Recent reviews by MrRip

This game certainly has its issues:
Monetization practices such as advanced access and locking paint colors behind paid DLC are not cool, and we shouldn't encourage stuff like this.
The customization system is a headache.
PVP TTK is way too low, and when games are laggy it can be very frustrating.
PVP maps are very simple and don't lend themselves well to the combat mechanics.
The story is basically a retread of the first game, the characters are mostly unlikable, including the main character.
The learning curve is steep, and mastering the melee system requires a lot of trial and error. Blocking/parrying frequently doesn't work the way you'd expect, and many enemies will stunlock you if you get caught off guard.
A lot of the fights can feel like total bs.

On the flipside, it has many things going for it:
Gameplay is fun once you get the hang of it
It's gorgeous.
Sound design is good, although sound balancing is not and you will need to tweak your sound levels a lot.
The set pieces and scenery in the background are amazing. World design is very good.
There is a lot of stuff to grind for and collect.

Overall, I'd say if you liked the first game, you will like this one. It's definitely far from perfect but it's a good enough game, especially for a 40k game, which we don't get a lot of.

I have a love hate relationship with this game.
The Pros:
-It's gorgeous.
-The semi historical cowboy horror theme is appealing, as not many games let you play with weapons from the 1800's.
-The gunplay is great. Every gun feels like it has advantages and disadvantages. If you aim you know you'll be accurate. A generally slower fire rate on all weapons means you need to be more deliberate with the shots you take.
-Melee combat is fun and exhilarating.
-The sound design, from the weapons, to footsteps and broken glass on the floor, to heads exploding when crunched with a sledgehammer is all amazing. Sound is a core element of this game and it's done really well.

The Cons:
This game doesn't know what it wants to be. This leads to an insidious feeling that no matter what you do in the game, it's wrong somehow. It cannot decide whether its meant to be PVP or PVE or progression focused or some sort of multiplayer roguelike experience. I've never played a game that made me feel stupid for trying to do the objective, or reckless for trying to engage other players, or like I'm wasting my time for focusing on hunter or bloodline progression. Somehow, no matter what you chose to do in the match, it feels wrong. The strange thing is that when I started playing Hunt, I loved this aspect of the game. I really enjoyed that I could play the game the way I wanted. Was I just here to farm xp to unlock a new weapon variant? No problem, I could dodge players, wait til I knew where everyone was, and start killing all the AI I could find. Did I explicitly want to fight other players? Alright time to grab a leveled up hunter, deck him/her out with my favorite high tier guns and traits and get hunting. Was I just here to kill the boss and extract? I could bring weapons and tools that would allow me to do that faster and more efficiently than other players and go do it. But the more I play this game the more I hate this aspect. I think events illustrate all of these issues in microcosm.
-Events: Every event they release is the same thing, you get points for doing what you would always do (killing bosses, finding clues, killing and looting players), except now there are statues and things to collect in the map as well, and as you earn event points you unlock cosmetics. Simple enough, and the cosmetics are all good, but the time investment to actually unlock all of them inevitably makes every event feel like a slog. The majority of my friends who I've played with, and I've gotten a lot of friends into this game, feel similarly to me in that we end up sick of the event about halfway through and wish it would end. The problem is not so much that the event isn't inherently fun, so much as that it both encourages you and punishes you for engaging with the event. What does that mean? Well, if one team is entirely focused on killing the boss as fast as possible, another is trying to get their points from murdering everyone in the server, and another is just on an easter egg hunt for all the statues and effigies littered around the map, it creates tension between these playstyles, and everyone feels like they shouldn't be doing what they're doing.
If I rush the boss, I am countered by the players just looking for kills, because they know where I am, where I'll go, and will have brought weapons that are more optimal for PVP than boss slaying.
If I'm just looking for kills, I feel like im cheesing the event, and my event progression is effectively a gamble, because I could have been running around hunting inanimate statues, grabbing clues and the like, or focusing on killing and extracting the boss before anyone else.
If all I'm here to do is farm event points off these statues and clues, I'm again putting myself at a disadvantage to both the players rushing the boss, which will lock off the remaining clues if theyre fast enough, and force me to leave the match if they extract early enough with the bounty, and the players looking for kills will be given clues as to my whereabouts because I'll be making noise and exposing myself all over the map on my easter egg hunt.
So which playstyle does one choose? You can't do all of them efficiently and simultaneously. The time investment is another problem that arises here. The team hunting bosses is encouraged to get in and out of the match as fast as possible. The team hunting players is now encouraged to stay in the match just long enough so that they can make sure they've killed everyone. The team hunting effigies wants everyone else to die so that they can scour the entire map for the entire match length.
I hope this illustrates what I mean when I say this game doesn't know what it wants to be, and no matter what you choose, it's wrong somehow. Keep in mind that the events are just accentuating the problems that already exist in the basic game.

Boss lairs are where all of this comes to a head. Because of the advantages and disadvantages of each weapon mentioned earlier, how you tackle the boss lair and the bounty token hunt is quite problematic.
If a team brings shotguns, rapid fire weapons and traps and gets to the boss lair first, there is no point in trying to push them to take the bounty token. It just doesn't make sense. If you brought a bolt action rifle, you'll be pushing into a dark compound with many angles to defend/hide in against weapons that can one shot you to the chest, or may have higher fire rates or more ammo than your rifle. You'll be at a disadvantage. If you also brought a shotgun and close range weapons, you'll still be at a disadvantage because of the noise you make on approach, even if sneaking as best you can. You simply cannot move without making noise, so the player sitting perfectly still will be able to ambush you with an advantage.

So what should you do? Well the answer is inevitably: Wait. You should wait as long as possible for them to be forced to leave the compound to extract, and then kill them in the open where you are on even terms or have the advantage. Both teams know this, and both teams are encouraged to wait. The team defending the boss lair wants the other team to push in, the team besieging it wants the other team to push out. That simple reality leads to waiting games that get insanely tiresome after you've encountered them for the 300th time. The other problem? The higher MMR you get and the better all the players get, the more they stick to this strategy because it is simply the best one. So the better you get at this game, the more boring it becomes to play it optimally. Now sure, patience is a virtue and I'm not complaining because I am specifically impatient, but when the match has up until very recently had a 60 minute clock on it, it becomes a bit of a joke. To be fair, the devs just made it 45 minutes, which is better. But if basically 30 minutes of a match can include every team just camping, why not just cut this time out and force everyone to make their move earlier?
This issue is so bad that basically at this point I won't even engage with the boss lairs because either way I do it, i'll be encouraged to wait as long as possible. Either I should actively hunt every team on the server and wait to do the boss once everyone is dead, or I should do the boss as fast as possible and wait for other teams to be stupid and push me, or I should wait for the team banishing the boss to make for the extraction.
Of course, the way most people end up playing both the events and the regular game is a blend of all of the styles already mentioned. But this style is inherently at a disadvantage in regards to specific goals to other more extreme styles.

Alternatively I could just run off the map and leave the match early at any point, which sometimes feels like the smartest option, especially when trying to level up hunters to retire or get them to 50. And when a game's best answer to player interaction is to just avoid it, I think there's a core problem with the game.

Leaving a negative review until Bluehole/Valve does something to get rid of the slew of hackers infesting the game at the moment. It's starting to seem like I run into a hacker in 4/5 of my games, at least.