Updated: My Review of this game after 400 hours. TLDR; Don't buy this game, do not support the dev team. its a bug riddled, hacker infested game, with leaseweb servers making for a terrible experience that pushes pay to win skins over bug fixes.

A new "Engine" upgrade and some changes are coming in August 2024 (allegedly), the current state of this game is an unplayable mess further riddled with cheaters and people playing from different regions making it a terrible experience for new and experienced Hunters alike.Want to spend 20 minutes going for a Bounty and get shot from 150 meters by someone who surely never knew where you were? play this game. Want people to run up behind you full speed with no footstep sounds, play this game. Want to be shot through buildings with ammo that doesn't penetrate surfaces? play this game. Actually want to enjoy your time and save money? play literally anything but this game.


Final straw with the devs of this game. Here we go.

Full Review:
While Hunt: Showdown provides a unique take on the PVPVE extraction genre with a dark wild west /scifi/horror vibe, providing you with some pretty cool and unique ways to play as well as the possibility of almost always 1 tap headshotting enemy players. Which is a lovely experience. When it works HOWEVER - -

This doesn't work when the game is plagued with Hackers, and cheaters of all sorts and a bad MMR system that will have you fighting players outside of your range or players who tanked their rating despite having THOUSANDS of hours played.

So ranging from Wallhackers, ESP, Aimbots and exploiters of known mechanics to make walls disappear in their game. As well as the ability for players from far away regions to play on servers with pings well into the 200s, making them unable to take damage. What this leads to is for the player to constantly have to battle between, did you die to a legitimately good player or did you die to someone hacking- or someone grossly lagging or someone hacking while lagging giving them the ultimate advantage in a game where you lose your hunter upon defeat.

Another big community complaint is the use of Reshade (which will be considered an exploit in a few days after this review), Reshade allows you to do quite a few things, most people use it to add color or clarity to games. in a game like Hunt:Showdown the graphical tone of the game is Black on Grey on mud green. Very disgusting to look at, even more so when you realize the pay to win character skins also have these tones, and most of the free hunters are in vibrant bright white(ugly) outfits. Making it the equivalent of fighting the Roze skin from COD in literally every game you play. Without a good monitor, the only way to have real visual clarity in this game was through Nvidia's color panel (also got disabled) and Reshade (soon to be disabled). This game's sharpness is a mess, everything is blurry without some form of enhanced sharpening. Which Nvidia, and Reshade both provide.

UNFORTUNATELY, Reshade itself is a tool, one that some lame players use to exploit visual glitches, removing fog, or other fx's within the game. So it is understandable as to why they would eventually not allow it however they do not bring anyway to increase graphical clarity or visual quality in anyway. So for a non cheating individual, the game is now a complete lifeless mess. And pay to win skins, are once again going to be on top.

That being said, there was a move made to stop Reshade but there is nothing being done against the gigantic amount of hackers within this games community. Easy AntiCheat is doing nothing here, the devs? also doing nothing except pushing more things for the players to buy. A new skin? Another near invisible target to fight. If you don't have one of these skins, the game will be ridiculously harder for you. Look at the Reptilian skin as an example, a ghilisuited individual in a game filled with dense bushes, all the same color. Add in hackers that can hit you from 100meters and enjoy respawning.

It took them almost 3 weeks to fix an event in which the map had rain but for users with AMD graphics cards, there was no rain at all. Giving them an advantage to exploit and ruining the event for everyone else until it was fixed. Forcing the rain event onto the main game play rotation, despite the fact that a good bit of users did not want to be in the rain environment because it changes gameplay completely from what the normal experience is in a bad way. Because if you aren't kitted out to deal with a rain environment, you are at a disadvantage from the jump.

Hit registration in this game can also be horrible, headshots somehow turn into leg shots. A monster you should kill in a single headshot, ends up taking 4-5 headshots due to the servers being bad, or your weapon gets thrown through someone entirely dealing no damage, or your bullets just do not hit at all. The server's consistently have bad lag spikes, packet loss going up to 30-50%.

Disconnect from the game? its a dice roll on if you can reconnect. I once spent 16 minutes reconnecting 4-5 times before i was able to get back into a game. as a streamer, this was a horrible experience for my viewers. Also note, if you cannot connect to the server or the game ends while disconnected, you lose the hunter you bought in, so you lose item, money and progression.

False positive crashes happen a lot as well, i have received messages of being banned just going into a match. I have had teammates spawn with enemy teams or spawn on complete different sides of the map.

So this game is a terrible clown fiesta, its sad to see a game with a unique experience kill itself similar to Vampire Bloodhunt by not listening to the community where it matters, pushing for content to sell, and allowing cheaters, lag abusers, and everything else to fall into ruin.

Do not buy this game, even if its on sale. If it was gifted to you, refund it to the person that bought it. I'd refund it if I could to the person that gifted it to me. this is how bad this game is.

Do better Devs.

EDIT:
After Tide of Shadows event, the amount of hackers and people from different regions went up by 200%. crazy amounts of 5-6 star players with 3.5kda, playing from china, russia, and aus. Can stand still and you get no hit registration, meanwhile they can shoot through walls, perfect headshots and know every movement, even through heavy rain and crouching.

