“We killed everything, can we go now?”
“There are still two treasures in this area.”
“Do we have to? I mean it’s not like we are using the stuff for anything.”
“Do we have to? Of course we do. We might as well stop playing if we are not looking for the treasures.”
“Well, there’s a thought.”
“Don’t be a jerk, it’s almost done. There. We can go.”
“Aaaand they stopped us again.”
Quest Hunter is a light ARPG, published in 2019, in which you and up to three of your buddies can team up to fight blobs, skeletons, and presumably other things if you manage to get past the first chapter. (Wow, this review did not beat around the bush, did it?) You collect items, crafting materials, gain experience, level up, and keep hitting enemies and crafting sources.
The game is, well, how should I describe it. Imagine an ARPG. Any one of them, doesn’t matter, we will get to the same place. Now, imagine that the game is dumber than that. Dumber. No no, you don’t understand, I do mean dumb as hell.
First, throw out classes. Then get rid of the attributes. What? Yeah, I suppose, we do need something, all right, let’s keep Attack and Defense, how about that? Then throw out most of the skills, only leave the most clichéd, worn-out ones possible, and I do mean Fireball and Shield level of clichéd. Next, let’s get rid of those fancy inventories. You need a melee weapon and a shield and a helmet. And yes, everyone should have the same stuff. That’s only fitting, considering all the player characters look the same anyway. Now, about the environment, you can just forget everything, and add the following assets: grass field, tree, rock, barrel, chest. That should cover like 95% of the game. Enemies? Just pick five basic types, doesn’t really matter, then imagine them in green, purple, small, large, etc. They should all behave the same way. Oh, and the story? Well, yeah, no.
The Good
OK, let’s give it a try. Music is cute, so that’s good. The game is harmless and colorful so it is actually pleasant to look at and probably won’t give you nightmares. Some of the artwork, especially the portraits, have a weird grotesque cartoon look to them, it was unique, I liked it.
I am not ashamed to admit, playing the game was actually funnish for a while. The reassuring sounds, the easy enemies, free respawning, it made me feel like I’m in a safe space. The menu systems radiate this smooth and simple feeling, I like the fonts. Yeah, bringing up the menu’s font types just so I can put something in The Good section is a new low.
Oh, no, almost forgot, there is also crafting in the game. Come to think of it, this is even lower than praising the font types.
The Bad
My first impression when I looked at the game was this: is this a mobile game? It looks like a mobile game. Like something someone would play on the subway and you would look at it over their shoulder and wonder how they can spend time with this. That person would most likely also not use headphones so you would get the full experience. I suspected it’s a game with pay-to-advance mechanisms, but I was quite reassured when I found out that it costs 14.99 USD on Steam so it must be a proper game, right? Well, I started playing, and there were no additional microtransactions, true, but it still felt like I am playing a mobile game, and then when we stopped playing, I had the utter sense of dread creeping around me that I just wasted three hours playing a mobile game.
And I do mean mobile. You click on anything, and you are immediately rewarded by sparkling colorful animations and cheery pings and cha-ching sounds for your hard work. It got on my nerves really fast.
There is a huge amount of unnecessary faffing about, for example, opening a chest takes time. And not in a satisfying way, like how Kratos in God of War performs the manliest chest openings ever. You just have to stand there silently, for 5 seconds, and wait for the little cogwheel icon to load up. Same with chopping a tree. It takes time. I realize how stupid it sounds to complain about, but just imagine that you have a huge open space, no enemies in sight, and there are fifteen trees and ten boulders. You can harvest all of them in like three minutes. But those three minutes would be gone forever, there is zero challenge in the gameplay now, there is no time limit, you are not under pressure, you are just clicking on things repeatedly, and waiting for the cheery sounds to penetrate your ear canals again and again and again.
And that’s true for all the game, it’s all very algorithmic. We enter a new map, and I know immediately what we are about to do, and know that it will take roughly ten minutes. And you can ask, well, why don’t I just not spend time harvesting, and yes, that is exactly that we did, stopped doing it, and then we realized that the whole game is basically this endless joyless harvesting cycle with some extra steps, so we stopped doing the whole game.
The skills, the items, the stats, the enemies are devastatingly boring and unimaginative. I won’t even spend time describing these.
One other thing that I found annoying is how the game fancies itself a clever and funny piece. I feel like there is a constant onslaught of nudge nudge jokes about fantasy clichés, but it keeps missing the punchline. How boring it is that you constantly have to save a princess, right, haha, wouldn’t it be funny if we did it here too, haha, you know what, the kobolds took her, oh man, we are having a blast, right, here we go on a tired and overused joke doing the same thing, perpetuating the cycle of bad art and bad parody? And no, Quest Hunter, I am not having a blast. Merely admitting that what you are doing is clichéd and boring does not in itself merit you absolution of said crimes. You have to be more, Quest Hunter! Just one more example. I mentioned how you have three items: a melee weapon, a shield, and a helmet. Well, what if I told you that the helmet can be a cooking pot!
(I would like to clarify that I’m not some humorless loser – I have multiple people willing to go on record stating that I have a measurable amount of sense of humor, and just the other week I laughed out loud! But this was too much.)
I mentioned the mobile gamey feel, how simple and boring everything is, and how much I hate the “humor”. Would these on their own make me stop playing the game? Yes, absolutely they would. So the next bit is not the killing blow, but it’s definitely the final nail in the coffin. The gameplay is so slow and boring it hurts. There is a place where you fight your way into the middle of a maze, get two huge stone cubes you can push, and slooooooowly push them out of the maze because you need them for a “puzzle”. Remember when in Skyrim after you finish exploring a cave, you always miraculously found a shortcut taking you back to the entry of the cave so you don’t have to walk all the way back? Well, Quest Hunter‘s designers took the exact opposite route. There is also a map of the world, where you can move with your party (it looks astonishingly bad, like something from a Flash game, your character looks like it’s cut out of paper and moved over this 2D map, but that’s not the point), and the progress there is also excruciatingly slow. Not only do you have to watch your character move every single time through the route, you are often stopped by unskippable random monster groups. Which is exactly as exciting as it sounds in this game.
So we eventually got to a point where the first chapter has ended, and we were told to get to a gate and cross it. And then we decided we are giving this game an honest chance, we are going to poke our heads through the gate, and if we see anything resembling fun or excitement, we will keep playing.
And that’s when we stopped playing.
The Co-Op
Technically, you are working together, but your gear and skills are exactly the same, don’t expect any clever combos.
The Recommendation
This game, as of now, is my most regretted Steam purchase ever. There were other games with higher cost per hours played, but I usually got something out of them, if nothing else, anger or confusion, but here, all that remains is the complete nihilistic feeling of wasting time.
So no, I do not recommend Quest Hunter.
I have a really hard time enjoying ARPGs, the two exceptions set in stone are Diablo II and the Van Helsing series (I, II, III), but I would literally play and recommend any other ARPGs I have ever played over this. If you are looking for something with a whimsical look and silly humor, try Magicka instead.
And if you find wearing a cooking pot as a helmet is the pinnacle of humor, you can always do that in real life.
Info
| Release Year | 2019 |
| Genre | ARPG |
| Difficulty | Easy |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 10 hours (extrapolating based on number of chapters, we got bored after 3 hours) |
Rating
| Overall | Terrible |
| Story | Bad |
| Co-Operation | Bad |