I am very sorry for the title, couldn't help myself. It sounds like i am very upset with this game and i sort of am. Have known about it since reveal, purchased couple of months after early access launch and played for 100h in total, around 70 being after launch. I just got prestige 1 and i think i am ready to finally put my thoughts about this game here.
This review is gonna be split into 2 parts: first of all i am gonna try to give the most rational opinion about this game in it's current state, after that in 2nd part i will let my fanboy out and basically rant.


In short - Hunt is a battle royale with PvE elements. It's obviously one of the most unique fps on the market right now which drew my attention in the first place.

Let's talk about the good things first. Hunt is very atmospheric. Everything about this game has this run-down gloomy style and it's great. CryEngine games always look pretty and it's not an exception, especially on higher graphics. It extends to gameplay too, just listen to main menu music or some ambience. Same goes for guns, hunters, monsters, everything. It's so good at building up tension that sitting in a corner and just listening to the sounds is the most immersive part of the game. It will also give you PTSD no matter what, like holy ♥♥♥♥ this game knows how to be scary.
That's kind of it for the good part. Everything else is on that "to be expected" level or worse. So let's get to the bad stuff.

Oh boy do i have a lot of stuff to talk about. Let's start with optimization. Well there is none. I haven't seen a game run that bad in a while and i am not even that picky. it doesn't hit 60 fps and sits at around 45 on my average rig and that's pretty much the same for most. Then there is an extremely annoying UI which is an absolute nightmare to navigate in for new people. It also disbands your party after every game, i thought we have been over that for like forever now. Then you have the clunkiness of the gameplay itself. You have to melee a lot in this game, sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible. Just try to hit hellhounds with their laggy jumps and random teleports without getting hit, have fun. Vaulting over stuff is clunky, picking up stuff is clunky, there are occasional bugs too, although not that many. These are all pretty minor things but they really add up. And i haven't even started on balance. Basically - it's not very good. I am gonna talk only about the main game mode, so hunts themselves. The game has this very unique system when you recruit your hunters with your in-game currency and then level them up by playing, which allows you to buy them perks. Also if they die they are gone, forever. With all the stuff they were carrying. While this is great for tension it breaks very easily. I am gonna leave most of it to the rant part so here is the summary: after a while i lost the sense of risk vs reward and just ran free/pretty cheap hunters to get money and then spend it to actually have fun with big bois. That happened because every gun in the game has very real potential to oneshot which means that free hunters are not much worse than the very expensive ones.

Basically, Hunt is annoying a lot of times. Really annoying. But i love the atmosphere and i love it when it actually works. And just for that i will suffer through bad stuff and keep playing, therefore a positive review. Now let me finally get to the juicy part.


Ok, look. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loved the game before 1.0 and that release update removed so much. This is the main reason i am writing this, Hunt is losing identity and losing it fast. That's why i will mostly talk about the changes and why they suck and break the game.

First of all - damage changes. All damage across the board has been increased by a lot. (Probably not true as has been pointed out in the comments. The issue still stands though). That means that even something as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ as nagant oneshots to the head. i am not even talking about shotguns, they can kill you at surprisingly long distances. This is so unacceptable on sooo many levels. Before a person could take like 5 shots and not die, now fights end in 1-2 hits. Yeah the old damage was way too low but this change just brings the game to CoD time to kill. And that's not good, because you won't respawn in 5 seconds but lose your hunter and everything with him. That's exactly why i don't really run good weapons, because why would i need an auto-shotgun if i can get a romero for free and it will have even more range? Why would i buy a mosin if some white shirt with a nagant (which is also free) will headshot me? It makes the main player skill to be aim, which wasn't the case in old hunt. I am ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible at aiming compared to people i see in this game but i could totally win them before. Oneshot in such a game is way bigger of a deal compared to other. Like look at other battle royales even. They have so many option to increase your defense just so you don't get 1-tapped by some random dude from behind all the time. Hunt has even more stakes, why does it go different direction? Like imagine ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PUBG caring more about it's playerbase. I am ok with damage increase, just make it less retarded. I want to buy an expensive gun and feel stronger, not scared of getting blasted with a romero handcannon or something like that. Oh yeah, it also makes sneaking absolutely useless, because if anything goes wrong you are stuck in the crouch and enemy has basically a free headshot.
So that was damage. Let me mention some other things about gunplay. The sway was reduced by a lot, so even more freedom for headshotting. Also allows to a/d which just looks so bad in hunt. The new gunslinger system is dumb too. It makes ads faster and allows to run-and-gun with a shotgun. Holy ♥♥♥♥ i never thought i would say that about Hunt.
Alright let's get to other stuff. ♥♥♥♥ legendary hunters, just a waste of money. ♥♥♥♥ new UI too, it was ok in the old Hunt, how did this abomination even get here? ♥♥♥♥ nights too, i am pretty sure they became darker and the game doesn't have brightness settings. What it means is that if you don't adjust your brightness you just won't see people when they see you. It's just that, i confirmed it in my last game. ♥♥♥♥ crouch and jumping as well. It's so easy to just win a person by spamming crouch since it doesn't have any restrictions and is very fast.

From what i have seen community doesn't really give a ♥♥♥♥ about these problems nor do the developers. I mean, the changes brought in more players, but made game worse for everyone. I don't feel so happy about supporting the devs just so they go full 180 at launch. Literally the only good thing that was added are skins, and they are all great. But even that is dumb because you barely get blood bonds to get them (unless you pay up) and even if you get a skin doesn't mean you will use it that much because you might just want another gun for the hunter, or he will come with his own gun without the skin.

I initially wanted to also tell some stories about how random this game can be, but it all boils down to me just losing extremely expensive hunters to some random free ones just because they shoot better/they have romero handcannon and sit in a corner with it. It happens so often that i stopped really caring. The best part of this game was the tension, it managed it better than most horrors. Now it's just impossible to care, it's all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ random anyways, i might lose with a nitro, i might win with 7 kills with a nagant. It's almost "just another shooter" now when it definitely wasn't and never should be. It still has some depth, it still has most of those great mechanics it had before. I just don't know where will they be in a couple of months and i don't think even Crytek knows.