It is flawed gem. While it is a great game in its own right, it has some severe issues which keeps it from being a classic for me.
First issue is consolization.
Game was made simpler to accommodate console players. While it was somewhat of a side grade, people rarely if ever express exactly why older version was better. While there was no simplification in game mechanics, game had removed its more sophisticated menus and hub features. Game wasn’t much back then, but now it doesn’t have a feel of a proper game. Game interface is extremely clunky and removal of features which already existed in game is a very bad practice which is worth mentioning.
Second issue is of poor in game mechanics.
It is not tight or polished. Mastering it is very hard to impossible due to various interactions between you and world. For example, you can’t never master melee fighting, because it is impossible to interrupt attack animation of enemies. This makes gameplay very frustrating, because you can’t get good at it. You will always lose health to a random mob which just happened to enter into animation just split second before you had hit him and it does not matter if your attacks is supposed to interrupt him. In this game animations and interrupt mechanics do not work well. Mobs do not have clear animations when they are going to attack you nor this game allows you to play around its base mechanics.
Enemies like Juggernauts tend to suffer from this too. Their charges towards you sometimes are hard to predict as they can readjust their charge rather liberally and still hit you. They strike you instantly. You can’t block them, you can’t interrupt them. They tend to get stuck in their never ending charges which are impossible to counter.
Furthermore, character melee strikes move you forwards regardless of your intent. This means that while range characters stays exactly where you want them to be, you have less control over melee characters.
Game does not give you time to respond to events. If it is AoE tower, it will go off immediately and you have microseconds to respond without having free mobility options. Game actively punishes you for trying to master it.
A good example are exploding enemies and shrapnel enemies. It is a lot more difficult to play with a melee class in this game, because all special abilities tend to disfavour melee classes. They do not have movement abilities which would help them to get through the crowds. Elf, necromancer and wizard all have it. Warrior can go through them, but only if he has some breathing room from the enemies. Valkyrie technically can, but it is a bad ability as it leaves you vulnerable when ability charges up and a moment when you get there. Thus classes which needs it the most are least mobile in this game. Game balance heavily disfavours melee classes and advanced players do not even play them as melee classes. They are being played as casters who just run through enemies, use their AoE abilities, kill remaining enemies and move forward.
Lastly, enemy hitboxes are bugged.
Third issue is of uninspired level and enemy design.
All environments and enemies tend to melt into one massive blob of enemies. There is little variety in enemies that would matter to you. A zombie here, a mummy there. Vast majority of enemies are not unique, they do not have their own character, strengths and weaknesses. Same could be said about environments you are in. I would expect this level of quality from procedural generated content and not from hand made levels. While it might not be a huge issue, the problem is that nothing gives personality for this game. Outside of narrator which is just one small, good thing about this game, everything is just bland. There isn’t really a story mode, no witty dialogue between characters, narrator also does not tell you anything interesting. Customisation is largely meaningless due to graphics and gameplay. I struggle to find something which would make Gauntlet exceptional as it doesn’t do anything really well. Mechanics taken individually are average or at best, good.
Fourth issue in this game is how overall balance is set.
Advanced players will ignore solid fighting mechanics and will play game completely differently. They will ignore room to room fighting and will just run past all of it. Game does not scale at all. The more difficult it is supposed to get, the more mobs are on a screen. This can lead to fps drops and overall meta gaming. There is no interplay between classes as there is in early game. You can’t rely on warrior to hold waves of enemies while elf takes care of towers and bigger guys. It abandons its solid foundation which most players encounter in their 30 hour playtime for just cheese.
Game forces you to constantly dash as it is faster than running. This contributes to this cheesy, arcade feeling and is not satisfying as a game could be.
In addition, quite few items are underpowered, especially at the highest level and are in need of a buff.
Another issue is that a lot of attacks do not feel satisfying. Elf just spams its little arrows doing negligible amount of damage. Why not just make his second attack as his main one? In a same way, Wizard does not have satisfying basic attacks. It all just feels weak, especially against hordes of enemies.
