun enemies. There's a good array of weapon types you can use and benefits to using any of them.
Crystal Hunts
Crystal Hunts are where you beam down to a pyramid that has three hallways and a large center section. In each hallway is a crystal that you must find and slot into a holder in the center of the pyramid. Once you do, you activate the crystal extraction device and that begins beaming up crystal energy to your ship above. Guardians of the pyramid are there to try and stop you of course, and it's really important you grab the attention of the caster guardian ASAP to stop them or they will destroy your crystals. If they destroy all your crystals, you fail the instance.
Just say no to casters!
You'll want to do crystal hunts because they unlock something called exo-suit buffs. So since all your armor is cosmetic based, you "upgrade" any of these by purchasing exo-suit buffs with the crystals you earn during crystal hunts. These can do various things for you like, increase your thrown weapon distance, protect you against poison, let you jump higher, etc.
YES! I need max throwing distance!
As you level, you get access to better/different exo-suit buffs. So, not only do you need to level, but you need to get the crystals to buff yourself up.
Soul Harvests
Soul Harvests are interesting. I'm not sure the lore behind this, but it appears your race has made buddies with some kind of necromantic being who helps souls move on to the next world. Your spaceship even has a custom built soul harvest room for him on board . . . NOT CREEPY AT ALL!
Does this look like it belongs on a space ship? Who am I to judge?
Soul Harvests work kind of in reverse of how Crystal Hunts work. You fight off waves of enemies in a central room, first marking them with a special staff, then using that same staff to vacuum up their souls after you've defeated them. Once your staff is fully charged with souls, you bring it back to a central area and unload them, which simultaneously unlocks a passageway with free loot. Each subsequent wave of enemies gets more difficult. Once you're all done with the instance, you're teleported back to your ship and our necromantic friend gives us a reward befitting of the number of souls you drained.
Zap 'em, kill 'em, and vacuum 'em up!
You'll want to do Soul Harvests because, the more souls you have acquired, the better the potions you can fabricate. Potions give you access to the best buffs in the game like Haste, Quad Damage, Invisibility, and of course good old fashioned healing. It's good to go into Crystal Hunts and Soul Harvests with a healing potion prepared, word to the wise.
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And that's the game, you just keep running instances dungeons over and over as you level and unlock more cosmetics, weapons, exo-suit buffs, and potions . . . which typically wouldn't be anything to write home about except this is all in VR where how things "feel" when you play can trump everything else, and let me tell you, it feels awesome. It has some of the best feeling melee interactions I've had in a VR game. Past VR fantasy games felt a little lame as I drifted through enemies while I swung at them. It's not often that a game let's you sever off zombie legs and they still crawl toward you with their arms. Bashing a skeleton on the back of their head looks and feels great as they shatter apart.
. . . and how I've gone through an entire post about Dungeons of Eternity and NOT mentioned their throwing weapons is now my worst sin. Friends, if you want to feel awesome chucking a throwing hammer, axe, or dagger at a skeleton and bust them apart, this is your game. They've included some kind of auto-aiming component to throwing that really makes you feel god-like. I mean, look, you can definitely miss, your shots can even be blocked, but once you chuck a mace, smash a zombie in its face, then tractor beam the mace back to your hand to do it again, you'll be hooked.
As with most VR games that have multiplayer, multiplayer is where it's at. Soloing is still fun, but running a dungeon with a couple of your gamer buddies is absolutely the best, and even better, if one of you falls in the instance, your buddy can bring you back up. Good stuff. Plus diversifying your weapon types can be really fun, and there's no competition for loot as everyone gets their own roll at loot from the chests.
Now we've reached the point in the post where I need to mention what I consider to be a few things I personally wish were a little different in the game.
1- Slow loot unlock cycle -- I was looking pretty homeless until I was about level 15 when I finally got an assassin type looking armor and a half elf face with a crown. I don't know if I just needed to grind the tutorial dungeon five times to get some good loot at first, or if I was just unlucky. All of that just felt like it needed to happen a lot faster.
Still looking pretty homeless at level 13 . . .
2- Magic Staves are rare, but awesome -- Some of the most fun abilities of the game are found on random staves. Grabbing a skeleton with a gravity staff and chucking it across the room as it rag doll slams against a wall it just fun. There's about 8 or 9 different types of staves and each has a different type of spell associated with it. So far my favorites are those that stun, blow back, or toss an enemy around: Force, Gravity, Shockwave, and Chrono. Weirdly, I got most of those staves back when I was low level and using them is really more about the effect than the damage, which is unfortunate.
For every one staff, I've got 10 shields, 10 swords, 10 clubs, and a gaggle of crossbows.
3- The win condition on Crystal Hunts is confusing, at least at first. Basically, crystals are shattered by one of two things . . . either they get drained or they get destroyed by the guardians. It's really hard to tell that a crystal getting drained is a good thing, and so it's very easy to get confused here. Did I win or did I not? Once you figure it out, all is well, but getting to that point is confusing. Basically, just aggro or interrupt the caster as soon as you see it, and you'll be fine.
4- Glowing enemies? I actually popped on to the Dungeons of Eternity discord because I had a few questions. One of them had to do with the appearance of one type of fire skeleton that was way harder than all the rest. I can throw a mace at a fire skeleton about 2 to 3 times and it typically shatters. But, there's one that I suppose is "glowing" red as opposed to be colored red (I really don't see the glow), and they take about 9 to 10 hits to get down. It's a common enemy here at level 20 and is such a pain to deal with. It makes me think there's a bug of some kind with this particular model, but I suppose it's meant to be that way.
5- Chest to Key disparity. There's absolutely nothing worse than being in a dungeon and finding a lucky haul of six chests and then you only find enough keys to open half of them. That's super frustrating. There should always be enough keys to open all the chests.
6- Wi-fi Disconnection issues. If you somehow disconnect in the middle of a dungeon, it doesn't save your progress in the dungeon, at least how I would expect it to. Instead it saves "the layout" of your randomized dungeon, and you'll need to replay it all over again. There's nothing more discouraging than getting super deep into a room heavy dungeon and crashing out or disconnecting from wifi.
7- No achievements. I mean, it may seem pretty trivial to some people, and I'd wager a guess that a lot of people don't even know when an oculus game has achievements. (Just go look at your scoreboard app). Unfortunately there are no achievements in this game where it feels very much like they could have included some with it.
8- Being consumed by a boss. This is a pretty trivial complaint, but I'm not really a fan of when I'm consumed by the beholder-esque boss, the screen turns grey like I've died, I see my body crumple to the ground, and then suddenly I'm back up and fighting again. It feels like a weird execution that could have been handled differently. I don't think "consumed" should be a condition that happens to me. Instead I should be, I don't know, bitten? It's just a weird reset/rebirth condition that breaks the connection with my character and makes me feel like I cheated death somehow.
The good news here is that Othergate (the company that makes Dungeons of Eternity) gave us some really good quality of life updates just a few weeks after launch and promises there's more to come with the game. I'm seeing a lot of people on the discord that are already level 50 and looking for more content.
All in all, this game is one of the best Dungeon Crawlers out there. Karnage Chronicles will always have a special place in my heart, but this is definitely my new favorite dungeon crawling game on the Oculus quest.
Happy Dueling!
