So I’ll come right out and say it, I’m a sucker for a good strategy RPG. There’s just something to be said for commanding a group of characters around a big chessboard laying pain to anything their movement ranges will allow. So call me a nerd, I don’t care. When you think back to great strategy RPGs, the original FF Tactics, the underrated Stella Deus, or the awesomely awesome Disgaea games may come to mind. What made these games great were the customization, strategy, and depth that led to unlimited possibilities for your party. So what happens when you suck the depth, fun, and strategy from these games? Well, you’re essentially moving spikey-haired anime characters around in circles for hours at a time. If this remotely sounds like a great break from your usual hobby of huffing jenkem in between three-hour masturbation marathons, then this is the update you’ve been waiting for.
As you may or may not know, I’m often keen to getting recommendations for games through the Gamescrap forums. This particular gem was brought up by Gamescrap junkie and overall forum addict Mstygerlilie. Having never heard of the game before, I was curious how I could even induct a strategy RPG into the site out of fear of actually liking it. Five bucks and three days later, the envelope arrived in my mailbox and my journey into the abyss began and saw fit to make it that I would never return to tell the world what I found. Luckily, I fought harder than a coked-up Scotsman at the world cup and returned with an article for you all.
Battle Hunter was released in 2001 for the original Playstation console. If anyone is familiar with this period in time, you’d know that this was the shovelware era of the PSOne where the hardware was far past its prime and the only releases it saw were throwaway Nickelodeon games, obscure Japanese shooters rebranded for boob hungry Americans (Mobile Light Force), and near ten-year old Dragon Ball Z ports from Japan. In the interest of keeping a long story short, Battle Hunter was amongst these titles and fit right in with the shovelware choking the gimp horse that was the Playstation.
First impressions are a bitch to make, especially in the case of Battle Hunter. Upon hitting the start button, you’re thrown to a nondescript gray screen and, well, not much else. The first thing the game requires is for you to create a character. While character creation is usually a fun task, Battle Hunter finds new ways to suck the enjoyment out of personalizing your squatty onscreen avatar. After giving your character a name and allocating stats (can you imagine anything more arousing?) you can choose from a handful of typical, stereotypical, and not to mention redundant anime characters to represent your character. These characters range from the atypical spikey-haired RPG guy, the metal-clad visored robot guy, or the always pimp “mysterious stranger” complete with trench coat, big hat, and wind constantly blowing at him at all times to further emphasize his mystique.
Once you’ve got a character created, it’s time to find a mission. After fumbling around with the clunky interface for a bit, you’ll eventually meet your broker, also known as the giant douchebag that assigns you missions. Seriously, if there were ever a character that I’d like to punch in the face, it definitely has to be this guy. Missions never stray from the all-too-exciting “find this item and bring it back to me” structure that’s sure not to get old after a few attempts. Further adding to the doldrums, each mission takes place in the same gray brick on black background dungeon – the only catch being that the layout changes with every mission, but manages to retain that same great shade of gray everywhere.
The gameplay is where it becomes totally obvious that Battle Hunter is suffering from a sort of identity crisis. While your mission is to trudge through a gray dungeon in search of a randomly placed item, there’s just a bit more to the proceedings in store. You will have to compete against rival hunters, ironically hired by the same broker on certain occasions, in a race to see who can get the item and make their way to the exit in one piece. Why your broker will pay multiple hunters to turn against each other for a mission is beyond me, but any backwoods hillbilly making a living off scrap liberated from dumpsters can tell you that’s just a damn stupid idea.
Getting back to the gameplay, Battle Hunter doesn’t seem to know if it’s a puzzle game, strategy RPG, or some sort of cobbled together foot race to search random boxes. The flow of the game is thrown out of the window thanks to the brilliant addition of random dice rolls that determine your movement and randomly collected cards that can so things such as lay traps, or increase your stats in battle. Unfortunately, for a game bearing the name “Battle Hunter”, the battle system is just about the worst one in existence. Battles are redundant and make absolutely no sense whatsoever. For instance, when you want to attack a rival hunter, dice rolls should determine how much damage you cause – it only makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is when you get a set of straight sixes just before you attack, but only inflict a whopping zero damage as a result. What’s worse is when you use an attack up card and end up doing less damage than you did without it. The end-result is a mish-mash of random madness that you can’t make heads or tails of and will most likely end up in a thirty-minute stalemate that took you 50 turns of game time to accomplish. Are we having fun yet?
In addition to your rival hunters, there are also random encounters where you’ll fight monsters that call the blandness of the game’s one dungeon home. By monsters, I mean that there are all of three monsters to choose from and two of those are lame looking robots and the other is a puddle of shit with all of three frames of animation. While these battles are infinitely easier, you’re still looking at a huge time void where your character will continue to be stupid, deal 0 damage, and be great at what he does best, which is a draw between nothing or stumble into a trap.
Graphically, Battle Hunter is the usual mix of 3D levels mixed with 2D sprites. Levels would be more impressive if they ventured beyond the gray bricks on blank backgrounds, but alas, that’s what you’re stuck with. If you want something to look at, you’re better off playing FF Tactics or the Disgaea games if great dungeon aesthetics are your forte. Aside from the overly “blah” level design, the characters look stereotypically fine as if they were lifted right from the game/anime they were originally spawned from, though animations are totally limited and will get old in all of a few damage-free turns. To its discredit, the lack of enemies and supplemental characters makes Battle Hunter even more boring than intended.
Music and sound follow the same path that the visuals created. There are three, count ‘em, three tracks in the entire game to loop over and over again while you vainly attempt to retry missions. Everything has a nice tinny sound to it and completely lacks any bass, which is a good design decision considering you wouldn’t want to over stimulate anyone staring at gray bricks for hours on end.
So reading this, you may wonder why there isn’t much substance. Well, it’s mostly because Battle Hunter is just a damn boring game with nothing really going for it substance-wise. It’s one thing when a game has an identity crisis, hell, Derrek Smart made a living making games that didn’t know what in the hell they were, but it’s another when a developer can muck up the simplest of ideas with unnecessary busy work and corner-cutting development. Battle Hunter is about as low-rent as it comes.
Since 2007, Gamescrap has brought you the the worst video games, game commercials, game merchandise, and gaming moments ever to grace the industry. No matter if it's a beloved classic or the next hot thing, no bad game is safe from the horrors of the Gamescrap heap.
Since 2007, Gamescrap has brought you the the worst video games, game commercials, game merchandise, and gaming moments ever to grace the industry. No matter if it's a beloved classic or the next hot thing, no bad game is safe from the horrors of the Gamescrap heap.