Like a lot of RPGs, you start off in Quest Hunter with customizing your character, and then you’re thrown into a story that seems to start off in the middle. Your newly-created character crashes into a tree while piloting a blimp. From here, you figure out you need to be a hero. You level up through killing enemies and completing quests. There are a few dungeons you can keep visiting that are slightly random. New weapons, armor and helmets are found at random but increase in quality as you proceed. Spells can also be used and upgraded to help you in your journey. It wouldn’t be a real journey without having a shovel and secret places to dig. Now if only you could customize and upgrade that shovel.

Here’s what I liked:

Charming Adventure — If you like cute and easy-to-play adventures, then you may fall in love with how this game looks. It has pleasant colors and lots of nature. The spells in the game are actually pretty cool, however, they take forever to unlock. The enemies don’t look too frightening and make this a great game to play with a younger audience. Because there is co-op, it allows kids to get a sense of an RPG adventure without any mature content, though a parent might need to help with upgrading, crafting, and finding the quest items. It’s still a nice little story that is simple enough for a child to play.

Route Hunter — At first I wasn’t sure about how I liked navigating the map. When you exit an area, you can go to other areas unlocked. There are random encounters that could happen, such as a bandit attack or a treasure hunt. I eventually got used to the idea that you can roam free and leave when you want. The best part is you can exit, from anywhere, to the camp of your choice. This allows much faster travels and that is always a great thing. Later on, you’ll even get a blimp you can ride around on if you prefer to avoid these random encounters. I hate tedious travel, and I am very glad it wasn’t a burden to me while trying to figure out where the next quest item was located.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

Quite the Collection — I felt like there was almost too much to collect. Every tree, rock, barrel, and enemy will drop loot. Unfortunately, there’s no magnetic feature to help you collect them. The items seem to shoot into the air and over your head, making you have to backtrack to grab them. It happens so often you start to just run by a good portion of them. You use these items for crafting and leveling up your powers (through crystals). I don’t mind the amount of stuff, I just don’t want to have to run around grabbing it for half of my time with the game.

Fight Struggles — Hit detection can be a bit awkward at times. Specific enemies are a pain to fight with because it feels like you’re missing them a lot. Blocking and attacking works okay, but sometimes you don’t want to take that extra damage. So you use an attack and then retreat. This doesn’t feel right, as often you’re hitting air even though you’re super close to the enemy. This seemed the worst with the giant rock enemies but still showed up in other instances, including the final boss. There is also an annoying enemy late in the game that looks like a knight. You have to hit him several times to knock off his armor and then destroy the skeleton wearing it. I played on the easiest setting and put the majority of my points into the attack attribute. I also believe I had the strongest weapon which I also upgraded a few times. Yet it still took me a confusing amount of hits to kill these enemies. Just an absurd amount, considering how many were typically attacking you at the same time. I think usually four or more running after me. That’s a lot of chance for your sword to miss or attack the wrong enemy!

Bad Dungeons — I played the same dungeon ten times and never once did I feel like it was any different. Sure, a few areas were just moved around but they still existed and actually made it more frustrating. You could run down a long route, move a block to build a bridge, only for it to lead to a dead end. For some reason, it happened more times than being a normal route. Also what practically ruined my experience was the little yellow mushroom guys. They were just terrible. Seriously, there were hundreds per run. It wasn’t just one room, it was about half of them. Just filled with these stupid little enemies that you can’t block because there’s 10 of them. I hated them. Luckily they stop appearing in later areas. I didn’t die to them; they were just super annoying.

Wrap-up

I thought that, overall, the game was decent. Nothing really awed me and only a few things really annoyed me. However, these annoyances ruined any real interest I had to begin with. I can’t imagine even playing on harder difficulties where you actually lose your gear. I will emphasize the fact that this game could be a lot more fun with multiple people. You can play online cooperative as well as couch co-op. It seems it’s always a lot of effort to add online multiplayer support so, I must say, it is respected that it was included. This may only really appeal to people who want a game they can play together with a friend or family member, or to a die-hard “play every action RPG” gamer. Otherwise, you won’t miss much by not playing it.

Score: Limited Appeal

Quest Hunter was published by and developed by 2 Zombie Games on Xbox One. It was released on April 24, 2020, for $19.99. A copy was provided for review purposes.