Hunt the Night Review: The Nightmare Of Your Dreams 

Ah, how morbid and visually striking gothic stylings can be, especially when video games are ready to reel in the reins on the horse and buggy, hauling these dark and dreary designs. One of the most iconic of this day and age to take on that gothic style is Bloodborne, taking the Soulslike genre on a galloping ride into a dark, ever-so-gothic descent into madness. So what happens when you take good ol’ Bloodborne and tweak it to be like an old-school Legend of Zelda-esque adventure? Hunt the Night is what you get, featuring a plethora of puzzles, challenging but fair gameplay, and that signature gothic style that beckons like a full moon.

A Tale of a Somber Night

Look, you can only throw yourself at the same boss for so long before you start charging in with all the confidence of a suicidal fruit fly.

Developed by Moonlight Games and published by DANGEN Entertainment, Hunt The Night is a retro-inspired adventure game with Soulslike elements. As with most Soulslike games, the plot here is very piecemeal, but admittedly still keeps a semi-fresh dialogue stream, albeit one that doesn’t hesitate to info dump a touch from time to time. You play as Vesper, a huntress that’s a member of the Stalkers, and the time has come to take over Fort Ravenford, the soon-to-be last bastion for humanity, once you clear out the nasty wolves. This bleak war between the Stalkers and the Night has been going on for quite a while, and, for a while, humanity had the upper hand, using something called the Seal of Night, which kept the Night at bay. Well, until it didn’t. The Night started swallowing up the light, and now, with the Seal in fragments, Vesper will need to traverse Night-infested lands to gather the fragments and hold it off just a little longer. Seems pretty straightforward, right? While some of the storytelling through the environmental storytelling can be a bit troperiffic at times, it’s still interesting stuff nonetheless and helps tremendously with selling the grim-dark atmosphere in a tasteful but simple way.

If there’s one major shining point that I have to applaud, it’s the art direction because the visual style and audio design knock it right out of the park. The faint glow of stained glass, the harrowing body horror enemies, and the gorgeously done environments made all that arduous pixel work worth it. I was worried going in, as I’ve learned that I have a really tough time with grim-dark aesthetics, the darkness, and lack of color palette, making it hard to discern what I’m doing. This is 100% not the case in Hunt the Night, the art style is still dark and gloomy, but pops where it needs to so it doesn’t look like I’m staring at fifty shades of grey bricks. Vibrancy can be done in moderation, and Hunt the Night does an excellent job demonstrating that point.

The audio does more than its fair share as well. You’d expect something as gloomy and gothic to feature lots of spooky thunder, wolves howling, and gunshots going off in the distance, and to that, you’re absolutely correct. You’ll be hearing all of those and more. Yet what happens in Hunt the Night’s aural aesthetic is different. During the prologue, along a hallway of beautiful stained glass, the sound of thunder hit with such force that it legitimately scared the hell out of me when it first happened. Later in that very same prologue, a body falls from the sky and hits the ground with a short but very meaty thud that, again, made me jump and tense up. There’s so much firmness to the audio, captured in a very clear but poignant way, even if it can come across as kinda jumpscare-ish sometimes. That said, the atmosphere and ambiance are just so damn well done that you won’t likely care by the end of it, rolling with the punches and thunder when it strikes and appreciating how damn good it sounds while it’s doing it, to say nothing of how well the music compliments all this (which I add was composed by none other than Hiroki Kikuta, who was the composer for Secret of Mana).

A Good Night for a Hunt

When the boss rush ain’t got no time, so they just throw all three bosses at you at the same time.

Certainly, this hasn’t been the first Soulslike to try the pixels of yesteryear, but how well does Hunt the Night pull it off? In Hunt the Night, you have a health bar, a quickly refilling sort of stamina bar (shown with purple liquid in the image above), how many bullets you have (shown by the revolving chamber in the upper left), and your range of guns in the top right. You have melee weapons, three different types of guns, and a recharging Dark Art active ability. Every three hits adds one more bullet in the chamber, and you also get a supply of grenades that can be replenished at Crow Shrines. Lastly, you have Crimson Roses that restore health in the way the Souls games used Estus Flasks.

I will say that this can sometimes be a bit to remember in the thick of combat. To that, I agree that there is a bit of a learning curve, but once you let it settle in and get past the first boss, it starts settling better. At its best, the combat is fast, fluid, and impactful for being a bit more hit-‘n-run focused than stamina management focused like other Souls games tend to lean on. Attacks don’t eat into the stamina bar, only dashes and later abilities for navigation use that bar, so combat here is more along the lines of paying attention to see how many times you can sneak hits in before darting off. It’s a bit of an ebb and flow sometimes of using up your stamina in combat, then staying back for a bit, staying away from enemy attacks while waiting for a window to get in close. Or just shoot them, as I frequently did. If you have the patience for it, there’s a surprising amount of difficulty you can eke out by just popping shots into annoying enemies.

