DNF Duel Review

During the second DNF Duel Beta I was sure to be a Ghost Blade player, but then I saw Launcher bring down the Quantum Bomb; so I bid Ghost Blade good bye.

DNF Duel is great

I am not telling you anything new here when I am saying that DNF Duel is a lot of fun. Everyone has been harping on and on about it. What has me going back to the game every other day or so, are the DNF Duel’s simple inputs. With simple I mean, that DP motions are about as complex as it gets. You also have the option to go for even simpler inputs, the same way you enter your specials in Smash for example. So in a sense it’s kind of like playing Ryu or Ken in Smash, where you can use a single direction plus a button just fine, but you get benefits for executing it with the original motion input.

This was a relatively long way of saying that this system allowed me to learn how to play Launcher’s most basic game plan within a relatively short amount of time. I use motion based inputs for everything except for the DP. So a hybrid playstyle is not an issue either. Because of this input system, I can play DNF Duel interchangeably with my Hitbox, as well as with a DualSense just fine, without having to adjust much, if at all. The game still has its intricacies and it really forces you up front to learn the fundamentals of it a lot more than other games do.

Will Scrubs be able to beat me?

I know this might be a little controversial, but it is just a fact that simplifying certain aspects of any competitive game, fighting game or otherwise, does not suddenly level the playing field and allow scrubs to compete with the better players in a game. Simpler and easier also means that the people, the players that put in the time to learn and understand the game properly, will also have it easier. You’re not closing the gap, in fact you could argue that it’s widening the gap, due to how much quicker top players will be able to solve the game. Realistically though, it’s the exact same story, just with a different ruleset.

So to answer the question if there’s a chance that you will lose to “scrubs”, no there isn’t. If you’re losing to anyone and calling them a scrub… you are the scrub.

Combos

DNF Duel is a little different than most fighters I’ve played so far. Combos in particular feel very different to me than they do in other games. Especially being able to go into debt with your MP gauge is an amazing aspect in regards to decision making at the end of a combo. Also, the combos are long and I mean very long, well, by today’s standards anyway. Learning the combos can be a little difficult in the beginning, as due to the simple input systems, or to me at least it feels like it, DNF Duel seemingly requires you to do your inputs a lot cleaner. Timing button inputs mid combo over and over, so that the buttons will actually connect, with different timings, within a single combo, while instances that don’t really require timing, again, seemingly, will drop if you mash the button, is a tall order starting out. You will learn them quickly enough, especially if you actually try to utilise them in actual matches. Just be aware though that the input system, again, seemingly requires you to not mash… or maybe that’s just Launcher thing, I don’t know.

Hit Confirming

Because of DNF Duel’s simpler execution, making a mistake can mean getting punished extremely hard, especially if your opponent is below 30% health already and has a nasty awakening skill active, you really have to work on your hit confirms. With Launcher it’s a relatively simple one, as hit-confirming 5AA has a long enough animation on contact to decide if I want to go for 4S to combo, 5B to hopefully make it a safe blockstring, or be wild and go for a grenade, a rocket, or something else… and probably die, but that’s life, she struggles a lot after all. With other characters this might be more difficult and could require a lot more practice, but you really have to learn your hit confirms in DNF Duel. This is what I meant with that the game is forcing its fundamentals on you. As the game is simplified in its inputs, people who learn their combos will have them down to a T and will punish you heavily if you didn’t confirm correctly and went into an unsafe move.

Pressure and punishing

Pressure in this game was a little bit difficult to grasp for me at first. This is especially true if you jump into the game a little later. I only let DNF Duel slide for like a week, as I was busy playing Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak, but even in Bronze I immediately found myself overwhelmed by the sheer onslaught of stuff being thrown at me. None of which I had any idea how to deal with. Most games require some sort of knowledge to be able to effectively punish when your opponent is overextending. In this game however it’s a little more tricky I feel, because due to the nature of how the MP gauge works and that you can cancel into a special from, I believe, everything, plus that the gauge actually regenerates during long combos, you start to feel like your opponent has a bajillion plus frames. Which may or may not be true.

I gotta be honest, I gave up almost immediately on trying to figure out how to deal with pressure in this game. I spent about 20 minutes in training mode trying to recreate some pressure string that a Striker player was destroying me with and I couldn’t even figure out how to recreate it. I never even got to the part of trying to find a solution to get around it. So I just took to YouTube instead. Shoutouts to Daiken’s punish guide, which in fact even reminded me that Guard Cancelling is a thing. I had completely forgotten about that.

