Unless you were tuned in to the French internet scene in 2001, there's a good chance you may not have heard of the popular The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk audio plays until around 2020, when the first games from the series started to come out. Thus far, those games have explored genres that fit with the fantasy setting. The first game was a dungeon-crawling RPG, while the next one was a dungeon management simulator. TaVRn's Takedown: Naheulbeuk is the latest game in the franchise, and it takes a left turn of sorts in its initial foray into the VR space. Despite some rough spots, the game is very enjoyable and better than some of its contemporaries in a few areas.

The taverns in the land of Mliuej are facing an unusual crisis. The breweries of the area are still producing beer, but the product has been poisoned, causing everyone who drinks it to fall into a constant state of rage. Many tavern brawls are breaking out in the process. As the fighting isn't a product of normal alcohol consumption, the Goddess of Drink has chosen you, an otherwise normal person, to stop the ones responsible for the poisoned brew. To do that, you'll need to go to every tavern and beat up everyone you meet until you find the culprit and his underlings. While the story isn't very deep considering the source material, it is a cohesive one, and that already gives the game a leg up over its contemporaries.

This is a first-person brawler, and if you've played the likes of Drunkn Bar Fight, you know roughly what to expect. The moment you walk into the tavern, you'll be met by a small group of patrons that'll shuffle toward you, poised and ready to fight. Some will fight up close, while others fight at a distance. Some will brandish weapons, while others may sport armor. Either way, your goal is to knock out everyone in the vicinity before the doors open and you move on to the next room to repeat the process until the whole tavern is cleared out. Occasionally, you'll get boss fights that are one-on-one battles in arenas, and while you may occasionally fight near hazards like lava pits, don't expect anything too elaborate.

When it comes to the fighting, this matches up with what you'd see in those aforementioned games. Your fists are your main weapon, and while you can throw basic punches, don't expect anything more elaborate, like slaps or chops or backfists. You can pick up items, and this becomes the real highlight of the fights because almost anything can be used as a weapon. Bar stools and mops are expected, but you can also use things like bottles and toilet paper as weapons that deliver decent damage to foes. You can get potions to provide special attacks like charged punches, and while you can also get your hands on real weapons, don't expect projectiles. The game wants you to get up close and personal with your brawls.

The fighting feels very good, and part of that can be attributed to how weighty it all feels. That is a hard thing to do in VR, when you aren't supposed to hit anything in real life, but all of the punches feel solid rather than floaty, so the impact is mentally felt even if you can't physically feel it. The same applies when using an object to bludgeon someone or when you throw something, especially since the game is generous about aim assist. Even though you're not supposed to be playing a world-class brawler, the game does a good job of fulfilling the fantasy that you can hold your own in a multi-person brawl thanks to all of your offensive attacks feeling like they've been tuned correctly.

One element that makes the fighting fun is a general sense of progression. Most levels give you a trading card at the end that acts like your gear in lieu of leveling up. There are four categories for the cards, and you can only equip one card per category at a time. Some of the cards act as stat buffs, while others give you special abilities that, when combined with the random potion you get at the beginning of each fight, can give you brief moments of being an absolute wrecking machine. Considering how there are loads of cards to collect in the game, those aiming for a complete collection will have plenty of reasons to finish all of the fights.

There are two things that hamper the experience. The first has to do with defense, or the lack of it. The game teaches you that blocking is done by putting both arms in front of you in a guard position, but nine out of 10 times, the game doesn't detect this as a block. You won't notice this in a real fight until you look at your health and see it dropping from every hit. There's no position to make the game register a block with more consistency. Unless this gets fixed at some point, you should expect to use more healing items after a fight.

Since blocking is not being detected often, you learn to move away from hits, which leads to the game's other issue regarding slow movement. It doesn't feel slow when you're moving forward and backward, but turning feels almost glacial, as if you turned down the analog stick sensitivity on a normal game. Using snap turning instead of smooth turning slightly helps, while using warped movement when going from one location to another doesn't feel as snappy as in other games. Your best bet to mitigate this would be to use smooth movement on both axes while also dedicating a large area to roam around, as if you were playing a boxing game like The Thrill of the Fight. The solution may be impossible for those who lack the indoor space to do this.

Graphically, TaVRn's Takedown looks gorgeous, and that falls squarely on the art style. The 3D cartoon style the series has adopted over time still fits well, and it has been accompanied by slightly exaggerated animations that reinforce the goofy setup, especially when someone gets hit. The texture work is good, even though there are a few areas where you can see low-resolution textures. The special effects aren't extraordinary, but they get the job done, and there are no major clipping errors.

The sound is also quite good. The punches and all other attacks land with some nice thuds that convey the meaningful impact on an enemy. The music adheres to the medieval vibe, but it is whimsical, so the big brawls are meant to be laughed at rather than having them evoke a sense of danger afoot. The voices are also well done thanks to a cast of actors that put in very solid performances for a game that has no serious bone in its body. The whole audio package does a good job of conveying a fun lighthearted affair that happens to involve beating up on one another.

TaVRn's Takedown: Naheulbeuk is a fun game if you have the room for it and you can forgive its quirks. The presentation and fighting are solid, even if your defensive maneuvers don't work all the time. The ability to use anything in the environment to fight with is welcome, while the cards you get to augment your abilities gives the game some depth to prevent the experience from becoming monotonous. While the turn speed is slow, movement in general is good if you have the room for it. TaVRn's Takedown: Naheulbeuk is a good complement to games like Gorn and Drunkn Bar Fight, especially since there's a decently written story to go along with the punching and throwing.

Score: 7.5/10