Getting Into DC Universe Online a Decade On

Knowing that DC Universe Online would be hitting a double digit anniversary right at the start of 2021, I decided that the end of 2020 would be the perfect time to check it out for the first time.

The thing that’s always put me off are the episode expansions. It’s a free-to-play game, but exactly how much can I do without dropping £7? And that’s just for one episode, if I want to get up to episode 26 it’s £90, and then have to buy each of the remaining 13 episodes separately - if I’m buying them from Steam. There’s also the option of getting access to them for free, if you pay a monthly subscription for Daybreak All Access (which comes with added stuff). You can also save a little bit of money with the Ultimate Edition Bundle if bought from Daybreak Games, at £72, but again that only gets you to episode 26, and there is no way to get up to date with a single purchase.

I’m not saying that you wouldn’t get your money’s worth - because again I’d not yet played it. I hesitate to buy brand new AAA titles at over £35, and even then it’s not a sure thing. £200 on a game older than two of my kids? Clearly a hard sell.

Anyway, I installed the base game and loaded the launcher. Logging in, it started the chunky update - 36GB later, I was ready. Soon, I’d find out exactly whether or not the episodes were just endgame content, the kind of thing I’d always wanted from Marvel Heroes.

After the opening cutscene, which was fantastic by the way, I created my supervillain. Tech-based origin, dual-wields machetes and a speedster. Then I was kidnapped by Brainiac, and Lex Luthor helped me escape. We fought through some drones, a few other villains joined in, and then we fought Brainiac. Well, I fought him, while Joker, Circe and Lex battled drones, because Luthor would definitely not try to fight the big guy so that he could claim all of the credit…

Since none of the screenshots suggested what sort of game this was, I was surprised to find it had a third-person camera. It can be played using a controller, but I played with mouse and keyboard. WASD to move, mouse to aim and attack. The number keys do special attacks, which have cooldowns, and that’s about it. It’s like a slightly stripped down Star Trek Online.

Once I arrived at the villain hub, which is a bar, I was given some tasks by Joker. It involved murdering a lot of police officers, but I also discovered some side quests that random people on the street can give you. Well, those involved the exact same thing if I’m quite honest… Eventually, I was sent to a warehouse to help out Carmine Falcone’s men and Catwoman.

That was pretty much more of the same, fighting cops and freeing bad guys who had been arrested. After following Catwoman around a bit, we fought Huntress before she eventually escaped. I imagine that having a hero character would be basically the same, but instead put you by Huntress’ side against Catwoman. The job finished, I left the warehouse and was confronted by a message telling me to buy the Gotham City Starter Pack, which really took me out of the moment.

I had been playing for about half an hour by this point, and it was telling me to spend $10 to get 1,000 Daybreak Cash, so I can get some in-game items and a 25% experience boost? Sure, again the game is free-to-play, but if I want to keep playing I already know that it’s going to cost me nearly £200. Yet here they were, during the tutorial, trying to get money out of me?

Dismissing the notice, I headed back to the bar and activated a machine that had Booster Gold’s face on it. As the best character in DC’s stable, of course I was going to. It activated a quest that would have me checking out some of the notable locations in Gotham, which is a fantastic idea. I had noticed some collectables as I was running at super-speed up and down buildings, which gave me items when I interacted with them. Doing a tour of the city was a great way to spot more of them.

After returning to the bar to hand that quest in, I selected the next main quest and was prompted to open up my villain lair. After some brief tutorials on how to add furniture to my, admittedly, sparse apartment (it’s more that than a lair) there wasn’t really anything that I could do there. It lets you pick different loadouts for your character, as well as sort out henchmen once you’ve unlocked them, but for a brand new character there isn’t really any use for it that I could see. I later discovered that if you want to unlock the full functionality of your lair, you need to pay for it with Daybreak Cash.

From there, I finished up the Joker quest line, ending in a fight against Bane in a lighthouse. I was then almost immediately invited into the year 3000 by Supergirl, to help out the Legion of Super-Heroes! Which isn’t part of the main game. It’s actually the latest episode in DC Universe Online: Episode 39: Long Live the Legion.

Whilst looking at the episodes on Steam, it says that you have to have a character at level 30 before you can access them. However, whenever a new episode is released, any character can access it for free, in a cut-down form. Your character is temporarily increased in level so you can participate in a meaningful way - though certain things will still murder you easily from my experience.

Doing missions in the 31st century did allow me to access the Legion of Doom’s headquarters, which I had been unable to reach as the access point was so far away in Gotham. It’s basically the same as the bar in Gotham, just bigger and with more characters selling items.

It also allowed me to experience the On Duty missions, because the one I’d unlocked in the main story never seemed to get a team together. With On Duty you all sign up to go into it, and follow along until the end - assuming you’re doing it at the same time as a handful of other people. See Task Force Operations in Star Trek Online, or Dungeons in World of Warcraft. There are only a handful available at any one time, so it’s annoying that I was stuck waiting for ages to do them, and at time of writing still haven’t managed to get into the main story one I’ve been waiting for.

But anyway, this brings you up to date to my time with the game. The 10th anniversary is rapidly approaching as I type these words, and I’m sure that Dimensional Ink Games has something big in store. To answer my biggest question, the episodes are only for when you’ve completed the main story. Since you need to be level 30 to play them, that’s a good thing, too. I’ve not quite reached level 15, and I did a bunch of stuff from Episode 39!

Unfortunately, since I’m still waiting to progress the story - the aforementioned On Duty mission - I can’t say how much more of the main story I have left. It could be 10 minutes, it could be 10 hours! But I’ll definitely keep playing, now that I’ve started. Whether or not I’ll buy any episodes - on sale - I’ve not decided yet. It’s tempting, but even on sale it’s going to be £150 or more for the lot of them. Plus, the game is desperate for you to buy things, from trying to sell you XP boosts, to the paid lair system, and it even locks anything over $2,000 of your in-game money behind an escrow system, which you can pay to remove by subscribing.

If you’re on the fence about checking DC Universe Online out, rest assured that you’ve got at least eight hours of free game to play. It’s just really bogged down with selling you premium stuff.