Devil’s Hunt is a third person action/adventure game based on the original novel “Equilibrium” by Paweł Leśniak, Developed by Layopi Games, an Indy developer out of Warsaw, and published by 1C entertainment.
The game follows Desmond, a billionaire who also happens to be a champion underground MMA fighter. Everything seems to be chipper for Desmond; he has a great job, beautiful girlfriend, and more money than he could ever use.
Then everything goes to Hell: he loses his job, loses his big fight to a nobody from out of town, then slinks home to find his best friend in bed with his fiance. All of this is just too much for Desmond, who decides to drive his sports car right off a bridge. This brings him to hell, where he is offered a deal he cannot refuse from the devil himself.
Playing the Devils Advocate
Gameplay is centered around collecting the souls of enemies in order to unlock nodes in the three skill trees available. Each node contains an active ability, a passive ability, or unlocks a combo to use in combat. You may only equip three active abilities from any one specific tree, but can switch back and forth between the three trees at will.
It is also worth mentioning that the third trees abilities can only be unlocked by picking up hidden objects in the game. Desmond also gains the ability to take on a demonic for that deals huge amounts of damage and makes you immune to damage for a short time.
The combat itself is fairly straight forward. With only a hand full of enemies in the game, and AI that is easily exploited, it is not particularly difficult or interesting. It does, however, become very repetitive. The dodge mechanic is sluggish and not all enemies can be blocked or parried, especially in the late game. This led to some frustration as I found simply isolating and smashing each enemy was the only viable technique early on.
Movement over obstacles while navigating terrain can be onerous and frustrating, with prompts only appearing if you are in one specific position. While there are some very well done visuals, the long walks in this game between actual encounters make the game feel like it is being drawn out for no real reason.
What’s the story? No, Really……
The story in the game leaves a lot to be desired. There are so many loose ends, plot points that come up and are never addressed again. One moment in particular really sat badly with me. A sequence when you have to fight through multiple levels of a tower, being accosted by a giant snake, only to reach the bottom. I was sitting there thinking this was going to be an epic fight between me and this giant hell serpent that had been spitting death and hate at me for the last five minutes. Then, a cut scene that just filled me with utter disappointment.
The whole thing added literally nothing of value to the experience. The end of the game was stunning, and not in the “That was AWESOME” way, in so far that it left me sitting and asking my wife, “Was that really it?”, as the credits rolled across my TV. I could not help but feel I had just played what was half of a game.
From start to finish, I logged six and a half hours in the game. Which for me is absurdly short. The environments and art were actually one of the things really well executed, but some of the character models and attempts at facial renders left me cringing. The writing was, lackluster, to be blunt. It was pretty crude and juvenile, with just terrible execution.
Final Thoughts
Devil’s Hunt was a game I really wanted to like, it had a lot of potential but just feels and plays like a game that had a really good vision, but not enough production time or resources for that vision to be realized. There is no replay value to the game, and as such, I wouldn’t recommend picking this one up unless it was on sale. Even then, don’t expect this game to hold your attention for more than two or three sessions.
I rate this title two out of five. Devils Hunt is currently available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
