Devil’s Hunt is a brand new game by the developer Layopi Games and publisher 1C Entertainment which is an indie studio based in Poland. Devil’s Hunt is essentially based on a novel called Equilibrium written by Pawel Lesniak and the game follows the battle between the angels and the demons. Devil’s Hunt is yet another title which is based on a novel series and we got to play this game early as we were provided a review key. For our review, we played Devil’s Hunt on Steam because the console versions are slated to release in 2020.
Starting with the plot of the game, you play as the main character called Desmond Pearce who is living the life everyone wants to live. A rich dad, established business, a pretty girlfriend, sports cars, high rise condos and what not. However, just like any other typical story, everything falls apart for the rich boy and instead of fixing it, he decides to drive his sports car off a bridge which kills him but he ends up in hell and is sent back to earth to gather some souls so that everything in his life can get back to normal.
Get that? No? I didn’t either however, this is what the premise of the game is all about. You return back to earth and now you are a part demon and part angel. A strange turn of events and Desmond ends up in the middle of a fight between angels and demons and since we are part both, we are in the middle of it and there is no rest for us until we fix the mess. To clear it out, Devil’s Hunt only covers the first game in the novel series so you can expect more titles to arrive later in the franchise because the story is not over yet.
Anyway, coming back to the game, Devil’s Hunt has both extremes of the spectrum and I am having a hard time deciding which spectrum to discuss first. Some of the mechanics of the game are brilliant while some are absolute trash. Let’s just go over the good bits first. Starting with the game visuals, Devil’s Hunt is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The particle detail is very good and you can instantly tell that this is not a low budget game.
Devil’s Hunt will take you across a diverse set of locations ranging from earth and hell and each location is detailed very well. The earth features all the essential elements of looking like earth and the hell is just equally good to look at with fires and lavas littering the environments. You can easily see the level of detail and be amazed by them. Visually, I will say that Devil’s Hunt just shines in every department whether its shadows, particles or general environment design.
The second excellent aspect of Devil’s Hunt is its narration. Although the story does not pack quite a punch and often does not make any sense at all, the game’s depiction of its characters and the world is amazing. Each character is unique and the voice acting for them is good too. This is however apart from the main character Desmond who is just plain ugly and one of the most boring ones that I’ve seen in any game of this sort. The games that I get vibes of while playing Devil’s Hunt are Darksiders III and somewhat Devil May Cry 5.
However, Devil’s Hunt fails to capture the attention of the player like both Darksiders III and Devil May Cry 5. Another hit and run mechanic of Devil’s Hunt is the combat. At certain situations, it feels amazing but on certain situations, you are less than a single hit away from slamming your fists on your keyboard. I don’t understand how the developers managed to make the game super easy for one bit and super hard for another
You will be doing exceptionally well killing enemy after enemy and a time will come suddenly when the enemies will start making you their toy as they mercilessly beat the living daylight out of you. There were times when I was just taking hits like a sponge and there were times when I was the lord of punches. Because that is what you all can do in Devil’s Hunt.
You would be doing a lot of punching in Devil’s Hunt. It’s your most basic move while some advanced moves make use of your punches as well. There are three skill trees in Devil’s Hunt which offer you different advanced moves. You have the Executor Skill Tree which is essentially your main damage dealer. Then you have Unholy which are ranged attacks. They sacrifice damage for range. Last but not least, you have Void which is excellent at taking care of multiple enemies.
Combat does not require any sort of strategy and you find yourself mostly just mashing the attack buttons to deal damage to enemies. The special abilities are decent and the ability to switch between the three skill trees during fights is really beneficial as you can adjust your playstyle on the go. However, don’t expect to become a completely different fighter when you change your skill tree because your basic attacks remain pretty much the same.
Despite having three exceptionally detailed skill trees, these are severely unbalanced and you will find yourself sticking to a few select skills in the game only. The skills have so much potential in the game but due to the unfair balance, you cannot use some of these as they are just useless in nearly every scenario. You can be the judge here because ultimately, you end up with a skill that allows you to one-hit kill anything.
Will you use any other skill in the game if you have such a powerful skill at your disposal? This simply takes out the charm of having such big skill trees with skills that you are never going to use making them redundant. Naturally, I kept using the very same ability as well wherever I get the chance to the point I felt that I was cheating in the game. If you want to make the game feel balanced, avoid using the most powerful skill and you would be fine.
The bosses in Devil’s Hunt look great but they are extremely easy to beat. Most of the bosses in the game simply exist so that you can kill them. They don’t come with any sort of ‘boss’ moves that you would be scared off during the fight. Most of them simply resort to typical slam and swipe attacks which you can dodge easily. Despite the boss battles being boring, I enjoyed the fights because the bosses look great.
Another important mechanic to mention here is Desmond’s demon form which is truly helpful in difficult situations. Just like God of War’s Rage Mode, Devil’s Hunt Demon Form has to be charged with normal attacks first and once the bar is full, you can enter your demon form which grants you temporary invincibility and the ability to land some seriously powerful punches. This is a very powerful form and works really well against the bosses rather makes the boss fights very easy.
Coming to the character animation, I can say that Devil’s Hunt features some of the worst character animations I have ever seen in a video game in this age. Had this been a PS1 or PS1 game, I would have forgiven that the voice is saying something else while the character’s mouth is going somewhere else. How can someone even mess this basic animation up? I will just say that this was laziness on the developer’s bit because Desmond’s face is a complete screw up when he speaks. How can someone even clear this in the final testing of the game? The most obvious bit is in the game’s ending when Desmond is saying something else and his face is literally moving like he is having some sort of a seizure.
Not a very strong point to end the game with. Devil’s Hunt will take up around 6 or 7 hours to complete depending on how casually you play the game. If you rush everything, you might even shrink it down to 5.5 but that all depends on how you play the game. For a game that is 7 hours long, has no endgame and clearly needs a lot of fixing, the $35 price tag is a bit too much. I don’t know how much support this game is going to get in the future but in its current state, you must be ready for a few glitches here and there.
Similarly, despite the world being pretty big, it is mostly empty and feels bland at certain times. You can easily walk around for minutes and find not a single enemy to kill which is a serious problem as you totally lose your demon-slaying tempo during these long sections with no sections. This is again in conflict with the fact I mentioned above that in some areas, the enemies don’t stop and in some areas, it is just you and you alone waling around for minutes with not an enemy in sight.
Final Verdict
I do not want to be really harsh on the developers since it is their first game. Devil’s Hunt has its good and its bad. It looks really well, the level design is amazing and the combat is somewhat good and somewhat bad. However, the levels are dull when it comes to any sort of activity, the world is empty and feels bland sometimes. I think the franchise has potential and we know that the franchise will continue with at least two more titles. If Devil’s Hunt managed to get some things right, we can look forward to the second title and hope that it will be even better than the first title. Devil’s Hunt might not be a very strong contender in today’s gaming market but it is certainly a decent benchmark for the developers to improve upon and deliver a solid sequel next time. If you don’t want to wait for the console release, the game is now available on Steam.
Final Score: 5.5/10
