It seems the era of technical pitfalls and letdowns indeed has come to an end. Since last summer, not few players suffered from malfunctioning servers, resulting in game sessions disrupted by non-accessible inventories or freezing maps, as well as updates and patches freezing while being downloaded, or being downloaded at crawling speeds that made them a project of hours.
It took them almost half a year to start addressing these issues, and then another quarter of a year to resolve the issues. At the same time they nevertheless had the time to release plenty of payware items, reserves, and new species, which quite some people took queer. I had some initially polite and patient, but then increasingly angry arguments with their forums.
However, with their move to new servers, things slowly improved, and in the past couple of weeks I saw the major issues I attacked them for, going away one by one. Download of opatches still is a bit slow, but not that bad anbymore as if it would keep yopu away or stop you from playing, and mostly they are running at acceptable speeds now.
So since a few weeks I have started to find my enjoyment with this beautiful virtual world again. I can again with a good conscience recommend the game to people potentially being interested in its concept. The visual beauty, the gameplay, and the general mood and atmosphere never were in doubt anyway.
However, new players should act with hesitation and patience when deciding which equipmentg to buy, Expansive World carry The Hunter to Steam, the concepot serves for a mother comapony as a new busines smodel, and The Hunter itself has been beefed up with plenty of visual acessoires since release of multiplayer that have no gameplay value and only are cosmetic for multiplayer groups, and some new game concepts lioke hiunting geese and mallards have been turned into additioonal money generators, needing and/or offering quite a lot of additonal stuff for increasing the chances for successful hunting. Its not as bad as with mass online shooters, but a policy chnage has been done and the rersults from that are showing - if you think you really need all the gimmicks they offer, this now is an even more expensive game.
To do them fairness, you can do all reserves and wanted weapons and species with quite rudimentary expenses, and at this level you can not complain for sure, the game qulaity is ver yhigh, and the price for the deal "all reserves, all species, all needed ethical weapons" is okay. But they really try hard now to lure you into a thinking pattern where you spend several times as much money. So my advise: be restrictive with your buyings, be hesitent, and do not buy new gadgets as long as game experience has not proven you that youj have use for it.
And there is plenty of gadgets now, new weapons, aiming devices, clothing...
The "dry year" is over, it seems, it works reliably again now, and the game is as good again as it was before last summer, with several new species (18 in total now) and 7 reserves, and for those interested: multiplayer, it even is better than ever now. A new reserve is in the making.
After one rough year, the hunter is out there again!