Fifth issue is of variety.
Game lacks variety in its adversaries. It doesn’t have modifiers system nor it adds additional flavour to enemies which it already has. This leaves you fighting exact same enemies who can’t mess up your strategy. What games needs are more meaningful abilities for enemies in this game. Maybe spiders should have poison which would make even the smallest critter a heavy hitter if you do not find food? Or skeletons being fragile, but easily spawned and coming in high numbers while zombies being slow to move and attack, but being beefy and resistant to AoE?
Sixth issue is that this game lacks detailed information about abilities.
It wants to be this hardcore game, but it is set up as a casual game without precise information on your abilities and what they do. You can’t compare them objectively in this game and it is one of the reasons why most people disagree on what abilities they should use and when.
Seventh issue is of game camera.
In this game is that screen is very far out and for some idiotic reason all people share same screen. This leaves most players struggling to follow their characters and it often leads handicapping gameplay itself. Your character can easily get out of the screen range and get lost thus quickly dying. Running downwards also causes issues as screen is not re-adjusted, you often do not see into what you are running into which can sometimes cause you to take damage or even die from poor camera angles. Neither you can use map well when each character wants to be in different areas of a map. Because map is so zoomed out you cant clearly follow individual enemies and their attacks which leaves melee combat unviable. This happens, because enemies do not have clear attack animations and attacks often can get lost in the sea of enemies. This is very important in mid sized packs when you want to control them through your precise attacks, but game won’t allow you to do so reliably.
In the end, while for local co-op this would be justified, it is a handicap for a modern game and an antique from arcade days.
These were 7 deadly failings of this game. It would be a classic for me if those issues would had been addressed. While my list seems long, it is nothing what a sequel could not accomplish by focusing on the core game quality. However, as there isn’t much of a market for Gauntlet series, we are going to receive these games far and wide in between. So far this game is definitely the best entry in the Gauntlet series.
Btw: This game has amazing community for co-op!
Seven missteps of Gauntlet
First issue is consolization.
Game was made simpler to accommodate console players. While it was somewhat of a side grade, people rarely if ever express exactly why older version was better. While there was no simplification in game mechanics, game had removed its more sophisticated menus and hub features. Game wasn’t much back then, but now it doesn’t have a feel of a proper game. Game interface is extremely clunky and removal of features which already existed in game is a very bad practice which is worth mentioning.
Second issue is of poor in game mechanics.
It is not tight or polished. Mastering it is very hard to impossible due to various interactions between you and world. For example, you can’t never master melee fighting, because it is impossible to interrupt attack animation of enemies. This makes gameplay very frustrating, because you can’t get good at it. You will always lose health to a random mob which just happened to enter into animation just split second before you had hit him and it does not matter if your attacks is supposed to interrupt him. In this game animations and interrupt mechanics do not work well. Mobs do not have clear animations when they are going to attack you nor this game allows you to play around its base mechanics.
Enemies like Juggernauts tend to suffer from this too. Their charges towards you sometimes are hard to predict as they can readjust their charge rather liberally and still hit you. They strike you instantly. You can’t block them, you can’t interrupt them. They tend to get stuck in their never ending charges which are impossible to counter.
Furthermore, character melee strikes move you forwards regardless of your intent. This means that while range characters stays exactly where you want them to be, you have less control over melee characters.
Game does not give you time to respond to events. If it is AoE tower, it will go off immediately and you have microseconds to respond without having free mobility options. Game actively punishes you for trying to master it.
A good example are exploding enemies and shrapnel enemies. It is a lot more difficult to play with a melee class in this game, because all special abilities tend to disfavour melee classes. They do not have movement abilities which would help them to get through the crowds. Elf, necromancer and wizard all have it. Warrior can go through them, but only if he has some breathing room from the enemies. Valkyrie technically can, but it is a bad ability as it leaves you vulnerable when ability charges up and a moment when you get there. Thus classes which needs it the most are least mobile in this game. Game balance heavily disfavours melee classes and advanced players do not even play them as melee classes. They are being played as casters who just run through enemies, use their AoE abilities, kill remaining enemies and move forward.
