Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades

HunterX is a disappointing metroidvania. The reviews on the store page might make one think that the game is a hidden gem, but you just have to spend some time with it to find out that this supposedly metroidvania game lacks nearly all of the qualities and soul that makes a metroidvania game what it is.

I can't believe how pointless my experience with this game felt after finishing it.
HunterX is a game that practically has no story and its NPCs have no characteristics. The only thing you get from the story is that you are a demon hunter, you go to an alternate world where the hunters are no longer needed and one of them has gone rogue, and somehow you are the only person who can save the world even though nothing seems to be at stake. And when you do save the world, you'll never know what happens next and will have a lot of unanswered questions.
What's the deal with the hunters? Do they work alone or there's an organization or something? Who is the main character besides her name (which is Tsuki)? Who is this demon companion with her that sometimes shows up? What happened to Tsuki after we beat the last boss? What the HELL does that ending cutscene mean aside from teasing a sequel in a confusing way? You won't know the answer to all of these.

HunterX is a game that starts promising with its world design, but becomes utterly generic and boring after a short while. The game starts in the modern setting with a protagonist from the modern time, fighting against demonic beings that have appeared from another dimension. But it doesn't take long for the game to switch from the modern setting, a setting that is rarely used in metroidvanias, to a medieval one for the remainder of it.
Truth be told, I am already burnt out on old castles acting as the environment in a metroidvania game, but the way HunterX depicts one makes me tired of this trope even more. You go through multiple areas in the game, and despite changes in the backgrounds and hazards and platforms, all of them look the same except for the village areas. It's just the same old and generic-looking castle interior/exterior with nothing to make the areas stand out compared to each other, and the situation gets even worse when you start to notice some obvious repetition/reuse in their design. By the 4th hour, I was pretty tired of traversing the environment, especially since the exploration is also very flawed.

The exploration is so boring and unrewarding. The game is pretty inconsistent with the save/teleport rooms it gives you, either cramping them together or placing them far away from each other. And this, coupled with the way rooms are designed to make you traverse or backtrack a long way to get to where you want, makes for a lot of boredom.
The game constantly (and I mean CONSTANTLY) throws you into locked gates that require you to open the way from the opposite side, or blocks your way with a hazard that you need abilities to get over, to the point you will open up the map at some point and ask yourself about where the hell you should go then. There are also quite a lot of long hallways decorated with traps and enemies that only reward you with just regular items and equipment after reaching the end of them, with half of them spawning a random boulder to chase you on the way back, and half of them giving you a teleport stone in addition to the items that sends you back to the hub area. As if the developers themselves knew how tedious and boring it is to navigate back to a save/teleport point and did all those to make it less boring.
The game simply has no exploration value as exploration is only done for the sake of progression and achievements. You get better weapons from the bosses, you get occults (special magic attacks) by also killing bosses and from regular enemies and there are no secrets whatsoever! So basically, the game has nothing to offer you for going off the beaten path aside from giving you regular equipment, free items and achievements. That's why the exploration feels unrewarding: You get nothing of actual value for taking the time and checking everywhere out. And unfortunately the combat feels the same way.

HunterX's combat system combines hack & slash and souls-like elements, while adding changes of its own to the mix. The level up system, difficulty scaling and death system is directly from the Dark Souls series, while the actual meat of the combat leans towards hack and slash. You can perform grounded and aerial attacks, dash to dodge, and guard against attacks or parry them; with the last two actions relying on a stamina bar. Every dash and guard depletes the stamina bar for a set amount and when it runs out, you will be defenseless. So far, seems like the combat is well-made, but that's because I haven't talked about the issues yet:

• Tsuki and the enemies' models can collide on the ground, causing you to lose control of her until you get away from them.
  
• Aerial attacks are limited to 3 hits in a combo at max. After performing a combo in the air, you will be unable to do any more attacks until you land on the ground or do an aerial dash, a skill you have to unlock first.
  
• While attacking in the air, Tsuki hovers mid-air for their duration, and your attacks will only hit the area in front of her. If the enemy changes direction, you are forced to either land on the ground or use an aerial dash to correct yourself.
  
• Quite a number of bosses either fly around or their hitboxes are only reachable by jumping, making combat a slog. Especially in the beginning parts when you don't have the aerial dash and combos unlocked.
  
• Enemies frequently use debuffs on you that take away your ability to attack and defend (such as freeze, paralysis and curse), forcing you to constantly have items ready to counter them. They add nothing of value and mostly act as "Ha, Gotcha!" moments that get you on your first time.
  
• After death, your lost karma appears in the death location as a floating crystal which flies around you, and you need to hit it three times to get them back. This is a big issue when it comes to bosses, as some of them attack almost immediately upon entering their arena, and destroying the crystal flashes the screen while displaying a large text on it, hindering visibility.

And then we have the absurd difficulty spikes of the game, caused by faulty implementation of souls-like features.
In this game, the difficulty is mostly tweaked through how much damage the enemies and bosses deal, not the techniques they use. All of the enemies and bosses hit very hard, being capable of juggling you for massive damage or even ending you in 2-3 hits. But not all of them use correct tactics to face you, instead focusing on brute force, applying debuffs and leveraging your weak points such as aerial combat. This has caused very big difficulty spikes throughout the game, with some of the bosses being pathetically easy compared to those before or after them, and the rest of the bosses are so incredibly unforgiving that the best course of action against them is to exploit the parry move and turn them into a literal joke. A good example is the final boss which seems incredibly hard to beat through normal combat, but gets decimated upon parrying his attacks.


Ultimately, the game lacks the soul of a metroidvania game. It really doesn't feel fun or rewarding to play, and certainly won't become memorable. You can find something better for the same price.