One of the most high-profile game releases of this March is The First Berserker: Khazan, a brutal fantasy Soulslike with an aggregated score of 80 on Metacritic. For the most part, the narrative and world of The First Berserker: Khazan stand completely on their own. A closer inspection of its Steam page or official website reveals that it is connected to a bigger franchise: Nexon’s Dungeon & Fighter, also known as DNF.
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The DNF Universe isn’t as widely known in North America as fantasy series like Final Fantasy, Warcraft, or Dark Souls, but worldwide, DNF is an extremely popular franchise that’s attracted millions of players to its beat ’em up gameplay. Now that The First Berserker: Khazan looks like it will be the most popular DNF game in the West yet, I wanted to give an overview of the DNF series’ history and highlight where it’s going next for those unfamiliar with it.
The DNF franchise began in 2005 with Dungeon Fighter Online. At its core, Dungeon Fighter Online is a beat ’em up like Streets of Rage, although its anime-like fantasy setting feels more similar to Golden Axe or Dragon’s Crown. It found an addictive way to tap into the simple joy of watching big numbers pop up as you beat up hordes of enemies in a video game, and it resonated with people. Dungeon Fighter Online became popular in Korea before expanding to Japan, China, and then North America over the following decade.
Over the past 20 years, DNF is one of the franchises that put Nexon on the map as a game publisher, alongside MapleStory. As such, Nexon has continued to support it through live service updates for the PC game and new titles. Dungeon Fighter Live: Fall of Hendron Myre for Xbox 360 was the first example of that, but it has been delisted for a decade. DNF has also received some mobile games, with the main one supported now being Dungeon & Fighter Mobile.
Once again, those games are most popular in Asia. In 2022, the series got its most prominent Western release yet in DNF Duel, a fighting game based on the franchise by Arc System Works that utilizes visuals that are similarly gorgeous to Dragon Ball FighterZ and Guilty Gear Strive. It was a success but didn’t make DNF that notable outside of the fighting game community.
Don’t let that make you underestimate the size of this franchise, though. In a presentation for investors in February, Nexon confirmed that the franchise has attracted 850 million players across all its different releases and earned over $22 billion in gross revenue. That’s absolutely massive for a franchise you probably haven’t heard of until The First Berserker: Khazan.
That same presentation highlights the importance of The First Berserker: Khazan to Nexon, which plans to focus on “investing in” and “strengthening” DNF as a franchise in 2025. While the efforts with Dungeon Fighter Online and Dungeon & Fighter Mobile seem more focused on China, Nexon calls The First Berserker: Khazan a “strategic first step in a series of vertical extensions of Dungeon & Fighter IP to introduce it to a global audience.” Sifting through that corporate jargon, that essentially means The First Berserker: Khazan is intentionally meant to be an on-ramp to DNF as a franchise.
If you live in North America, Nexon knows you probably haven’t heard of DNF, but it wants to get those players into this massive series through games like The First Berserker: Khazan, which is set 800 years before Dungeon Fighter Online. If you enjoyed that Soulslike and decided to check out Dungeon Fighter Online or Dungeon & Fighter Mobile as a result, Nexon will have succeeded. I’m sure Nexon’s happy that The First Berserker: Khazan is being received warmly by Western audiences.
The First Berserker: Khazan isn’t the only upcoming DNF game, either. Project Overkill is meant to be a 3D adaptation of the classic DNF beat ’em up gameplay, while the Genshin Impact-like Dungeon & Fighter: Arad was announced at The Game Awards 2024. Even if 2D online beat ’em up MMOs aren’t your jam, Nexon has a lot of new DNF games on the way that’ll try to garner your attention.
According to Nexon, both Project Overkill and Dungeon & Fighter: Arad will be released by 2027. The First Berserker: Khazan is out this week on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, though.
