Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune Review – A Surprising Metroidvania Gem

A Surprising Metroidvania Experience

The phenomenon of a niche title you’ve never heard of before in your life, taking you by complete surprise in the most delightful ways possible, is a rarely experienced event. Yet, when it does happen, it is genuinely something special, forever cementing itself in your memory as a one-of-kind actualization.

This scenario perfectly encapsulates my experience with the IceSitruuna-developed and published action metroidvania Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune. Besides a preview written by our website’s founder years ago that I only just learned about, this title felt like it came out of nowhere. So, the offer for a code now feels like a fateful coincidence.

Engaging Story and Characters

Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune follows the titular protagonist, Erza, a streamer and legendary hunter who is quite beloved and popular within a certain empire. This civilization’s continuous growth and success can be partially attributed to Erza, who has played integral roles in military exploits. However, a sudden crash-landing with her crew on an unfamiliar planet leads her into dangerous waters where the surrounding wilderness and vestiges of the collapsed past birth dangers of increasing prominence.

Throughout her journey, Erza is accompanied by her empire companion, Ciara, who has a not-so-subtle crush on her, and a native of this planet, Neil. Erza also has a talking skull-shaped hairclip named Diablos that is quite the enigmatic, if perverted, figure. The character relationships and exchanges here are all pretty genuine and full of heart, but the writing and general storytelling are easily where Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is at its weakest.

Unfortunately, the English localization here is quite poor. There are countless grammatical errors, alongside horrid line spacing and awkward phrasing. You can undeniably grasp the overall story and understand the generalities of what occurs, but it’s more akin to trying to decipher a poorly written essay rather than experiencing a plot unfold. Additionally, the pacing in the second half is desperate, with randomly provided lore dumps that do little to attach you to the setting and its history.

Combat Customization and Player Freedom

These faults are severe, for sure, but I quickly found myself invested in the gameplay above all else, to the extent that any concerns I had with the writing at the moment were washed away. Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is a 2D side scroller boasting immense player freedom with combat customization. Erza, Ciara, and Niel all have individual weapon types, instilling entirely unique combative identities.

From Erza’s proficiencies with blades to Niel’s preference for fisticuffs, these three characters all feel entirely different to control, catering to several playstyles. I was pretty impressed by the lag times and attack windows being entirely characteristic, depending on the type of sword equipped.

Exploration and Metroidvania Elements

Still, Ciara is arguably the most standout character to control here as she possesses the steepest learning curve. She uses a kick-focused combat style for her primary attacks and various types of guns from afar, making her the most adaptive. However, her physical strikes follow a certain rhythm that necessitates practice to master. Moreover, these general strengths are collectively accentuated by the solid audio design, making each impact feel truly worthwhile and significant. I can’t emphasize enough how crucial well-implemented sound design is for action games since providing the right kind of feedback can do an indescribable job of encouraging the player to keep progressing. Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune understands this necessity.

Sound Design and Audio Experience

The combat’s positives don’t stop there; unlockable weapon skills are discovered in treasure chests scattered around the world. Of course, they add appreciated variety, but they’re interestingly activated by lite fighting game-like commands with specific buttons and directional inputs. These aren’t exactly difficult to pull off, mind you, yet they magnify this title’s already robust distinctiveness.

Another major factor of the combat system is the spells, which are acquired as drops from destroyable objects and such. Magic is applied to R1 and R2, and it’s comprised of countless elemental utilities. Further, the type of output for these elementals differs depending on the spell itself. For example, you have a fire spell that shoots out a simple fireball while another spews out flames for a set period of time and travels with you as you move. The experimentation here is unrivaled, as you must outfit each character with the spells that best complement their movement and currently equipped weapons.

These aforementioned factors alone prove why Frontier Hunter is a must-play, but there are even more impressive mechanics to mention. A major component of character building is rooted in magic cores. Essentially, these are equipment-specific grids made up of slots, and these slots are filled by inputting the magic cores sometimes obtained when defeating enemies.

Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune felt like it came out of nowhere, offering a truly delightful surprise.

To simply matters, you can perceive this practice as somewhat akin to Tetris. Each piece of gear has a number of slots, usually corresponding to how effective the stats are, and the magic cores obtained from monsters are specific shapes that must fit in the size of the gear’s slots. For example, a weapon or armor may be made up of six slots, two down and three across on two rows; your monster magic core must then be small enough to fit somewhere in there. Multiple magic cores can also be equipped within a single piece of equipment, which becomes increasingly evident in the game’s later hours when there are numerous magic core slots.

When considering the sheer amount of monsters, weapon types, accessories, and armor, you can imagine how much customization you can enact to your heart’s content here. Plus, equipment will pretty much always have slots that require gathered materials to unlock, adding another layer to this already involved and relatively intuitive system. It’s definitely better understood when doing rather than seeing.

Other gameplay features include a base camp and infrequent shops where you can buy, modify, and craft new equipment, purchase items, and even cook for temporary stat boons. These avenues are all rather self-explanatory. Cooking, in particular, shouldn’t be overlooked as it can instill tremendous benefits against bosses and in areas you are new to. Speaking of, the boss battles throughout this title are magnificent, with excellent telegraphs and genuine degrees of challenges that require you to learn the opposing movesets and react to tells swiftly. There’s even an area you can unlock where you can re-fight bosses at various difficulty levels for additional prizes, clearly illustrating the confidence this title has in its boss design.

The combat system shines with immense player freedom and solid audio design, making each impact feel truly worthwhile.

Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune also thrives in the exploration department. Each locale’s aesthetics and gimmicks are distinct and memorable. The smooth movement animations aid this enjoyment, even if some of the environmental hit detection can be a tad wonky. In addition, the metroidvania facets are quite simple, not rivaling the complexity of its contemporaries. Instead, the newly acquired movement upgrades and tools used for progressing past previously inaccessible pathways are transparent means to an end that are easily detected on the map. In essence, you won’t have to think all that much about where to go at any point; you’ll likely never be lost.

Still, the exploration is always satisfying. The movement upgrades are all cathartic to achieve and use; the core ethos of metroidvania satisfaction is more than adequately performed here. The puzzles are usually not necessarily mindless, either. Even underwater navigation is enjoyable here so that feat should tell you all that you need to know. It’s also worth acknowledging that the playable characters all have cosmetic equippables. I wish there wasn’t quite so much DLC tied to this, but that can at least be hand-waved, seeing as it doesn’t impact the gameplay.

The only strange collective element of gameplay that I wish were absent entirely are the brief minigame-like deviations, like the controllable ship segment in the opening hours. These instances feel obligatory in their incorporation, not adding anything of genuine substance.

One last factor worth noting for Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is the outstanding soundtrack. The songs here are terrifically upbeat and catchy, loosely reminiscent of the headspace I enter when listening to Falcom’s legendary soundtracks. Alas, the sound mixing isn’t the best. You’ll have to manually adjust the Japanese or Chinese voice volume sliders in the settings to your liking. Performance on PlayStation 5 was consistently smooth, with only a few negligible frame drops that didn’t impede the experience.

Final Thoughts: A Must-Play Metroidvania

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, I heartily recommend Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune to all action and metroidvania fans. Even though the storytelling and writing aren’t exactly compelling or well-edited, respectively, and the cutscene animations are stiff, the gameplay here shines to blinding extents. The masterfully addictive growth systems, movement, combat customization, and sense of progression are stellar, making this a sleeper hit in this jam-packed year. This adventure won’t escape Bloodstained comparisons, but it excels more than enough to stand on its own.