Gauntlet isn't half-bad, I quite enjoyed my time with it. I have never played the original arcade classic, but this version is a tough little action-rpg where you kill tons of enemies, dodge traps and solve simple puzzles in a dual joystick shooter-like style of gameplay with light character customization. The lack of real progression and the clunkiness of the controls in some spots made me put it down, but I still had a good experience and would shoot the food again.
I've played as the Elf for the time I had with the game and boy is that guy fragile, I'm not sure if the other classes have more health but two or three hits max and I was dead. With the large number of enemies, the traps, and the relative smallness of some of the rooms you fight in, this became a problem a few levels in. You have a dodge-roll as the elf, but you don't feel like you have complete control over it, which makes it tough to use it to actually dodge enemy attacks.
The main multiplayer competitive focus of the game is gold. There's food to heal your character and potions to use special abilities, and you also get tons of gold for breaking pots and collecting chests. You can use that gold to change your weapon or talisman, or to change the cosmetic appearance of your character, but there are no ways to improve your health, damage, movement speed, etc. I wish you could improve your character to make further attempts at a level easier instead of just having these 'pick one' upgrades. There is quite a bit of potential there since you have a basic attack, a special attack, and a skill with a cooldown, there are plenty of spots where you could improve numerical value slightly.
Besides the difficulty and lack of smaller upgrades, I don't have many issues with this game. At the same time, I don't have much to say about it either; It's a twin-stick shooter where you kill skeletons, open doors and find treasures. If you accidentally hit healing item, it breaks them, you get gold for completing certain achievements, there are a little range of skills/attacks you can select and it plays fairly well. It's okay!
