Hunt the Night Review (Necrothian)
T.L.D.R: Overall, it's a solid foundation of a game, with good combat bones and carried by the art and ambiance, but it's held back by some baffling design decisions, bad mechanics and buggy hitboxes (admittedly rare).
This is all I can think of at the moment (also hit character limit, but I tend to ramble). I know my negatives list is longer and more in-depth, but I did overall enjoy the game. It desperately needs some polish though. Would buy again, but maybe only while on sale.
I'll go with the positives first.
* It feels pretty responsive, dodging into and away from enemies to land those hits before retreating from their counterattack feels good.
* The enemy variety is good for how short the game is.
* Hunts add a fun twist to some enemy types when you can find them, though I wish they were a bit more prominent.
* The lore was fun to collect and the worldbuilding and ambience is really quite something. A bit cookie-cutter, but solidly executed.
* There are a few builds you can go with throughout the game, not many, but the game is short so you can mix and match pretty frequently. If you don't like short games, that's on you, but I enjoyed exploring new builds every area or so.
The negatives:
* There are four types of weapons within the 5 subgroups of weapons that exist. Basically, starter weapon, poison weapon, lifesteal weapon and bigger damage number weapon. Poison and lifesteal are the more interesting of the four, but proc chances are usually low (lifesteal is like 5% for all/most of the lifesteal weapons), and some enemy types/bosses are just randomly immune to their effects. The final boss can't be poisoned (called Plagum in this game) or lifestealed. Other bosses and enemies seem to share this immunity apparently at random to one degree or another and it sucks to go into a boss fight with a loadout that prioritizes a mechanic the boss is just straight up immune to. It'd be fine, or at least more ok, if that was telegraphed in some way by NPC dialogue perhaps or anything really (Say, a plagum NPC dead outside the boss arena with a note saying "My weapons did nothing..."). Truly baffling design decision IMO, to make bosses occasionally immune to what little build diversity there is without any foreshadowing, or at least without any foreshadowing that I noticed.
* Platforming and punishments can feel very inconsistent. Dashes sometimes feel like they need to be more precise than the game is willing to let you be. On top of that, dashing and falling can save your inputs after falling. For example, if you dash and miss your dash, hit dash again by accident, you'll fall from the first failed dash as the second dash fails to occur. You'll then experience a brief reload as your character gets placed somewhere randomly in the room (usually at the start of the room, but I've been sent back three rooms before, and also sometimes to the same platform I was just on, it's janky where it respawns you). After reloading, your saved input will immediately trigger, and you'll dash in whatever direction you tried to dash when you were falling. Which may cause you to dash into a pit and fall again. Hopefully you don't try to course correct mid-dash with another dash, save that input and repeat the cycle a third time. It saves movement and attack inputs too. I've tried to dash to platforms and immediately shoot the occupant of that platform, only to miss the dash for whatever reason, respawn a second or two later at the start of the room, and have my character immediately shoot the wall next to her.
* Plagum grenades are probably the weakest stuff in existence. You get a grenade (three per respawn) mechanic where you throw out a bottle of Plagum that ruptures on enemies. It's good for the weakest enemies, but not much else. Near as I can tell, it ticks 3 times for 10 damage each and then stops. There's no upgrades for it that I can find (though the promo video on the steam page shows the upgrade vendor selling such things, it doesn't exist in the released version that I can see). It's almost not worth using at all. I went the vast majority of my playthrough without acknowledging their existence, and only used them when I was stuck waiting for the boss to let me hit them in melee again when I was out of bullets.
* The occasional janky hitbox. Dodge behind an enemy as it's swinging and still get hit by the attack that's occurring somewhere else. Maybe it's a readability issue, where the damage should go through because you screwed up the dodge timing and got hit before the dodge, but the damage only comes in after the dodge? Idk, but it felt bad either way. Admittedly didn't happen much, maybe only a few times per area/boss, but it was noticeable and irritating considering how short the game is.
* Hunts are another source of baffling game design. They don't really offer anything outside of health, which is lame. After a while, I stopped looking for them because my healthbar was big enough. I think I missed 3 or 4, but it's hard to tell what I missed or didn't miss, because there's no way to track completed hunts aside from by memory. You pick up hunts at the tavern, and they get crossed out as if you had completed them, and when you actually complete them, they don't change or differentiate at all from just buying them. So there's no way to track what you missed. Bizarre. And they're a bit difficult to find on top of that, you have to keep an eye out for a small orange eye on a wall. The design decor for the first half of the game is usually "spreading darkness corrupting the land and covering it with eyes and teeth and tendrils", so they don't stand out too much til later. They're also mostly just juiced up normal enemies, but I found them fun enough anyway.
* No map or easy way to recall area layouts aside from just memorizing the area. They aren't that hard to puzzle out, but if you want to go back an hour later, unless you've got good memory, you're almost exploring from scratch again.
* The final three bosses were kind of a let-down. I won't spoil anything significantly, but one was just a "summon boring adds" fight. Boss only had one move, but it one-shots you. So the fight was kill adds, refill gun, shoot boss, kill adds again to beat it safely. Another literally stands still while you wail on her and has pretty easy to dodge attacks, except for one move which covers the whole arena and one shots you at the very end of the fight, which you can only dodge by running to the far corner of the map and hiding for like 15 or so seconds. And the last boss is not only immune to lifesteal and plagum (build diversity straight up murdered), but also seems to have some inconsistent dodge timings and weird "immune to all damage while the lamest and easiest to dodge fire moves across the map" mechanic. Sometimes his main move is the easiest thing in the world to dodge, and sometimes it comes out with almost no telegraph and perfectly catches you at the end of each dodge to full health combo you to death. I killed him (twice for both endings) in maybe ten or fifteen minutes (half of that was a lifesteal build before I realized he was immune), because despite the janky full-health combos and immunity to all the status effects weapons, he's an easier boss than most. Basically a stronger version of the toughest trash mob in the game. Kind of a let down.
* Enemies stay the same strength throughout the game, but so do you. There's no leveling or increasing stats (aside from health) outside of gear and runes, which you can only have one of each equipped at a time. So the very basic "tiny shadow child" is as tough to kill at the beginning of the game as it as at the end. Which seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to explore increasing power level of the protagonist. Alternatively, it's a great way to have your own skill be the only thing keeping you from progressing, if you're stuck at a boss or enemy room.