Lastly, enemy hitboxes are bugged.
Third issue is of uninspired level and enemy design.
All environments and enemies tend to melt into one massive blob of enemies. There is little variety in enemies that would matter to you. A zombie here, a mummy there. Vast majority of enemies are not unique, they do not have their own character, strengths and weaknesses. Same could be said about environments you are in. I would expect this level of quality from procedural generated content and not from hand made levels. While it might not be a huge issue, the problem is that nothing gives personality for this game. Outside of narrator which is just one small, good thing about this game, everything is just bland. There isn’t really a story mode, no witty dialogue between characters, narrator also does not tell you anything interesting. Customisation is largely meaningless due to graphics and gameplay. I struggle to find something which would make Gauntlet exceptional as it doesn’t do anything really well. Mechanics taken individually are average or at best, good.
Fourth issue in this game is how overall balance is set.
Advanced players will ignore solid fighting mechanics and will play game completely differently. They will ignore room to room fighting and will just run past all of it. Game does not scale at all. The more difficult it is supposed to get, the more mobs are on a screen. This can lead to fps drops and overall meta gaming. There is no interplay between classes as there is in early game. You can’t rely on warrior to hold waves of enemies while elf takes care of towers and bigger guys. It abandons its solid foundation which most players encounter in their 30 hour playtime for just cheese.
Game forces you to constantly dash as it is faster than running. This contributes to this cheesy, arcade feeling and is not satisfying as a game could be.
In addition, quite few items are underpowered, especially at the highest level and are in need of a buff.
Another issue is that a lot of attacks do not feel satisfying. Elf just spams its little arrows doing negligible amount of damage. Why not just make his second attack as his main one? In a same way, Wizard does not have satisfying basic attacks. It all just feels weak, especially against hordes of enemies.
Fifth issue is of variety.
Game lacks variety in its adversaries. It doesn’t have modifiers system nor it adds additional flavour to enemies which it already has. This leaves you fighting exact same enemies who can’t mess up your strategy. What games needs are more meaningful abilities for enemies in this game. Maybe spiders should have poison which would make even the smallest critter a heavy hitter if you do not find food? Or skeletons being fragile, but easily spawned and coming in high numbers while zombies being slow to move and attack, but being beefy and resistant to AoE?
Sixth issue is that this game lacks detailed information about abilities.
It wants to be this hardcore game, but it is set up as a casual game without precise information on your abilities and what they do. You can’t compare them objectively in this game and it is one of the reasons why most people disagree on what abilities they should use and when.
Seventh issue is of game camera.
In this game is that screen is very far out and for some idiotic reason all people share same screen. This leaves most players struggling to follow their characters and it often leads handicapping gameplay itself. Your character can easily get out of the screen range and get lost thus quickly dying. Running downwards also causes issues as screen is not re-adjusted, you often do not see into what you are running into which can sometimes cause you to take damage or even die from poor camera angles. Neither you can use map well when each character wants to be in different areas of a map. Because map is so zoomed out you cant clearly follow individual enemies and their attacks which leaves melee combat unviable. This happens, because enemies do not have clear attack animations and attacks often can get lost in the sea of enemies. This is very important in mid sized packs when you want to control them through your precise attacks, but game won’t allow you to do so reliably.
In the end, while for local co-op this would be justified, it is a handicap for a modern game and an antique from arcade days.
Almost a Classic
These were 7 deadly failings of this game. It would be a classic for me if those issues would had been addressed. While my list seems long, it is nothing what a sequel could not accomplish by focusing on the core game quality. However, as there isn’t much of a market for Gauntlet series, we are going to receive these games far and wide in between. So far this game is definitely the best entry in the Gauntlet series.
Btw: This game has amazing community for co-op!