Updated: My Review of this game after 400 hours. TLDR; Don't buy this game, do not support the dev team. its a bug riddled, hacker infested game, with leaseweb servers making for a terrible experience that pushes pay to win skins over bug fixes. A new "Engine" upgrade and some changes are coming in August 2024 (allegedly), the current state of this game is an unplayable mess further riddled with cheaters and people playing from different regions making it a terrible experience for new and experienced Hunters alike.Want to spend 20 minutes going for a Bounty and get shot from 150 meters by someone who surely never knew where you were? play this game. Want people to run up behind you full speed with no footstep sounds, play this game. Want to be shot through buildings with ammo that doesn't penetrate surfaces? play this game. Actually want to enjoy your time and save money? play literally anything but this game. Final straw with the devs of this game. Here we go. Full Review: While Hunt: Showdown provides a unique take on the PVPVE extraction genre with a dark wild west /scifi/horror vibe, providing you with some pretty cool and unique ways to play as well as the possibility of almost always 1 tap headshotting enemy players. Which is a lovely experience. When it works HOWEVER - - This doesn't work when the game is plagued with Hackers, and cheaters of all sorts and a bad MMR system that will have you fighting players outside of your range or players who tanked their rating despite having THOUSANDS of hours played. So ranging from Wallhackers, ESP, Aimbots and exploiters of known mechanics to make walls disappear in their game. As well as the ability for players from far away regions to play on servers with pings well into the 200s, making them unable to take damage. What this leads to is for the player to constantly have to battle between, did you die to a legitimately good player or did you die to someone hacking- or someone grossly lagging or someone hacking while lagging giving them the ultimate advantage in a game where you lose your hunter upon defeat. Another big community complaint is the use of Reshade (which will be considered an exploit in a few days after this review), Reshade allows you to do quite a few things, most people use it to add color or clarity to games. in a game like Hunt:Showdown the graphical tone of the game is Black on Grey on mud green. Very disgusting to look at, even more so when you realize the pay to win character skins also have these tones, and most of the free hunters are in vibrant bright white(ugly) outfits. Making it the equivalent of fighting the Roze skin from COD in literally every game you play. Without a good monitor, the only way to have real visual clarity in this game was through Nvidia's color panel (also got disabled) and Reshade (soon to be disabled). This game's sharpness is a mess, everything is blurry without some form of enhanced sharpening. Which Nvidia, and Reshade both provide. UNFORTUNATELY, Reshade itself is a tool, one that some lame players use to exploit visual glitches, removing fog, or other fx's within the game. So it is understandable as to why they would eventually not allow it however they do not bring anyway to increase graphical clarity or visual quality in anyway. So for a non cheating individual, the game is now a complete lifeless mess. And pay to win skins, are once again going to be on top. That being said, there was a move made to stop Reshade but there is nothing being done against the gigantic amount of hackers within this games community. Easy AntiCheat is doing nothing here, the devs? also doing nothing except pushing more things for the players to buy. A new skin? Another near invisible target to fight. If you don't have one of these skins, the game will be ridiculously harder for you. Look at the Reptilian skin as an example, a ghilisuited individual in a game filled with dense bushes, all the same color. Add in hackers that can hit you from 100meters and enjoy respawning. It took them almost 3 weeks to fix an event in which the map had rain but for users with AMD graphics cards, there was no rain at all. Giving them an advantage to exploit and ruining the event for everyone else until it was fixed. Forcing the rain event onto the main game play rotation, despite the fact that a good bit of users did not want to be in the rain environment because it changes gameplay completely from what the normal experience is in a bad way. Because if you aren't kitted out to deal with a rain environment, you are at a disadvantage from the jump. Hit registration in this game can also be horrible, headshots somehow turn into leg shots. A monster you should kill in a single headshot, ends up taking 4-5 headshots due to the servers being bad, or your weapon gets thrown through someone entirely dealing no damage, or your bullets just do not hit at all. The server's consistently have bad lag spikes, packet loss going up to 30-50%. Disconnect from the game? its a dice roll on if you can reconnect. I once spent 16 minutes reconnecting 4-5 times before i was able to get back into a game. as a streamer, this was a horrible experience for my viewers. Also note, if you cannot connect to the server or the game ends while disconnected, you lose the hunter you bought in, so you lose item, money and progression. False positive crashes happen a lot as well, i have received messages of being banned just going into a match. I have had teammates spawn with enemy teams or spawn on complete different sides of the map. So this game is a terrible clown fiesta, its sad to see a game with a unique experience kill itself similar to Vampire Bloodhunt by not listening to the community where it matters, pushing for content to sell, and allowing cheaters, lag abusers, and everything else to fall into ruin. Do not buy this game, even if its on sale. If it was gifted to you, refund it to the person that bought it. I'd refund it if I could to the person that gifted it to me. this is how bad this game is. Do better Devs. EDIT: After Tide of Shadows event, the amount of hackers and people from different regions went up by 200%. crazy amounts of 5-6 star players with 3.5kda, playing from china, russia, and aus. Can stand still and you get no hit registration, meanwhile they can shoot through walls, perfect headshots and know every movement, even through heavy rain and crouching.