As it’s name suggests, Dungeons of Sundaria is a third person dungeon crawling RPG. You start off the game by picking your class, race, and characteristics. Once you select your character, you are brought to a menu that acts as a world map. This menu take on a world map kind of reminds me of the Heroes of Might and Magic series. It feels a bit basic, but gets the job done.
Each dungeon area on the map menu has a suggested level and additional information about it. Once you select it, you’re plunged into it and left to face what’s inside. Each dungeon is filled with enemies, loot, and traps. Taking down enemies gives you loot, along with chests, weapon racks, barrels, etc. The loot consists of weapons, armor, accessories, and other items.
Once you’re done exploring a dungeon, you get to take on the dungeon boss which is about as difficult as a regular enemy, provided that you have obtained all of the loot in the dungeon. This makes the game feel a bit like it’s holding your hand too much. Aside from standard enemy fair, and end dungeon bosses, there are also mid bosses as well.
With every dungeon having a ton of enemies to dispatch, I feel like having a mid boss in every dungeon along with the end dungeon boss is a bit too much. Like just some extra fluff or padding to make dungeons that much longer to get through. This is totally unnecessary and the game would do well to only have an end dungeon boss or maybe less enemies all over the place.
There isn’t much more to say about the gameplay with Dungeons of Sundaria as it’s this in a nutshell; just rinse and repeat. Now this is fine for a game like this, almost expected in fact. But at the same time, this type of game and mechanics make it feel dated.
The one good redeeming quality of this game is that not only can you play it solo, but the game features both local split screen multiplayer as well as online multiplayer. So I guess it’s an unheard of thing for a modern game to feature up to four player split screen and online multiplayer, but with the era in which the game presents itself, it’s not too surprising.
Much like the gameplay, Dungeons of Sundaria is a bit of a letdown in the graphics department, though not in performance. Every asset in this game feels like it was ripped from the PS3 or Xbox 360, but polished. Not to say that the game looks bad graphically, but it could look a lot better than it does.
The player model and enemy models look really nice, but there isn’t much detail to them. Dungeon environments are really large, but feel rather empty. Couple that with the fact that again, it looks like the assets were ripped from the seventh generation of consoles with a bit of polish, and it’s easy to see just how lackluster this game is. I would have liked to see the environments have a more realistic look, have environmental effects, and be much smaller than they are.
Because of how lackluster this game is graphically, the game runs about as well as a polished Xbox 360 game does on the Xbox Series X of which this game was played on. The game feels like it runs at a solid 60FPS, maybe even closer to 90FPS which is really solid and enjoyable. Though this is great performance, I would have preferred the game have a much more realistic look, be specifically designed for current gen, and have it run at 30FPS.
I won’t say that Dungeons of Sundaria is void of sound, but there isn’t much here. Featuring a dull and muted sound track along with sub-par sound effects, the sound is even worse than the graphics. Weapons sound rather authentic and rather satisfying to use as a result. The various enemies have some good sound effects to them, with the exception of the sound that the humans make when they are dispatched. The sound that the human enemies make upon death is a very pathetic sounding scream or yell. I mean not only is it completely unnecessary, as cheesy as a box of macaroni, but very much out of place. It feels like it was put in post production, like an after thought.
With all of this shade thrown at Dungeons of Sundaria, is it worth picking up? Well for the price, it’s not bad at all. You’re paying $10 or the equivalent for your region which is a really good price given what the game has to offer, all be it in an ugly and dated package. Dated graphics, large and empty environments, sounds and music that feel like they were taken from a cracker jack box and tossed in, all wrapped up in a stellar performance bow, the price point is justified and understandable.
You won’t find many games that offer a single player, online multiplayer, local multiplayer, let alone four player split screen multiplayer on modern platforms and have it be a modern game. Would I have much rather had the game look like current gen and priced at $40-$60? Yes, of course I would! But I think that a big reason why the game can offer so many options when it comes to playing with others, is because of the graphical direction the game took and how sparse the game is.
So I would say that it’s a great game at it’s price, but understand that you are getting what you pay for, especially with Dungeons of Sundaria. For a budget friendly game that offers a lot for the price, I would recommend to picking up this game!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.