With such a wealth of homebrew and aftermarket video games releasing for outdated Nintendo {hardware}, we thought we would take a look at some of the promising examples on this neo-retro Recreation Boy assessment. To reiterate, Glory Hunters is not obtainable on Change, although we’ll make sure you let if that state of affairs ever adjustments.
For assessment, George performed and captured screenshots on an Analogue Pocket.
The discharge of GB Studio in 2019 has resulted in a flurry of video games obtainable for Nintendo’s pretty huge brick over the previous few years, however few have been as formidable or as extensively coated as Glory Hunters – the debut recreation of Mexico-based 2think design studio. Billed as “a novel Recreation Boy action-adventure RPG”, Glory Hunters smashed its crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter in 2022 and launched lately in each downloadable digital (by way of itch.io) and bodily kind, the latter coming courtesy of Bitmap Mushy. However does it reside as much as the hype?
Through the build-up, Glory Hunters was typically likened to The Legend of Zelda, and proper off the bat we see a big, celestial physique (not a moon!) on a collision course with the land, adopted by a positively Wind Waker-esque slideshow detailing an historic story – imploring a hero to stand up and summon a slumbering God to avert catastrophe.
However the similarities with Nintendo’s iconic franchise roughly finish there. We’re thrust straight into the motion. Form of. We’ve a sword however there are not any enemies, just a few bushes and a path blocked by a go well with of armour and a pleasant little NPC, who lays out the premise that units Glory Hunters aside from its forebears. The go well with of armour known as a ‘Glory Knight’ and development within the recreation is achieved by the gathering of ‘Glory Factors’ (GP) awarded by finishing ‘superb deeds’. We are able to use these to repay the Glory Knights and open up new areas of the map. It’s a type of levelling up, map enlargement, and foreign money system rolled into one.
At an deadlock and with little else to go on, we do what any action-adventure veteran would. We begin chopping bushes. As soon as 5 chew the mud, a notification pops up – we’ve achieved an excellent feat (apparently) referred to as ‘Minimize Starter’ and have a shiny GP for our troubles. We might pay up and transfer on however as an alternative we hold chopping, curious as to what’s essential to additional this achievement. In doing so we unearth, to our delight, a special feat by choosing up a specific amount of merchandise drops.
Studying by doing is one thing of a misplaced artwork in trendy video games however Glory Hunters excels at this. It is aware of the tropes — we’re going to learn signposts, peer down a effectively, relentlessly chop grass — and it rewards us for it. Nevertheless it additionally steers us effortlessly towards extra obscure feats, drip-feeding factors to encourage repetition and exploration, always fuelling the compulsion to maintain probing and making an attempt new issues. It’s setting us as much as perceive the deal from the very starting – the whole lot on this world is transactional. Succinct tutorial over, we’re then free to discover the open world of Glorianta any approach we would like, constrained solely by the variety of factors in our possession and armed with the data that reaching considered one of its 4 corners will enable us to finish our quest.
Simpler mentioned than finished. Glorianta is a behemoth. At a grid dimension of 17×19 it’s greater than 4 instances greater than Hyperlink’s first pocket journey – and simply as attractive as Koholint, too. In reality, the entire visible and audio presentation of the sport is elegant. The boss designs are a selected spotlight and there are cute cutscenes scattered all through the journey. The completely different areas of the world have a robust sense of id whereas the music underscores every space completely, thumping anthems akin to Mega Man energy us by the overworld whereas cosy aid is supplied as we bustle about cities assembly inhabitants. It’s by no means overbearing and most significantly, very hummable. It’s not all work both, with some glorious minigames dotted about to each waste time on and acquire GPs. Double win!
Exploration is hampered by the truth that the overworld map is simply accessible in mentioned cities. With such an enormous area to discover, it’s slightly overwhelming to not have a reference level at our fingertips; thankfully, the enemies are various sufficient in sample and design and the puzzles and hidden secrets and techniques sufficiently partaking to maintain exploration attention-grabbing – although it does chug a bit if there’s greater than two foes on the display screen. Saving the sport and replenishing well being can be restricted to particular areas and for a recreation that depends on repetition to drive exploration, this generally is a actual downside. Bear in mind these bushes we chopped down at first of the sport? We chopped them down 100 instances, then died earlier than discovering a save level, which meant chopping them down 100 instances once more. This was fairly discouraging at instances – notably at first of the search.
One other gripe we’ve got is loss of life leading to us being returned to the world with the quantity of well being we had on the final save level, as an alternative of replenishing it. Greater than as soon as we got here by a tough stretch, saved, then confronted a tricky problem or wanted to return and have become locked into a fairly dire state of affairs the place advancing or retreating punished us over and over.
Having mentioned that, the stability of GPs earned/required is fairly effectively judged, with minimal quantities of grinding essential to press on. However GPs are additionally used as a foreign money to improve your armour, sword, quantity of well being, or give hints, so that you’re enjoying a continuing guessing recreation about spending with out understanding if an enormous blockade of Glory Knights lay forward that might require hard-earned GPs and if amassing extra could be achievable and even pleasant ought to that be the case. Over time our pondering adjusted to the thought of chasing factors to bolster ourselves, as an alternative of bolstering ourselves after which chasing factors, however this concerned quite a lot of backtracking and there have been positively instances once we simply wished to get on with it. There’s an entire host of different collectibles which felt slightly underused and we couldn’t assist however suppose perhaps these may need been higher suited to the function of foreign money.
Conclusion
Glory Hunters is a package deal that has had quite a lot of love poured into it whereas remaining slightly tough across the edges. We weren’t at all times certain once we had been taking harm and even dishing it out – notably when dealing with bigger, noisier bosses, and a few beats throughout the recreation felt a bit flat. Some translation quirks and grammatical errors additionally popped up, however these had been by no means substantial sufficient to trouble us (we really thought they added a little bit of appeal to proceedings). All in all, Glorianta is a wealthy, deep world that’s pleasant to discover and efficiently faucets into nostalgia for Recreation Boy experiences whereas offering a contemporary and attention-grabbing tackle the system. Proof, if there was ever any doubt, that there’s life within the outdated Boy but.
