Dawn of the Monsters - Nightmare Arcade Mode - No Death Clear (Meteor Temujin)
134Dawn of the Monsters is a kaiju beat 'em up from 13AM Games and WayForward from 2022. Now, a year later, they're releasing a big content update - one for free, and one paid DLC. The free update for everyone includes New Story+ (replay the story with all Augments), New Game+++ (higher difficulty and remixed enemy placements, I think), Trial Mode (similar to combo trials in fighting games), in-game achievements, and even a full Japanese dub. The paid DLC (which costs $6.99) includes Arcade Mode, the new playable character Meteor Temujin, 50 new character skins, and new items in the gallery and archives (as well as achievements, of course).
This update will be released on August 24th for the Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, and Steam (August 28th for Switch in Europe). Huge thanks to WayForward for letting me play it early!
I enjoyed this game back when it came out, but the one thing I really wanted out of it was a more traditional arcade mode... and now they've added it! It comes with two difficulties (with different enemy placements), and two different play styles (Classic and Rogue). And of course, you don't have any of your Augments from Story mode. Instead, every time you clear a stage, you get to choose a power up. When you clear a stage that doesn't end with a major boss fight, you get to either upgrade your attack power, your defense, or your rage generation. When you clear a stage that ends with a boss, you get to pick an Augment. If you're playing Classic mode, the Augments are predetermined from start to finish. If you play Rogue, they're randomized, and you'll find Augments that don't appear in Classic mode. Which Augments you want will depend on which character you're using, but some of them are so good, it's hard to take anything else. Like the Gore Armor, which increases your defense every time you execute an enemy, and it stacks up to five times. If you build that up, enemies do very little damage to you, which is incredibly helpful since they can hit hard without that buff.
I'm using the new playable character, Meteor Temujin. Basically, he has three different weapons you can swap between by using his Rage attacks. The sword is fast and 'weak', the hammer is slow but hits hard, and the axe is the middle ground between the two. I generally stick with the axe; I feel like its basic moveset has the best DPS. The other weapons are still good though; the rage attack with the sword slashes through every enemy in your path and ignites them, which all together does quite a bit of damage. And the hammer is good at stunning enemies and gives you some very damaging juggles. So overall Temujin is pretty fun. All of the characters play differently from each other and Temujin's 'style switching' adds another archetype to the mix.
I think it goes without saying now, but if you already have Dawn of the Monsters, I'd highly recommend picking up the DLC. Temujin's a fun new character to play with, and Arcade mode is probably what I'll stick with any time I feel like playing this game. For me, this update makes Dawn of the Monsters a great total package.
0:00 Intro
1:04 Stage 1
4:34 Stage 2 - Torgahra
8:57 Stage 3
13:13 Stage 4 - Sednagon
18:41 Stage 5
23:47 Stage 6 - Gaiacras
28:17 Stage 7
32:16 Stage 8 - Agnitor
35:46 Stage 9
39:30 Stage 10
43:23 Stage 11 - Azrael
46:56 Ending
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Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvMhpG1GR9sk8OYiWQMZZTgl
2D Action (e.g. Metal Slug): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfI6IYca_kvNFjpnJ59Th6N0IU1PSpD3d
STG/Shmups (e.g. Dodonpachi): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE6B3779BE759F71