As of right now the game seems very heavy on two- or maybe three-tapping and considering that there are currently inescapable guard break setups and infinites, I am pretty sure things are going to shift around over time as things are getting balanced out. Who knows, perhaps Launcher will even get some type of attack, jumping or grounded, that would maybe give the opposing player a reason to block high every so often instead of negating 100% of her moveset with crouch blocking. Well, one can dream right? What changes we will see in the coming weeks and months, I don’t know, who is to say, right? As it stands right now though, single mistakes are getting punished so hard that you are mostly only making two to three decisions per match. That’s neither good nor bad, that’s simply where we are at right now. So if you are the type of person that keeps whining about how combos are bad game design, as I don’t get to do anything while being comboed and bla bla bla, DNF Duel is probably not the game for you.

Netcode

We can keep it short with the netcode, it’s insane how good it is. I’ve played people from Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul and all of them ran smoother than me playing someone from the middle east in Strive. That’s not to say that Strive’s netcode is bad in any way, I am merely using the example to hammer home the fact that DNF’s netcode is just straight up magic and I have no clue how it works this damn well.

Right, so the netcode is great, so the general online environment is great? No, no it’s not. Why? Because for every new game that comes out, that improves on one aspect of online, the rest of the online environment’s elements are just completely neglected.

Ranked Matchmaking

First up, there’s no stupid lobby and even though you technically kind of can still dodge certain people, as long as you have a right analog stick from what I understand, it is a real matchmaking queue, which you can just let run and find you matches. For some reason however, you’re once again not shown the info you need to make a decision on if you want to accept a match or not. What’s their Ping? Are they on Ethernet or WiFi? And what is their Match Completion percentage? You are not given any of this. Instead, you once again have to choose a region you want to play in, which as I discussed in my post about strive’s lack of matchmaking, is dumb. At the very least there is also a global region to choose from as well, but you will just end up with really bad connections here, as everybody else will logically, as it’s offered, choose their respective regions. Which in turn makes the global option completely useless.

Also the queue is kind of buggy and doesn’t do a great job of actually making matches. I keep getting matched with the same people over and over. Then all of a sudden you don’t get any matches anymore. The logical conclusion here would be, duh, there’s no one else to play with, that’s why you kept getting matched with the same person, if they are going, you’ll just sit there waiting. That is incorrect though, as when I check live streams, I see a lot of people from Europe either playing, or also, just waiting for minutes on end. In Training mode it’s absolutely busted btw. If you reset the room, I think you just outright destroy the queue and you will never again get a match. Granted I haven’t tested it for that long, but yeah, Training mode just did not work for me. So there are things that can definitely be optimised here.

Player Matches

The way things work here is less important, as you are supposed to take more of an active role in making things work anyway. There are however still some things that are just not working as intended. For one, if you search for rooms, and this might just be a PSN kind of issue, I don’t know how it works on Steam, but your account’s region is used to measure the ping of the room instead of your location. Which makes no sense, because once you go into the room, you can see the individual connection indicators anyway. So if I open up a room, chances are people from Europe are unlikely to find me, unless I put Europe into the notice, which will still look rather dodgy, as another person from Europe will see my room having an awful ping. So they won’t click on it. On the flipside, if I am searching for rooms, I now have to look for the worst ones, which are more likely to be closer to my region. Thankfully, as the netcode is as magical as it, you can get away with a lot here and this is a very niche kind of issue to begin with, but still it is not working as intended.

Between how ranked and player matches work though, it is already a vast improvement over Strive. In terms of usability, still leagues behind SFV, but SFV’s netcode is garbage… so it swings and roundabouts. I mean technically speaking it’s just going back to Granblue Fantasy Versus, right? But this time, it’s actually playable.

Single Player content

I don’t care.

Closing Words

I just made it into Gold League, feeling quite proud of myself, as I don’t think I have ever played a character as underpowered as Launcher. I have nothing to lose here right, so I am not going to switch, but looking at how hilariously busted Swift Master is and then glancing over at my precious Launcher and realising how useless she is, like she got seriously screwed over here. I am still having a tonne of fun though.

What are your thoughts on DNF Duel so far? Is it something you can see yourself playing for longer, or is it just this year’s summer fighter and that’s it? Also let me know which character you are playing and what character you dislike the most so far. Let me know in the comments, either here or on the YouTube video. See you next time.