Glory Hunter is an action adventure RPG for Game Boy. It has lots of elements you would expect: you explore a huge map, you meet all sorts of original NPCs and you crawl through dungeons and fight bosses. The game is certainly fun, but it seems to be missing something. Let’s see.
Glory Grinder
The gimmick here is that you have to do all sorts of tasks, quests and exploits to earn glory points. The game should really have been called Glory Grinder, as you grind your way through it. You need those precious glory points to progress, so you go around killing monsters, talking to people, cutting grass, breaking rocks, feeding horses! Everything you do in this game seems to earn you points. It might seem boring, but the process is kinda fun and diversified. The titles you earn each time you get a glory point are funny. It must have been a tedious process to write all of these!
The graphics are really good. Each character and enemy has personnality. The environment is rich and detailed. I have no complaint here. Same thing for the music. It is entertaining and suite the different moods of the game very well.
The game can take up to 20 hours to beat. There are a lot to find, a lot to grind. It is a good point, although it can become a little repetitive. The boss battles are really and challenging, as you must find the pattern. Some are easier than other.
There is an interesting aspect of morality. You fight against all sort of embodied sins. The idea is fresh and interesting. The lore is rich, and there’s a gigantic map to explore. It is really impressive, k
Flaw hunter
The game is fun, but not perfect, and the followings are really subjective complaints, but here are some annoying things that I found. Take it a constructive criticisms!
The sword animation and hit detection seems a bit random. It’s hard to explain, but it doesn’t feel satisfying. You just keep smashing the button whitout knowing if it was a successful hit, or how many hits it takes to kill the enemy.
The game doesn’t give you any health recovery items like potions or medicinal herb. You have to go back and sleep at the nearest village INN to recover your health. It’s tedious, especially when you are exploring a dungeon. You have to get out of it, go to the nearest village, find the INN, talk to the innkeeper, sleep, recover your health. Go back to the dungeon. Yup, that’s tedious.
There’s a cruel lack of things to buy. Once you buy something at the shop, it remains empty. So the shop owner is always greeting you like “what are you gonna buy today?” but there’s nothing to buy! I get it that the goal is to collect glory points, but why put a shop in your game if there’s nothing to buy?
The dialogs are too long. Seems everyone in this universe has so many things to say, while not saying anything really helpful.
The game is slowing down when there’s more than 3 sprites on screen!
Conclusion
The project was ambitious, especially for such a small team. With all its imperfections, this is an epic and fun adventure made with passion. A must have for the retro rpg lovers.
My score: 7 glory points out of 10
Where to buy: https://2think.itch.io/glory-hunters