I feel the need to begin this Devil’s Hunt review by pointing out that its developer, Layopi Games, clearly has a fondness for nerdy things. You can find the name “Leeroy Jenkins” on main character Desmond’s fridge, for example, while there are also passing references to pop culture staples like Doom and Star Wars. These references speak to the underlying tone of Devil’s Hunt, which is one of overwhelming goofiness, and while that lends a certain kind of charm to the story by counteracting its incoherent attempts at self-seriousness, much of the game’s lightheartedness is the unintentional result of disjointed storytelling and eerie character behavior that consistently keeps one foot planted outside the realm of normal human behavior. Devil’s Hunt is a significantly clumsier game than its premise and marketing suggest, feeling like a series of linear Final Fantasy XIII corridors interrupted only by combat that plays like a poor man’s version of Batman: Arkham Asylum‘s freeflow system. Those who can appreciate jankiness will likely find something to enjoy, but those expecting Devil’s Hunt to live up to its considerable promise are bound to be disappointed.

[Note: the videos embedded on this page were recorded using a pre-release version of the game that suffered from known audio bugs. I’m writing this less than 10 hours from its release and subsequent pre-release patches still haven’t fixed these audio bugs, but if they’re patched out in the official launch version of the game, I’ll rerecord the embedded videos and delete this message. If this message disappears and the videos still have issues with the audio cutting out during combat, though, it’s because that reflects the state of the game at release.]

Devil’s Hunt is based on a Polish book series that hasn’t been translated yet

I’ve read from multiple outlets that Devil’s Hunt is based on a book called Equilibrium by Paweł Leśniak, but it turns out that this is actively misleading; Paweł Leśniak’s relevant trilogy starts with a book called Równowaga, which roughly translates to balance/equilibrium, but none of the books appear to have ever been translated into English. And you’ll notice that I said “trilogy”; Devil’s Hunt looks to be based on the first book of three, and as such, it ends on a minor victory before any of the overarching plot points have been wrapped up. An industry as brutal as this one is no place to leave lingering plot threads unresolved. That’s hardly the end of the game’s plot woes, either, as there are several points where the reasons for things happening aren’t communicated. I suspect that the root cause has something to do with the writers’ familiarity with the source material causing them to mistakenly believe that everyone will be similarly up to speed. The mechanics of important plot occurrences such as Desmond getting captured during a vision of the future and imprisoned in the present are never adequately explained by Devil’s Hunt.

Despite its many flaws, I found myself enjoying the story because of its characters, particularly Desmond. He isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, easily being one of the most adorably stupid characters I’ve ever played as, and his general daftness in the face of overwhelming odds makes him likable.

Desmond’s entitlement is through the roof, for one thing, and he walks around with so much unearned confidence that he treats his damnation and subsequent role in determining the outcome of heaven and hell’s war with little more than weary resignation. This isn’t even played for a laugh. Desmond isn’t a Saints Row-style personality designed to be larger than life. He’s written as a serious character enduring serious trials.

It’s simply impossible to wrap your head around Desmond without an example, so here’s what he has going for him: a white-collar job (that he was given thanks to his dad being the boss), absurdly expensive house, recent engagement, and promising underground fighting career. After losing one match and having some unclear stuff happen with his fiancee, however, he decides to drive off of a bridge and kill himself. For a while, I believed that this was caused by CTE because of how sudden it is, but no—Desmond has a bad day and drives off of a bridge because the thought of only having most of the things in the world handed to him on a silver platter is unbearable. Ending up in hell, Desmond is immediately introduced to Lucifer and enters into a contract with the physical manifestation of death to work as an Executor, which is to say “someone who steals souls for the devil.” He’s as terrible at this as everything else, though, and yet he’s continually bailed out by Lucifer, Lucifer’s right-hand man Sawyer (one of Devil’s Hunt‘s few legitimately interesting characters), and other characters because he was handed some grand destiny that everyone’s weirdly respectful of.

Everyone calls Desmond the “Savior and Destroyer,” which supposedly reflects his innate ability to tip the scales in the unending battle between good and evil. How he would do that, I have no idea, and Devil’s Hunt ends long before his destiny is explained. There are no choices to be made here, either—this is a linear game that sees Desmond working with and against both sides at different points, as his ego is too big to take orders. And yet, for all of the failed attempts to establish gravitas or stakes, and all of the many squandered opportunities to explain basic plot points that are inexplicably glossed over, Desmond’s boneheaded personality establishes a warm glow of cheesiness that benefits the entire story.

The combat in Devil’s Hunt feels like an Arkham game with no block button

Gameplay-wise, Devil’s Hunt is remarkably simple, consisting of a series of linear paths that sometimes result in enemy mobs appearing. When that happens, the game shifts into combat mode (which means no interacting with the levers, ledges, or doors required to move on) until every last enemy is defeated. Rinse and repeat. As Desmond reaps souls by defeating enemies, he can then use those souls to purchase upgrades in three separate skill trees, with each tree reflecting a fighting style that can be switched between in combat. Simply put, you can use your Executor moveset and blast the enemies around you with a ground slam, then switch to your Unholy moveset and launch a magical spear at anything that survived. For the most part, though, the attacks in each skill tree are similar enough that I stuck with the Unholy moves almost exclusively once that skill tree was unlocked thanks to it being the only one with a healing skill. All attack skills operate on a cooldown, so you can switch between styles while fighting to get around cooldowns and stay on the attack, but Devil’s Hunt never requires this; attack skills are unskippable animations that don’t grant invincibility, so you’ll use them rarely enough that they’ll almost always cool down before you find the next safe opportunity.

