Review by: William Abner

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge tells a tale of two reluctant heroes, the aggressive female huntress and the cautious brawny swordsman. Mercenaries by trade, these two unlikely protagonists become wrapped up in an adventure brought upon by a ghost like creature called Seraphine, voiced by Lucy Lawless and sporting comically large breasts. She grants them amazing battle and spell casting powers but tasks them with performing a suicide rescue mission which also requires the killing of untold numbers of adversaries, let alone the end game foozle.

This is, at its heart, a two player, third person action-rpg co-op game. Sure, you can play it solo and take on the role of either hero, but you are missing a great deal of the tactical depth offered by a playing with a partner. In fact the game is significantly more challenging when playing cooperatively. The partner AI is almost too good; they tend to stay alive a lot longer than a teammate and it's not until the last segment of the game where it becomes difficult (especially playing as Caddoc, the brute) when running through the campaign solo.

However, with a human partner the game pulls no punches. Learning how to block with a shield, use effective cover while using every special power granted you is crucial to surviving against the legion of bad guys you are to face. Simply rushing in with the swordsman without discussing tactics is a recipe for a quick death. You absolutely must work as a team when fighting the tougher groups of enemies. Each hero plays a specific role – neither of which is “tank”, so despite Caddoc’s brawny exterior, it doesn’t take many hits before he falls and when that inevitably happens you must toss your downed teammate a glowing vial which gets them back in the game – these vials are limited in number so staying alive for as long as possible is somewhat important.

Co-op is not drop in/drop out. If you want to start a co-op campaign your partner needs to have completed the same amount of content as you so if you need help with the end game boss you simply can’t bring in a buddy to do it.

Fighting is made a little easier by the powerful spells and weapon powers at your disposal. You can even chain these powers with your teammate to unleash all sorts of hell on your foes. In typical rpg fashion you have various spell and skill trees to upgrade throughout the game but you will eventually upgrade nearly everything by game’s end so the choices you make early aren't as important as they first appear. What's not so typical is that you don't earn experience points like in a standard fantasy rpg. Instead you collect crystals which are scattered throughout each map area. You then spend these acquired crystals at designated points throughout the game. It's a different type of leveling system but it works well enough and also allows the designers to keep player advancement restricted a bit to stay in line with enemy difficulty.

While the game sports many rpg trappings, make no mistake, this is a linear, mission to mission adventure much like you'd find in a typical action game. There a several hidden areas for you to find but each mission is otherwise on a rail, allowing very little deviation off the set path. As a result Hunted suffers mightily from the two foot fence syndrome in that there is no jump button and a two foot fence proves to be an insurmountable obstacle. There are many gold coins to collect, which oddly enough you never actually spend on anything as every item in the game you find from looting or smashing weapon racks. Collecting gold inside the game itself is almost meaningless, but instead unlocks certain items in the level creator. Weird.