For all the interesting powers and abilities we get, it’s in a rather shocking change of formula that there really is no level-up system in the traditional sense. Keeping things on the simpler side, there are upgrades you can purchase for your guns, extra armor and weapons you can buy with currency, and you use the same currency for getting more Crimson Roses or increasing their efficiency. I do feel like this is on the beneficial side here, as this keeps combat a bit more succinct with all the extra calculations out of the way. It can wind up feeling sometimes like it makes artificial difficulty, but I never found it threw off the formula all that much. If I found myself getting my ass handed to me, I’d fast-travel back to base and see about getting some upgrades. There is one little point of contention I could see some players finding too lenient is the fact that even if you die, you get back all your currency, nothing is lost in death. Some will dislike the lack of challenge, and some will find it helps them more easily digest the challenging, Souls-y side of combat. I found myself enjoying it since I didn’t really have to grind up Noctilium all that often. You’ll get quite a bit from chests and creatures, and there’s even equipment made for increasing how much you get from creatures, so by the time you get done with one area and take down the boss, you’ll probably have plenty to spend, even if you died a lot to get all that Noctilium. I do like this setup since I don’t feel as discouraged to be adventurous and explore, and really there’s only so much you can buy with all that Noctilium anyways.

A Long Night Ahead

Dracula’s got one helluva ski resort, just don’t eat the red snow. Or do. Might heal you.

Something that does need going over, though, is the boss fights. They’re ferocious, they’re well animated and detailed, and they’re the #1 reason why I’d have a bit of difficulty recommending Hunt the Night to anyone that isn’t already used to some of the more heinous stuff Soulslikes tend to crop up. The biggest offender I found was the second boss. It’s unnecessarily difficult due to hitting way too hard for how early the game is. There’s no tell for its faster, harder-hitting attacks – no windup at all. You just keep your distance from it and try to land potshots in the few precious seconds the enemy has between animations. This is putting up a cage around the rest of a game that honestly isn’t nearly as painful. A game where you have the option to grind for upgrades, at least if you are a bit stuck. No such luck with the second boss. He pops up before you can get your upgrades, so you’re stuck until you essentially do a damn near flawless run, or he will stomp on you over and over again. The damage needs to be reduced drastically for that one, and even then, I still think he’s going to be the #1 gate for new players.

Now that we got the Souls part of this review out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the other gameplay elements, particularly the ones that bring to mind stuff The Legend of Zelda titles love to use. The biggest takeaway from this is no doubt the movement system, using a flash-step kind of dodge that’s used for platforming, along with using your somewhat spirit buddy, Umbra, to navigate hazardous floors. Honestly, this was where Hunt the Night does its best work. There are so many little nooks and crannies everywhere, hiding chests with either new weapons, new suits, other equipment, or just a healthy chunk of Noctilium. That said, though, that platforming mechanic can be a bit arduous from time to time. There are these floating eyeballs scattered around that make temporary platforms when shot, and there are a few times that they’ll be in quick succession. Needless to say, some dexterity is required when getting around, and don’t feel bad if you’re having trouble getting to grips with it. It’s a fairly quick respawn back to the nearest safe spot so you can try again, only shaving off one heart when you fall. When it works fine, it’s a nice traversal mechanism, but there’s quite a bit of hitbox dissonance scattered around. Quite a few platforms will fool you into thinking you can make it, but the sprite isn’t quite lined up with the hitbox. I think I did this sort of respawn dance where I fall off because of one bastard ledge and respawn repetitively, probably at least five times more often than I actually died to enemies.

A Bumpy but Bountiful Hunt

Bloodborne meets Legend of Zelda worked out much better than I would’ve ever hoped. The bosses can have quite the malicious edge to them, especially a supremely sadistic second boss, and the platforming can be, quite literally, hit or miss. Nonetheless, the combat is so fluid but focused that it’s hard not to fall in love with how it handles. Cleaving apart zombies, then immediately whipping around to pistol-snipe a wolf all set to a firm and punchy soundtrack is just icing on the cake, especially with the added flavor the better bosses bring to the table. While this journey into the night had a couple of hiccups and could use a bit more prep work, I’d still gladly call this a successful hunt.

Final Verdict: 4.5/5

Available on: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PC (Reviewed); Publisher: DANGEN Entertainment; Developer: Moonlight Games; Number of players: 1; Released: April 13th, 2023; MSRP: TBA

Full Disclosure: A copy of Hunt the Night was provided by the publisher.