Devil’s Hunt isn’t a difficult game when playing on its normal difficulty—which is called “casual” for some reason—so you can safely whack away at most enemies without relying on unlockable combo attacks. These combos have to be purchased with souls, and by the time it’s prudent to buy them instead of skills (some of which are passive and increase Desmond’s health or the frequency with which he can perform cutscene finishers, with both being far more useful early on), you won’t have any use for them outside of winning in a slightly flashier way. Something that I have to give the developers credit for is allowing the player to refund skills at any time, though, which enables you to experiment with new attacks and passive bonuses without blindly committing.

The only real moments of difficulty come toward the end when enemy mobs send 3-4 damage sponges at you simultaneously, and it isn’t a situation where you’re likely to die so much as it just takes forever to finish them all off. Even if you do lose all of your health in combat, there’s a button-mashing QTE that lets you revive instantly without losing any progress. Devil’s Hunt being on the easier side is a small mercy, however. While combat feels vaguely similar to the freeflow system of the Batman: Arkham series and its numerous copycats, there’s no block/counterattack button, and this ruins the sense of momentum. You can block a single type of attack that shows a prompt, but you’re otherwise forced to dodge or tank enemy attacks, and there’s rarely a reason to dodge—the souls of fallen enemies restore Desmond’s health, so you can usually just pummel your way through encounters with impunity. This “trading blows” approach to combat suits his history as an underground fighter, but it also makes the gameplay incredibly dull.

I’m not confident that the bugs will manage to be patched out by release

This is the point where I have to point out that I’m playing a pre-release version of Devil’s Hunt with some known issues that could be fixed by the time the game launches. Considering how buggy my playthroughs were, how little time remains before release, and the fact that multiple pre-release patches haven’t done much to curb the bugginess, though, I’m not optimistic. Let’s start with Lucifer mirrors—while this is indeed a linear game (which isn’t inherently a bad thing), there are some side paths that lead to rooms containing an extra soul or Lucifer mirror, which provides you with 5 extra souls when smashed. It didn’t take long before I realized that these souls randomly stopped registering in my total, and only refunding and repurchasing a skill caused the correct number of souls to show up. That just emphasized another bug where my controller stopped being recognized in menus, forcing me to use the mouse. Once, I even got softlocked in the menu when a new skill tree unlocked.

Another problem has to do with your inability to push enemies out of the way. You have skills that can knock regular enemies down, but bosses are immune to their effects and at least one boss can corner you in the arena. The result is a fight where you can’t see and have to rely on the invulnerability of Devil’s Hunt‘s temporary demon transformation to eke out a win while the camera flails and clips through Desmond’s body.

Outside of that demon transformation, the only invulnerability you’re given is during dodges and cutscene finishers, which makes finishers the best way to avoid damaging boss attacks in a couple of encounters that use filler enemies. Their animations are unskippable, though, and each enemy type has either one or two animations that you’ll see a million times each. Because of how often you’ll be fighting the same enemies and how often finishers are available, they’ll become tiresome long before you’ve reached the story’s midway point.

My save broke in chapter 11 of 13 because one of the autosave locations doesn’t work properly. Trying to load it results in an infinite loading icon 100% of the time. Here’s where things get weird—while Devil’s Hunt allows you to replay previous chapters, restarting from a chapter before you have skills resets the menu and risks baking the absence of the skills tab into your save (despite the game remembering your original location when you replay a chapter), so while you retain all of the skills you had, you’re unable to purchase more or remap them. I don’t know if there’s only one save that doesn’t work, but Devil’s Hunt uses an autosave-only system, so I suppose we’ll find out once more players get their hands on it.

Devil’s Hunt‘s visuals aren’t good enough to justify its performance

This isn’t an ugly game by any stretch of the imagination, and in many cases, it manages to be quite pretty. The smoke effect that appears when angels spawn is particularly good. At the end of the day, though, the visuals in Devil’s Hunt remind me more of 2010-2015 games (The Dark Eye: Demonicon, Blood Knights, and Alpha Protocol in particular) than they probably should, with the most significant difference being the performance; Devil’s Hunt doesn’t run anywhere near as well as its relatively modest appearance suggests, and while its performance in smaller areas can be perfectly fine, larger areas are unexpectedly CPU-intensive and can see the frame rate tank. Then there’s the soundtrack, which frustrates me endlessly. It uses a combination of strings and guitar at its most interesting points, and you’ll hear that in the trailers, but that’s not what the music is ordinarily like—most of the time, you’ll be listening to atmospheric tracks that linger on notes for uncomfortably long stretches. It’s fatiguing and so unremarkable that you could be forgiven for forgetting that this game has a soundtrack. The wasted potential in Devil’s Hunt is astounding.

Story: 2/3 Gameplay: 1/3 Visuals: 1/2 Music: 1/2 ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ – 5/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

Devil’s Hunt Review Screenshots (PC)

*A Steam key was provided for this Devil’s Hunt review. I don’t know how long a playthrough is because my save broke four-fifths in, but I’d guess 5-7 hours, including cutscenes.

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