Nintendo just proved that 2019 is an amazing year for Nintendo Switch gamers with their absolutely amazing lineup of titles on display at E3 2019. One of these games is the highly-anticipated port of Phoenix Labs’ very successful monster hunting free-to-play title Dauntless, which we can now see gameplay footage of for the very first time. Check the footage out below, which debuted on the Nintendo Treehouse: Live 2019 Showcase.
As excited as I am for this upcoming port, seeing as Dauntless is one of those games where cross-play across all platforms is implemented, this Switch title is looking a bit rough. First off, the framerate at the beginning dipped to what I would guess is below 20 frames per second, which is pretty far from the bare minimum playable of 30. There’s also a lot of stuttering here and there as the demo team tried to take on Charrogg, which is one of the existing Behemoths in the game.
Textures look pretty incomplete and unoptimized as well, although I think you can attribute that to the fact that the game is still very much in development at this point. All of this said, I hope Phoenix Labs does do something about the framerate at the very least, seeing as it’s very important for an action-heavy title such as this one.
Despite the obvious technical problems, it’s still impressive looking at how far this port has come. While Dauntless is definitely not on par with, say, The Witcher 3 (which is also getting a severely downgraded Switch release this year) it’s still really graphically demanding, and the footage shows Phoenix Labs making headway into making this game playable on the Nintendo Switch.
The Treehouse: Live presentation also debuted a new never-before seen monster named Winterhorn Skraev, which will be released on all platforms at a later date. This Behemoth was actually available to play against very early on in the game’s development cycle; it has been reworked extensively now to serve as one of Dauntless’ hardest Behemoths, themed after the icy realm it resides in.
Check out the rest of the gameplay footage above to see more of Dauntless in action on the Nintendo Switch.
Dauntless is now available to play for free on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the Epic Games Store on PC. The Nintendo Switch version will be out later this year.
