An indie Metroidvania, The Bounty Huntress is a simple game released at a budget price. While the generic visual style leaves plenty to be desired, the gameplay would have been casually enjoyable if it wasn’t marred by technical issues and poor quality of life choices.
Clearly inspired by Castlevania titles, you play as a female warrior mostly based around melee combat. With one button to attack, another to jump, and a limited magic attack, gameplay is approachable and nothing that hasn’t been done before. This is a low budget, small indie title through and through and unfortunately the quality shows its roots.
The first major problem is the lack of save points. If you watch my stream embedded here, a played through the opening half hour of the game. During this 30-minute play through, I only found one save point. Off stream, it wasn’t until I grinded some levels before I was able to venture deep enough to find that second save point. The worst part, there are one hit kills, like falling into water thanks to cheaply placed enemies, forcing a restart upon death. Stage design, enemy placement, and the lack of save stations does not respect the player’s time.
As one of the oddest technical flaws I have seen, the game starts to skip frames the more it is played. Not sure how or why this happens, but after playing for 20-30 minutes and dying a few times, the overall performance started to chug. This is a major problem because the level layouts often call for precision jumps and timed attacks, something that becomes impossible when every third frame is skipped. Also, Achievements didn’t pop, the blurry images in the menu screen are not attractive, and the background can often look like the interactive foreground (those candles look very breakable). When you collect a coin, it also makes the same exact rupee-get sound effect from the original Legend of Zelda. While I personally have enjoyable nostalgia for this sound, not sure how Nintendo allows this…
With a little more time to iron out the technical and design issues, The Bounty Huntress could have been a fun little Metroidvania. It is a shame because there is a solid framework here so it breaks my heart that so much falls apart so quickly.
Not As Good As: Cosmo Bit
Also Try: Escape from Tethys
Don’t Forget About: Trash Quest
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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