Will you become a hero or a legend? That is the big question when you jump into this dungeon-clearing, RPG looter. Developed by Industry Games, ‘Dungeons of Sundaria’ can be played singularly or in a co-op of up to 4, even allowing for split screen in local play. An impressive feat to get you diving into the action.

Your journey begins as a lone traveler or a band of outcasts (if you decide to start the game as a group) entering the town of Sundaria. You must help the town exterminate the evil within the dungeons that surround the village and pose an ominous threat before it starts to seep in. Each dungeon has its evils and perils to tackle, creatures lurking around every corner, and mysteries to be solved.

The story is played out by interacting with NPCs with mainly text dialogue and is a very generic ‘evil creature invasion of a space that needs to be cleared out’ type of scenario. Not much in the story stands out or is very memorable when you log off for the night and the characters lack an endearing charm.

Opening up you will need to pick from 1 of 5 classes: Champion, Cleric, Ranger, Rogue, and a Wizard; the typical sort of classes you would find in fantasy RPGs. You also can customise your race too with a choice of 7 to pick from which is a nice touch. You can also pick your appearance and colours but these are very limited to what is out there in other similar titles though.

There is a lot involved in Dungeons of Sundaria and it is almost a conundrum as to where to start. Firstly, you will be introduced to a hub village to use you will as a base camp between dungeons. This is where you will find a Blacksmith to craft, sell, and salvage weapons, an Inn for food and drink upgrades, a Guild House to interact with NPCs to enhance to story, an Alchemy tower to acquire potions, a Guardhouse that supplies more quests, a bank to store your loot, and finally a Hovel that houses a drifter willing to change your character if you grow weary of your class. Here, you will also acquire quests from NPCs to complete by entering the dungeons surrounding the town. The whole layout is simple and easy to navigate.

There are 8 very different dungeons with a completely different set of interesting enemies and various well throughout bosses in Sundaria, with each taking well over 2 hours to complete if you search every nook and cranny. Fortunately, though, you can leave at any time and re-enter in the same spot without having to re-track your progress. Each dungeon also has a rating before you enter scaling from what could be considered easy, medium, and hard with each having a recommended entry level. This adds to the replayability with a decent difficulty curve that naturally progresses with power levels.

You level up and unlock abilities as you go leading to a plethora of attacks designed around the class you pick that become equiped to your attack bar. These can be physical attacks associated with your class of character or weapon choice, or passive attacks that increase the defense, offense, or health. These attacks aren’t perfectly fluid and do feel like they are slightly janky when making connections with enemy hitboxes. As you progress you can loot bodies and destroy containers to obtain gear to increase the stats of your character. Loot has 6 ranges from the lowest being Common to the elite Eternal gear and each has very different styles and stats.

You can play with a keyboard and mouse with remappable buttons and fortunately for me with a controller. I have never been super streamlined with a mouse and keyboard so this was greatly appreciated.

The graphics are not the most modern I have seen but they do the job of creating a decent fantasy scene albeit a little empty in areas. The armour and weapon sets create a quite interesting-looking character which I am grateful for as to me this is an important point of a looter RPG with a wide range of gear to collect. The hub village itself is quaint and homely to look at and the dev team even updated it halfway through this review with a holiday theme, showing so much care for the small details a community might appreciate.

The audio of move sets is at times a little delayed with the actions, and in the rare times characters do talk they say some bizarre and dull lines of dialogue that don’t quite suit the circumstances of the written text objective. The music though is full of strings and feels very folk-like creating that adventurous atmosphere.

Overall, Dungeons of Sundaria while not polished nor very innovative has some satisfying dungeon crawling where you can see the clear inspirations it draws upon. It has loads of replayability which will net you some sweet gear and has some interesting enemies and boss fights. While not super streamlined in combat and a little dated in narrative you will feel satisfied as you charge through these dungeons. I look forward to seeing in the future what else Industry Games can achieve with more resources behind them.

Written by: Stacey