Hunt the Night Review – Castlevania’s Successor

When I think of Dark Fantasy as a genre in gaming, two big titles immediately come to mind: Dark Souls and Castlevania. The latter has been around basically as long as gaming has, and both have had massive influences on the industry, especially the gaming genre, thanks to their prolific success and the uniqueness of their settings and world-building.

Despite representing warped versions of Western fantasy worlds, both Castlevania and Dark Souls are properties of Japan. While the franchises are undoubtedly popular overseas, their popularity in Japan is tenfold, and their influence on the market back home is noticeably stronger because of it.

Hunt the Night is a brand-new Dark Fantasy game that reminds me of both Castlevania and Dark Souls. Developed by the indie Spanish company Moonlight Games and published by the Japanese company DANGEN Entertainment, this 2D fast-paced action game pits players against an unforgivingly cruel fantasy world with nothing but their wits and weapons to survive.

The game feels heavily inspired by Castlevania and Dark Souls in so many places, some of which I’ll get into later in this review, but in many ways, it also plays a lot like the JRPG/Action games that inspired it. So many choices from the devs over at Moonlight Games struck me as elements someone who loves the previously mentioned titles would want to see in a game, and I can imagine this game is going to do incredibly well with a Japanese audience and fans of its inspirations.

In Hunt the Night, the world is besieged by a harrowing event known as the Cycle of Night, which brings terrible monsters into the world to drive humanity to near-extinction.

After finding an artifact known as the Seal of Night, humanity was able to live in peace for hundreds of years of endless day. But this peace was not to last, as the Cycle of Night returns, summoning horrible creatures that prey upon humanity and threatening to overwhelm the world with eternal darkness.

You play as Vesper, a Stalker and Crow, who arrives to save the last holdouts of humanity from the cruel dark. Her battle is both external and internal, as her own darkness threatens to consume her.

Hunt the Night is a game that throws you face-first into its story without any warning or real context. There are a ton of concepts that exist in this world that are simply presented to you, and you are expected to accept and move on from them without really understanding the extent of what the game is telling you.

This is done frequently throughout the story, which doesn’t take the time to help you understand the world Vesper is fighting for. Deeper lore is instead discovered through journal entries (or ‘feathers’) and first-person writing found throughout the world, which does do a good job of giving you deeper context on some things without just being flat-out dictionary-style articles on the world around you.

This manner of storytelling is the first place where Hunt the Night reminds me of Dark Souls, which also loves to drop you into a world that’s unfamiliar and let you piece together what’s going on as you play. However, I feel like Dark Souls pulls it off a lot better, partly due to its far lengthier reading sections.

The main story of Hunt the Night is told almost exclusively through visual storytelling. This is a problem for anyone trying to get invested in what’s going on, as the game really isn’t great at it. Without spoiling anything, I found myself utterly confused by the game’s opening, and this was a feeling that kind of followed me throughout the game — but maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to get it.

Hunt the Night’s gameplay is charmingly simple and definitely shone for me more than the storytelling. You move with WASD, with the space bar being a dash you use to clear obstacles, dodge attacks, or simply traverse the map quicker.

When faced with the many horrors of the night, Vesper can fight back with a number of melee weapons and her trusty sidearm. You use left-click to attack, which is a three-hit combo that is different depending on what weapon you have equipped. By right-clicking, you can aim Vesper’s pistol, which is a powerful but limited tool that can be upgraded. You also have grenades at your disposal, which can quickly dispose of pretty much any enemy.

I should note that while I played on the keyboard and didn’t have any trouble, the game does recommend you use a controller.

One of my favorite parts of Hunt the Night was the level design. I’ve only included screenshots from the first part of the game because I felt that walking into each new area for the first time was a fun experience that I didn’t want spoiled.

Hunt the Night’s gameplay reminds me further of the aforementioned inspirations, leaning more on the Castlevania side of things. There are several aspects in the game that remind me of the old-school Castlevania games, such as finding your weapons in chests and the game’s use of movement-based puzzles. But, I feel the Castlevania love especially when it comes to the game’s difficulty.

Much like in Castlevania, you are thrown against multitudes of unique enemies each level, with no instructions on how to defeat them. You have to learn their attack patterns on the spot, and sometimes it takes dying to an enemy to learn the level of caution you have to use when facing that foe.

Finally, a review of Hunt the Night can’t be complete without acknowledging the game’s stunning visuals. The art in Hunt the Night is beautiful, from the cutscenes to the actual gameplay, with each pixel feeling deliberately placed with loving care. The bosses were especially beautiful, and I found myself dying a few times just trying to get a better look at them and their stunning attacks.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Hunt the Night is available on Steam.