Best of the poor
I've been pretty bored with iPhone games so far because they are too overly focused on casual gamers. And with casual gamers in this context we are taking about drunk people in a party who has 3 seconds to show something funny to impress someone equally or more drunk. Peeing monkeys, shaking boobs or other interactive jokes seems to be dominating.
But, Dungeon Hunter is one of the few games that actually goes a bit deeper, while at the same time manages to keep that casual gamer hook, which does make sense on a mobile device since you might only have a few minutes to play each time.
Anyone familiar with Diablo'ish dungeon crawlers and action RPGs should instantly know what this game is about. If you like this genre, then go ahead and buy the game.
There are quite a lot of things to sink your teeth into, like finding the best gear for your hero and leveling him up and customizing him to your likings. Quite a lot of options and items.
Also you can find fairy companions, but they are pretty useless and in essence just represents an additional spell you can cast since when the fairy cast a spell you actually need to spend your hero's mana for it.
There are some very basic puzzles in the game, but nothing more than your basic pull a lever to remove a blockade kind of thing, and it plays pretty much straight forward. You get plenty of quests, both main quests and side quests. Nothing revolutionary here, it's all "kill those monsters, fetch that thing" kind of quests. The main story line is also pretty basic, but at least gives you some kind of feeling of progress.
One thing I like about the game is the controls. The default control is a virtual joystick, which you move by dragging your finger around the joystick area. This works surprisingly well, and I never felt I missed a proper joypad or similar input devices to play comfortably.
On the downside of things, the game does suck a lot of battery. On my 3GS I ran out of battery twice while playing the game, which caused some trouble for me since I was unable to use the phone for calling afterward. This is not really this games fault though, but rather an issue with the iPhones poor battery. I did feel the game somehow drains power faster than other games though, perhaps because it's 3D based and have quite a lot of details. The graphics is pretty good in fact.
All in all, a good implementation of a dungeon crawler for the iPhone, it's easily one of the best, or perhaps the best, iPhone RPG game, even though it's still pretty basic if compared to similar games on PSP, PC or game consoles.
iPhone is slowly getting there as a serious game device...