Dungeons 4

23% of reviews name Dungeons 3, and the game's critics lean on it heavily: a third of negative reviews make the comparison, usually to say the older game is the one to buy. "In every metric that I care about, dungeons 3 is better" comes from a player who played through both. Others go further and call it a Dungeons 3 expansion at full price: "it's the same thing as 3. There is very little new content and does not feel worth the full price."

Some positive reviews call Dungeons 4 an improvement on Dungeons 3, praising the streamlining and better faction balance, and some explicitly push back on the charge that it is the same game. Others take a middle position: it is familiar, it is fun, and if you liked Dungeons 3 you will like this. One reviewer put it as "Feels more like an upgrade than a sequel, but it's still fun". Several suggest newcomers start with Dungeons 3 for the story, or because it is cheaper with all its DLC.

29% of reviews talk about the humor, narrator or writing, and the jokes divide players. Fans love the fourth-wall breaks, the self-mocking narration and the dense pop culture parodies (Marvel's gauntlet, Lord of the Rings speeches, Warcraft peasants, a Rick Roll). For them the comedy is the point.

Critics say the meta humor has worn thin after four games. The running joke that the writers are lazy and the missions padded lands badly with them; one player says that if the humor amounts to jokes about bad writers, "I'm just going to start agreeing with you." Others complain about repetition, with the same voice lines firing many times per mission ("the jokes are... very reptitive."), and about the story itself: the returning villain from Dungeons 3 and a new brother who escapes at the end of mission after mission ("every map ends the same where the good you need to beat just escapes again and again and again."). Several players who gave up within the first couple of hours cite the tone as the reason. Some recommenders take a middle road, as one review does: "Is the dialog somehow childish? yeah. Does the humor often miss the mark? yeah. Is the army control a bit clumsy? yeah. Is it fun to play? HELL YEAH!" Players note a setting that reduces how often the narrator speaks, but some warn that muting him means missing mission hints.

Evilness, the research currency, no longer trickles in from captured islands as in Dungeons 3. You earn it in bursts by killing heroes, good creatures and caravans on the overworld. Fans of the change say it ends the old habit of hiding underground until you are unbeatable: "Thanks to a couple of gameplay changes you can no longer trivialize most maps by just turtling in the dungeon."

Critics find it stingy and say it forces the army out before the dungeon can defend itself. "Evilness, a resource needed to upgrade your dungeon and army, is a finite resource stingily doled out." Several point out that evilness also pays for demon resurrection and Thalya's spells, so it competes with research, and that research costs feel high overall ("The research is the biggest hurdle to progression on each map, entirely because of the cost."). Some players report feast-or-famine swings between too much gold and too little evilness.

In Dungeons 4 the little snots operate every room (mana, toolboxes, potions, traps), while horde, demon and undead creatures exist only to fight. Some players love the freedom: "Having little snots be the primary workers for all your resources (mana, toolboxes, traps, potions etc) is a huge QOL improvement". You no longer have to leave specific creatures at home or field a faction you dislike just to run a room.

For some veterans, the dungeon lost its purpose and personality. "What on earth is the point of the dungeon then, you just have the snots do everything!" The same group laments the missing titans, magic toolboxes, the old hero conversion and favorite Dungeons 3 traps. Trap complaints are concentrated here: players say traps are fewer and stop hurting elite heroes later in a mission ("Traps are basically decoration."), so the best defense becomes teleporting the army home. A smaller group says traps are now easier to build and that slime and saw combinations work well.

Players disagree about the three creature factions. Supporters say each now works on its own, with undead minions, healing vampire queens and debuffing gazers giving the undead and demons a real identity: "each faction is viable as a solo faction". Critics say that this is exactly the problem, since "there is no reason to have units of every faction to have a functioning dungeon", so players pick one faction and spam it. Reviews name undead, horde and demons alike as overpowered or useless. A few add that campaign missions favor one faction and punish the others ("every mission is clearly designed around a specific faction").

Some experienced players find Normal too easy and say Hard is where the game comes alive, while a few casual players report Easy feeling unexpectedly punishing in some missions and skirmishes. Several describe enemy waves that scale relentlessly the longer a map runs ("Enemy scaling is completely out of whack."). Players who like a challenge praise the late campaign; players who want a relaxed builder often recommend dropping the difficulty or sticking to the sandbox Dream Dungeon mode.