Battle Hunters is your typical adventure RPG game set in an unknown faraway kingdom in need of saving. On your quest to save the kingdom, you run into many different characters that eventually join your party and become playable characters. Boasting over 36 different characters to choose from, Battle Hunters’ simplicity and accessibility allow players to form squads catered to their own preferred playstyle.
The variety of characters presented is pretty neat, ranging from your typical knight in shining armour to elusive rangers and spell-slinging wizards. I was so spoilt for choice with the characters that were presented to me, as a party could only consist of three battle hunters and any given time. I guess a downside to the character system that I noted was that each character gains experience points separately. This meant that if I wanted to switch up my playstyle or heroes in the middle of my playthrough, I had to train my hunters all over again.
Battles and their mechanics are straightforward to understand, making the game really accessible for kids and casual gamers. Players issue commands to their characters separately to try and defeat the monsters during battle. The game is forgiving because the battle pauses whenever the player is issuing commands so that the player does not need to overly stress about micromanagement within a strict time frame. The combat is highly intuitive, which allows players to dive right into the heat of battle without the need to read up or study any fancy tips and tricks. However, this begets the issue that the gameplay can get really repetitive and mundane after a while. The combat system is thus also very restrictive, in that players are only given a limited set of actions which prevents creative strategies and playstyles.
My first impressions of Battle Hunters upon launching the game honestly gave me shallow expectations of what to expect. The game started off with overly simple dialogue and storyline, what one would expect in a children’s game. This, coupled with a visually unappealing user interface, made me feel like I was playing a mobile game made by an overzealous game producer with little to no budget.
First impressions are undoubtedly important, but the gameplay is usually the deciding factor as to whether a game is even worth playing at all in the first place. Unfortunately, the gameplay itself was OK at best. I found the battles very repetitive and boring as they were not interactive at all. Because of the game’s simplicity, all I did was issue commands and watched as my characters fought to the death. It was a simple brainless process, devoid of thought that a kid would have probably enjoyed. The maps and dungeons were not aesthetically pleasing either, which did not alleviate the overall mundaneness of the game. Quests were repetitive and unexciting, while the background music was just forgettable and unimpactful.
Battle Hunters felt more like a mobile game that you would drop after a week or two. The aesthetics of the game, combined with its overly simplistic gameplay, didn’t do much for it as a console port. It is definitely enjoyable to a casual audience and is excellent for just killing time. However, for $16.99, there are surely better games out there that could better make your money’s worth.
