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This is a battle royale game, but with a completely different setting and combat mechanics from the likes ofFortniteandPUBG. While most other battle royales are shooters, battles inHunter’s Arena: Legendsare fought hand-to-hand, with swordsmanship, martial arts and combat magic being the orders of the day. It’s definitely a unique take on the genre, but it’s also not without its flaws.
10Love: Unlike Any Other Battle Royale Game
There’s something immediately refreshing about playing a battle royale game that doesn’t feature guns, and isn’t trying too hard to copyFortniteandPUBG. At first glance,Hunter’s Arena: Legendslooks more like one of Koei-Tecmo’sMusou games, likeSamurai WarriorsorDynasty Warriors.
But instead of rampaging around a packed battlefield, sweeping enemy soldiers out of their paths like bowling pins, players are dropped headfirst into a battle for survival as, in classic battle royale style, the playable area of the map gradually shrinks around them. The shift from shooting to melee makes a big difference though, as it’s not possible to pick off other players from a distance. Every victory has to be earned face-to-face.
9Hate: General Lack Of Polish
It doesn’t take long to notice thatHunter’s Arena: Legendsisn’t the most technically accomplished game ever released. While the art direction is pretty decent, it’s let down by fuzzy textures, dated graphics, and sluggish, clunky animations.
The game’s servers aren’t the best either, although sometimes it can be difficult to tell if the choppiness is due to lag or to poor frame rate. In most cases it’s probably both. Many players are also reporting frequent bugs and glitches, so here’s hoping that future updates will bring patches and fixes with them.
8Love: Lots Of Depth To Explore
For players who are hooked in by the premise and can forgive its dated feel, there’s a lot to discover and master inHunter’s Arena: Legends. While it’s not difficult to pick up the basics, there are a lot of fighting styles and game elements to experiment with.
Hunter’s Arena: Legendsis from Korea, where Esports are massively popular and currently dominated byLeague Of Legends, so it’s unsurprising that it draws a lot of influence from Riot Games’ MOBA mega-hit. It lifts ideas from all kinds of other places too though,even including slipstreaming, which is something usually only seen inracing games.
7Hate: Too Much Of Everything
The abundance of ideas at play here is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Sure,Hunter’s Arena: Legendsoffers a lot of value to players willing to give it a bit of time and effort. But it can also often feel like an incoherent mess, lacking in balance and cohesion.
There might be a lot of different characters, attacks, combos, techniques, strategies and items to try out. But when spamming the basic attack buttons seems to serve most players pretty well, it’s difficult to figure out why a lot of the game’s features were included at all, and many of its ideas ultimately prove to be more distracting than useful.
6Love: Asian Mythology Is Always Awesome
WhileHunter’s Arena: Legends’ setting and visual style are pretty generic, and will be familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in Asian (particularly Chinese) mythology, there’s still something very appealing about the game’s look and feel.
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The extravagant costumes, the ornate weapons, the obligatory anthropomorphic characters, the epic tales of ancient demons: it’s cheesy, but it’s undeniably charming. And, what’s more, it’s such a natural fit for a battle royale that it’s surprising nobody’s tried it before. There are so many great characters and settings from Asian mythology that would make ideal content for future updates.
5Hate: Counter-Intuitive Navigation And Controls
Usability is not one ofHunter’s Arena: Legends’ strong points. Far from it. Simple actions such asunlocking characters, or evenjust quitting the game, have already been confusing players, and the in-game controls aren’t much better.
One of the biggest complaints is the inability to fully customize the controls. There are two presets to choose from, but they’re hardly different to each other, and neither is intuitive, certainly not to Western gamers. Hitting the right buttons at the right time requires both a good memory and agile fingers, and getting it wrong can be fatal.
4Love: The Combat Basics Are Immediately Accessible
WhileHunter’s Arena: Legendsdoes burden players with a lot of distractions and over-complications, at its core, the combat system is simple to pick up, and can be pretty satisfying. It’s not amongthe best ever seen, but at least it works.
Basic weapon attacks are pulled off with one button, and can be combined with punches, kicks and headbutts activated by another. Special abilities are triggered using a combination of two buttons, which is also pretty easy to learn, even if it can require some gymnastic fingers and thumbs when trying to navigate the environment at the same time.
3Hate: It Often Gets Confusing And Feels Unresponsive
Knowing what’s actually going on inHunter’s Arena: Legendsis sometimes very difficult, if not impossible, and the reasons for this are many and varied. The game camera, which is wayward even when locked onto an enemy and feels like a throwback to the PS2 era, is one of the worst culprits.
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But then sometimes it’s confusing because the game insists on throwing way too much information at the player at once, much of it in the form of tiny, barely readable text. Much more attention should have been given to making sure that the combat action at the heart of the game was actually understandable.
2Love: Encounters With Other Players Feel Like Proper Duels
While battle royale experiences typically consist of a lot of exploring, hiding and stalking, with occasional panicked firefights that are usually over pretty quickly, inHunter’s Arena: Legends, an encounter with another player usually signals the start of a spectacular, anime-style duel.
Nobody gets taken out with a well-placed headshot or two in this game. All the characters are tough enough to survive sustained assaults, so there’s plenty of room for counter-attacking and turning the tide against an opponent. As a result, defeats rarely feel cheap, and victories always feel well-earned.
1Hate: Excessive Grinding (Or Cash) Required To Unlock Content
Not everyone hates grinding. In fact, there’sa whole sub-genre of gamethat, when it comes down to it, is all about grinding. But when players are forced to grind excessively in order to unlock features that are otherwise available for payments in real money, it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
This is standard practice in free-to-play games, of course. But, PS Plus notwithstanding,Hunter’s Arena: Legendsis not a free-to-play game. So, many players, having already paid for the game, will be dismayed to discover that some of its content has an additional price tag.
