Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune – Review, the fate of the frontier

Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune It’s an adventure in style Metroidvania anime proposed by IceSitruuna and NPC Entertainment and this is the second chapter ofTower Hunter: Erza’s Trial. The game begins with the introduction of the protagonist during a streaming session on an airship sailing along the borders of the empire. Our heroine’s journey, until that moment placid and peaceful, undergoes a drastic change of course, when dangerous creatures decide to attack the ship and break into it. The damage caused by the invaders pushes the airship off course, bringing it to the border, which is defended by a colossal storm of debris. After a crash landing on the unexplored frontier, our protagonist Erza and the crew of the airship find themselves forced to explore the crash site in search of resources useful for restoring the ship’s systems.

The Power of Three

Erza will not be alone during her research: initially, she will be accompanied by Chiara, another member of the crew, and later this pair will be joined by Nia. Unfortunately the translations internal to the title they are not among the bestand names and some phrases in the dialogues change continuously, confusing the player in most cases.

The trio of heroines represents one of the cornerstones of Frontier Hunter’s gameplay, thanks to the character exchange and calling during combos. Each of the protagonists highlights a different fighting style:

• Erza She is an expert in gaining distance and attacking enemies from a distance using special sword and spear techniques, however, our heroine’s skills are not limited to melee weapons only: in fact, through the use of magical artifacts, she is very skilled in overpowering enemies with powerful spells.

• Clear She prefers to overwhelm her opponents with storms of long-range magical projectiles, and an arsenal of close-quarters melee techniques centered around the use of kicks. While her magical abilities aren’t quite as good as the other two protagonists, she easily makes up for this with the use of firearms such as gatling guns, sniper rifles, and missile launchers.
• No She is the last heroine to join the group and is the most versatile thanks to her kit of equippable weapons, which allows her to approach each challenge with creative tactics. Her favorite weapons are combat gloves useful in devastating enemies with powerful long-range strikes, dual swords specialized in mid-air combat, supported by techniques capable of knocking enemies into the air or making them fall to the ground. Finally, there is the classic combination of sword and shield useful in counterattacking and driving away threats.

From Forests to Forgotten Cities

The levels of Frontier Hunter are divided into several biomes developed both horizontally and vertically in a panorama horizontal scrollingthere is no shortage of characteristic monsters and traps accompanied by puzzles and challenges to test the players. The combat system uses the classic mechanics of metroidvania, such as storms of full-screen shots, platforming during boss fights, and the super armor or temporary invincibility of some enemies reached a certain damage threshold.

The game offers two levels of difficulty differentiated only by the presence of a temporary invincibility to the player after taking a hit in easy mode. The bosses of each biome provide an excellent and balanced level of challenge, with the exception of one that resides on the altar, an advanced section of the game map. The altar boss requires you to have mastered with Erza or Nina the dynamics of the counterattackin order to respond to a continuous series of hits and damage the temporary shield generated by the boss, which grants immunity to hit reactions and status ailments, making it the most difficult challenge in the game (currently completed by only 10.4% of players on Steam).

Hunting for nuclei

Character Growth in Frontier Hunter is a continuous and challenging process. The level of the heroines is not everything: each piece of equipment and magical artifact has ranks that affect the quality and rarity of the resources required to be crafted and upgraded. Upgrading equipment does not increase its base stats, but provides an additional slot in which you can insert a magic core.

These are special power-ups dropped by defeated monsters, capable of increasing the base stats of equipment and granting passive abilities. Optimizing equipment and collecting cores is a major focus of the endgame content accompanied by the search for skill manuals useful in expanding the offensive repertoire of the heroines. Boss cores provide unique abilities, initially accessible to only one character, however by advancing in the sections of the map a room full of tombstones with the boss portraits. Inside the tombstone room, you can relive the boss encounters and face them again, applying penalties to the player and bonuses to the boss, in order to obtain rich rewards and additional cores.

Erza’s Adventures

Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune tested at maximum performance on PCusing a video card Nvidia RTX 3070 and a processor Ryzen 7 3700xhas led to a great smooth result without interruptions. Frontier Hunter offers a long-lasting and balanced experience accompanied by exciting soundtracks and one anime style representation. Unfortunately, the translations of the dialogues are the weak point of the work, these errors often cause misunderstandings in the reading of the interactions between characters during the progression of the story, and complicate the use of some objects and equipment due to an incorrect translation of the descriptions. Overall, Frontier Hunter manages to involve players in the exploration of a vibrant environment full of puzzles and heart-pounding challenges.