Content to keep rolling until 2024
As part of this weekend’s ARC tournament series, publisher Nexon and developers Arc System Works and Eighting announced that there is still plenty of exciting new content planned for wild fighter DNF Duel, which will see new characters, mechanics, and stages added to the anime scrapper well into 2024.
Nexon has previously teased the coming of the deadly fashionista samurai, Spectre, but a new season pass announcement notes that there will be four further fighters added to the title, but two more characters are expected in 2023, and two more in 2024, for a total of five DLC characters. A new stage will also be arriving in the winter of this year. The action kicks off with Spectre’s arrival this summer, which also brings a revised Awakening system, and an entirely new mechanic.
DNF Duel hasn’t quite taken off as well as Nexon had hoped, but has found itself a passionate community, (including this author). It’s a great-looking name, with fabulous animation and a really varied roster of characters. But DNF Duel‘s most interesting element is also its most divisive: The game takes a wild approach to combat, with high damage, lengthy combos, and a lack of fear in regards to the characters having uber-powerful buttons and/or abilities. This makes for dynamic and engaging matches, but many have also complained that the title is too embracing of its chaotic nature.
Still, the fact that the development team has a fistful of new roster additions in the works — with ArcSys likely keeping the title on its pro-tour for the foreseeable future, is a good sign that DNF Duel has not been abandoned simply because it isn’t doing Tekken numbers. And that’s as it should be, as DNF Duel, though an underdog, still deserves to be part of the main stage conversation.
DNF Duel is available now on PlayStation and PC. A Nintendo Switch port launches April 20.
