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Old-school Zelda meets Bloodborne in this challenging horror adventure - Hunt the Night Quick Review

4K View2023-04-13

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it as long as you’re up for a challenge! Hunt the Night is an excellent action-adventure game in the top-down style of something like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, except with the combat filtered through the more hardcore leanings of Bloodborne and Elden Ring. Spanish developer Moonlight Games has crafted a complex, creepy, and altogether satisfactory experience that’s good enough to stand on its own, not just as an ode to past greats.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played six hours of Hunt the Night across the past week, which has taken me through the game’s lengthy prologue, past a couple of super-tough boss battles, and deep into the second of the labyrinthine dungeons that the main quest throws players into. I initially thought the game was going to be a lot smaller in scope and primarily set in one location, but after the first dungeon (which took me around two to three hours), things opened up in a surprising and very impressive manner.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• An intriguing world to explore. Hunt the Night cast me as Vesper, a Stalker in the world of Medhram who is tasked with exterminating monsters. In this world, time cycles through ages of humanity and ages of eternal night, where monsters roam the world and humans are wiped out. Medhram is about to enter its latest endless night, and it’s up to the Stalkers to figure out how to stop it.

The story is certainly intriguing, but what really pulled me in is just how vast and well-developed the world of Medhram is. I felt encouraged to explore, sometimes coming across enemies who I could barely handle and other times stumbling into horrifying scenarios, like a wedding party that had been interrupted and torn to shreds by awful creatures. The game world is bursting full of hidden nooks and crannies, many of which contain unique treasures, such as new weapons or armor to equip, or small notes that build up Medhram’s dark lore.

• Some of the best pixel art visuals around. At this point, nostalgia-driven pixel art games are a dime a dozen, but when a game comes along that really does this style well, it’s hard not to be impressed. Hunt the Night is one of the best-looking pixel art games I’ve ever seen, with some gorgeous and absurdly detailed art showing off a dreary, dying world and the grotesque monsters roaming it.

• Tight combat. The trick to a good Soulslike game is making sure the player always feels like they’re in control; that way, when they inevitably die over and over again, it’s clear that it’s their own fault and something they need to get better to overcome. Believe me when I say that I died over and over again in Hunt the Night, and it was definitely always my fault. This game is hard, but it gave me plenty of tools to overcome enemies, include super-fast dodging, responsive blocking and parrying, and an arsenal full of different weapon types with their own move sets. I even had ranged options via a choice of three different guns that could be further modified to fit different scenarios.

• Edge-of-your-seat boss battles. Another thing Soulslikes need to get right to succeed is boss encounters, and as far as I’ve progressed, Hunt the Night absolutely nails this element. The bosses in this game are huge and intricately designed, and their fights require learning how to dodge a variety of attacks and when the best time is to dash in and deal a little damage before zooming away again. Both of the bosses I faced were extremely challenging and required a fair bit of work before I overcame them, but victory felt as sweet as it should in this type of game.

WHAT SUCKS

• Occasionally frustrating checkpoints. Like most Soulslikes, Hunt the Night has a system where the player character rests and refills healing items. Instead of bonfires, in this one you rest at giant, creepy statues. Sometimes the run from one of these statues to a particularly difficult section of a dungeon can be a bit much, but the more frustrating issue came when the game picked other places to respawn my character.

For example, sometimes instead of respawning at the nearest statue, I respawned at the entrance or exit of an area I had just loaded into. And sometimes there was a big, beefy monster right by the entrance or exit, and every time I respawned, he proceeded to pound me into dust. And also maybe sometimes this entrance or exit was also right by a swamp that I would sink into if I wasn’t careful, so I couldn’t even get away from said big, beefy monster dude. These instances of poor checkpoint planning are rare, but they definitely hurt what was otherwise a superb time playing the game.

💬 Are you ready to face the darkness threatening the world of Hunt the Night, or will you be skipping this hard-as-nails Soulslike? Share your thoughts below!

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