Battle Hunters PS1

[Gabriel]

Last night, I dug out an old PS1 disc called Battle Hunters. For those who don't remember, the end of the PS1's life cycle there were a slew of $10 bargain games like Space Shot, Top Shop, and a couple of others. Allegedly, Space Shot was pretty good. I own Top Shop and it's a pretty fun (if overly long playing) take on Monopoly. Battle Hunters is the "RPG" entry for the budget line, and whereas Top Shop is pretty entertaining, Battle Hunters is an exercise in futility.

 

Battle Hunters allows you and any friends you want to alienate to create 4 characters to play. You get some customization. You can name each character and pick from a selection of character graphics and colors. Beyond that window dressing, you can also distribute 10 points among your stats: Attack, Defense, Move, and HP.

 

I'm not entirely sure how one is supposed to play Battle Hunters. It seems to be a game you play with other people in a competitive race for the quest item. But playing in that manner is a recipe for frustration. If you don't make 4 characters, the AI will fill out the slots with it's own players and do everything in it's power to screw you over (and they will ALWAYS find the quest item before you). Ultimately, the only thing to do at the beginning is to make up 4 characters and coordinate them all. The rest of this rant assumes the player is doing this or playing cooperatively with a friend.

 

Once your characters are made you can take a mission from a guy who runs a shop. No mission details are given. You simply click that you want a mission, the guy tells you what you're after (a random icon), and away you go.

 

A mission consists of a random appearing board. The playfield is a large mazelike array of tiles. There is no terrain other than areas you can walk and holes into infinity (where you can't walk). Also on the board are boxes (which contain items), flags (which are worth bonus points, which appear to be meaningless), and the Exit. All 4 player characters are scattered randomly about the map. Your job now is to find the required item in one of the boxes on the board.

 

Each character gets cards which boost their abilities. There are Attack cards, Defense cards, Move cards, and Trap cards. Attack cards can be played during combat to boost your attack. Defense cards can be played during combat to boost defense or during the movement phase to help avoid hidden traps. Trap cards lay the trap indicated at the spot you were in before moving.

 

Each square can have a random trap or a trap laid by a character. The various traps discovered are stun and damage traps. Triggering a trap immediately stops your movement. Once again, all these traps are completely hidden and completely random.

 

Continuing this theme of randomness, each character's amount of movement for the turn is determined by the roll of a six sided die (presumably plus something from their Move stat, although this seems iffy). A move card can enhance this, but you might crawl like a snail from rolling a 1 or zip across the board rolling 6 after 6. The game likes rolling 1s and 2s for human players, but AI players tend to roll lots of 5s and 6s.

 

While moving around, you might encounter a monster. When this happens, a bland placeholder thing appears on the board. This placeholder looks something like the kind of pointer graphic which would be over the active characters head in a good tactical RPG. Only once the monster enters combat with a character do you see what they look like. I've seen a 4 legged walkermech, a trash can robot, a slime, and some giant hellcat.

 

Combat is turn based. When attacked, you have the option to counterattack or to simply defend. You always get the option to play a card to help your defense or attack. The attacker strikes first and if the defender is still alive and has opted to counterattack then they get to go. After one combat round, play returns to the map.

 

Combat is also random. Each side rolls 2 six sided dice and presumably adds their attack or defense value and compares it against the other party's roll. A higher total on attack results in damage to the defender. A roll of doubles seems to cause confusion when damage is inflicted. Sometimes when monsters die they leave an item behind.

 

Each player recieves a new card at the beginning of their turn up to a maximum of 5. The number of cards left in the deck is shown above the map. Should the deck run out of cards, a mega-monster comes out to kill whatever character has quest item.

 

The goal is for a player to get the quest item and move the character which found it to the Exit. Once that happens, the mission is over and you're returned to the shop. The character receives their bonus and life continues. If the character with the quest item didn't reach the Exit, and died instead, then everyone is still teleported out of the dungeon with whatever items they had.

 

Once back at the shop you can sell or identify items, and use money to level up. That's it. Pick another mission and go again.

 

All in all, it plays like a really poor cousin of the Heroscape boardgame. The main difference is that Heroscape has mechanics that work with the game, and is actually fun. Battle Hunters is nothing more than an exercise in completely mindless die rolling. The card mechanics feel far from integral and instead seem like an afterthought to present the illusion that something other than the die roll matters. As a competitive game it fails because the map is too large, the item placement too random, and combat between characters is pointless. As a single player tactical RPG it fails because the characters are too spread out, everything is random, and there is a feeling of total detachment which comes from not being in control of anything you do.

 

If you're a tabletop RPGer like I used to be, you might have a square grid battlemat around, some dice, and miniatures. You can damn near play this exact same game by drawing a random maze on the battlemat. Tossing miniatures representing the players down on the map. And then using a random encounter table from another game for spice. You'd probably come up with a game which is more fun and more intelligently developed than Battle Hunters.

[vdub_bobby]

Sounds...awesome.

 

Thanks for the warning; I'll steer clear.

[Ryanw]

Wow I thought I was the only one who wasted money on this awful game. Well, I was at a Flea Market and a guy had a ton of new PS1 games and they were only 20 dollars! I was like 11 at the time so I was super excited. The guy said I have a game for everyone, what kind of games do you like to play? I said oh I'm playing Final Fantasy VIII now and before I could finish he shoved Battle Hunters down my throat. I bought it of course, 20 bucks isn't that bad for a new game... Well later I find out the game sucks, and later I find out that the game was for sale at Wal Mart for 10. OH well... the bowling and tennis games by that company were ok