The Huntsman Winter’s Curse is a beautiful game, unfortunately its also the most broken game that I have played on the PS4 yet. Its technical glitches with its game breaking bugs overpower the excellent artwork and the interesting story that the game has to offer.
The Huntsman Winter’s Curse
Detailed Review
(-) No Chris?
The Huntsman Winter’s Curse is set in the Huntsman universe and takes place between the 2 movies. Queen Ravaena has died, while Queen Freya’s army marches on-wards. You play as Elisabeth, which is weird since the game is called The Huntsman. The titular Huntsman (think Chris Hemsworth) do make a guest appearance though and so do the seven dwarves. Infact, the game is full of movie references, and anyone who has watched the 2 movies will understand the setting perfectly. For the new comer though, the campaign is pretty straightforward. As Elisabeth you are looking for your 4 older brothers, and have an adventure while you are at it.
During your search you come across a variety of enemies like Wolves, Spiders, Trolls, Soldiers and Ice Wisps. Similarly you will also come across allies who will help you in battle, and level up along with you as you defeat enemies and finish quests. All battles are fought like a turn based RPG, with the turns decided according to an active-time battle similar to what you saw in Child Of Light and Final Fantasy.
(+) Simple Numbers
Attacks and indeed stats are very basic understandable numbers instead of some huge values that take some time to filter through. The strongest of enemies have their HP in the 100s and most attacks average 6-8 damage in total. Experience is also given out in single digits, and its easy to gauge your progression throughout the game. Some attacks bring special effects such as Pushing your opponent’s turn back (Stun), pulling your turn forward (Invigorate) and binding an enemy to a particular party member (Taunt) among others.
(-) Game Breaking Curse
The battle animations though leave a lot to be desired. Infact animation, sound and the technical aspect of the game is what hold it back in the first place.
THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST BROKEN GAME I HAVE PLAYED ON THE PS4.
Believe me the caps do not emphasize that enough. The selected quest is not highlighted properly, members from your party disappear for no reason and leave you battling enemies alone, the background music freezes and then restarts at the most oppurtune moment, inventory of party members are locked and are not editable, sometimes the menu highlighter is broken so you don’t know what you have selected, and a lot of times, the game cuts away to the World map without letting the current dialogue finish. Then there was a maze mission, in which if you don’t get the combination right in your first go (Hint: Its Left, Left, Right) you will not be able to make it past the first choice, unless you reload the save again.
All of this would have been alright (barely) if there were no game breaking bugs in the game. I have seen majority of my saves crash and burn, leaving me hanging on a world map with no missions, or either in a party with no members with a 3 on 1 fight upon me. In any games these bugs would have been highly frustrating, in The Huntsman Winter’s Curse which allows for only 1 save at any point of time, this is blasphemous.