Hunter: The Reckoning (2002)

I remember loving this game in High School. I never beat it, so this play through felt like me rectifying that. Was it worth it? Sort of...

Honestly it's still fun especially if you can find four friends to play co-op with. It's by no means a polished experience. Far from it. It's rife with jank. But hey that's how most games were in this time period. The industry was only starting to homogenize and there were plenty of indie developers squeezing through the cracks. Unsurprisingly this is the same studio that made Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. Compared to that game, this actually has smoother controls. The RPG mechanics do feel rather tacked on. And this plays more like a traditional isometric shooter, akin to Smash TV or Gauntlet Legends on the 64.

The world building is pretty scant. Where a bunch of weirdos attend a public execution and gain the ability to see spooky things. Then they go on a rampage of brutally killing these spooky things with swords, axes, guns and crossbows. The real catch being everyone else only sees normal people and so they assume you are going on a murder spree. They don't really do anything with this concept. You basically just mow down hordes of zombies and monsters and save random people that are cowering in corners. There are some things left unclear, such as what do normal people see when there's a hulking monstrosity that you are killing. Does it look like a dog? Or does it look like a sweet old grandma that is capable of throwing you across the street?

There are four playable classes that each have their own abilities. Though eventually some classes will share certain abilities. This isn't too relevant since you probably won't unlock the overlap abilities until pretty late into the game. Some abilities do end up being unique. Such as the Priest's first spell. A cone of holy death. Which is pretty awesome.

The game plays and feels more like an arcade game than Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance. The only items you can pick up are special weapons that do more damage but have limited ammo. The only exception is the rocket launcher which is atrociously bad. It not only does terrible damage to boss enemies, but it's far more likely going to result in friendly fire or suicide while using it... which to be fair, it can be funny to accidentally kill all your allies because your one friend accidentally stepped in front of you.

You get experience from killing monsters and when you level up you supposedly get stronger. Honestly it does get pretty hard to notice power increases until the late game when weaker enemies are being thrown at you with the higher level enemies. Even then, it's still barely noticeable. So progression doesn't really result in a meaningful way in how you play the game. The only real exception is with the Defender being able to AOE heal everyone. Though the AOE distance is never really that clear and you could easily miss out on a heal unless you are hugging the Defender which isn't always possible in the chaotic combat.

Controls are simple. Basically only one attack button and a dodge/jump. The other face buttons are basically used to toggle to different weapons and abilities. You get used to it, but it's still a bit clunky. Particularly when it comes to selecting spells.

The game is challenging, but honestly feels unfair in plenty of moments. Such as the meal hall... there are two brutal rooms that felt designed to take away your saved up lives... the first room is small and you immediately get surrounded by dogs and gun zombies that immediately blast you. The very next room you need to enter is basically a firing squad. These weird tentacle monsters will hose you with spikes, covering the entire screen and doing an obscene amount of damage. Our first attempt to clear that room we lost 15 lives... which made it impossible to beat the game. Besides these sporadic difficulty spikes (pun intended), the boss fights are also pretty terrible... they are massive damage sponges that can 1-2 shot you with big AOE attacks. While it is possible to avoid these attacks, you often won't from the chaos of fighting over the camera with four other people all trying to avoid the attacks. All of these felt like arcade moments when you shove a bunch of coins into the machine to brute force past it. Eventually we discovered a cheese for all bosses. Use the dual wield pistol character's first spell, which kind of makes her invincible (at higher levels) and have her tank/distract the boss while everyone else unloads from ranged. This way only one person is dying as they run out of mana!

While this is still fun with friends, it is a deeply flawed and janky AF. The last half/third of the game is 3 cycles of the same levels back to back. Including fighting the same boss like 5 times in a row... which is pretty blatant padding from them running out of money or more likely, ideas...honestly they should have just made this game shorter. Would have been more enjoyable. According to a tool tip on a loading screen 70,000 hours were needed to make this game! I guess they fucked around for a ton of those hours... or is it the combined hours across all employees who worked on the game?