Anime inspired labyrinthine platformers are all over Steam, though they all seem to be tagged as Metroidvanias, for some reason or another. Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is a game that follows the titular Erza, an accomplished soldier whose detachment crash lands in an unfamiliar world. Tasked with exploring their surroundings, Erza and her subordinate Ciara venture out into the unknown to gather information before getting drawn into something much greater.
One of the protagonists for this adventure is the taciturn and competent Erza, who uses a katana, rapier, and spear to cut through aggressive and unfamiliar creatures in their new locale. Alongside Erza is Ciara, who is significantly bubbly and upbeat, though she’s absolutely obsessed with her boss Erza, much to the latter’s exasperation. Ciara combats foes using martial arts kicks and heavy armaments like sniper rifles, gatling guns, and rocket launchers. Lastly, you encounter the enigmatic and caring Niel who fights using fist weapons and blades. There’s also a disembodied voice stuck to Erza named Diablo, and you’ll be subjected to his helpless perversions over the main cast constantly.
The actual story of Frontier Hunter is pretty decent, but the English translation is pretty awkward and stilted at times. You’ll completely get the gist of what characters are talking about, but there will be moments where the dialogue won’t immediately make sense due to poor syntax. The story at the beginning is very lighthearted, almost as bubbly and cheerful as an Atelier game, but by the end there is a series of lore dumps where the developer attempts to hit you with all of the mystery and world building all at once, and while I was interested in what was transpiring, the pacing and storytelling of Frontier Hunter are probably it’s two weakest aspects.
You can run through the areas, attacking enemies by mashing buttons, but as you explore you’ll find technical manuals that teach your characters new weapon skills. These weapon skills follow simple fighting game inputs, such as down-up inputs that launch an enemy into the air, or quarter-circle-forward motions to deal huge damage. What’s even more valuable is that your weapon skills can be weaved into your standard attack combos, and you can even switch characters to, say, Ciara and continue attacking enemies from a distance using her rocket launcher if you knock an enemy too far away from you. It’s important to note that you will have to use these simple fighting game commands to take out enemies, as your weapon skills deal significantly more damage than your basic attack strings.
Frontier Hunter has some pretty fun game mechanics involving your party if you couldn’t tell by the fact that you can swap characters while dishing out punishment on enemies blocking your way. Characters who aren’t currently being used recover health and MP, so if you find yourself getting hit often, you can switch to another of your three heroines to recover while you continue to explore. You can recover health at various safe zones located throughout the world, and can even cook some food that can yield useful bonuses for the next time you go into combat.
As you explore the world, you’ll also find magic spells as drops from various sources. Some of them are simple projectiles that give you a way to hurt enemies who you don’t want to get too near, while others may be a close range flamethrower effect that does the most damage to bosses when you get as close as possible and use it during your other combo attacks. Again, all of these things can be utilized simultaneously, including switching characters, so as long as a boss or large enemy isn’t in their super armor state (generally indicated by a blue aura), you can freely juggle and bounce enemies from one side of the screen to the other.
There’s a significant amount of customization available to players of Frontier Hunter because not only do you have to upgrade the weapons, armor, accessories, and spells of each character, but you also can receive enemy cores as drops, and these can be slotted into your gear to give you passive abilities or boost your stats. The passive bonuses can be really strong, too, as you can give yourself faster move speed, force enemies to be weak to the element of your weapons, or regenerate health and MP that you need to cast spells or use your weapon skills.
As you progress through Frontier Hunter, you’ll find the materials to make new weapons, armor, and accessories, as well as finding them occasionally in the wild too. You generally won’t be underpowered to the point where you will feel compelled to grind out enemy item drops to craft new weapons, so you’ll very likely skip a tier or two of weapon crafting as you go. Really, nothing requires grinding in this title, and you shouldn’t feel underpowered at any point unless you changed gear and completely forgot to install enemy cores into your new equipment or something. The only real drawback with all of the customization, however, is that when you do switch equipment, you’ll need to manually remove cores from your old gear to set them into your new weaponry, armor, and accessories.
As for exploration, Frontier Hunter follows a very standard labyrinthine platformer formula where you mostly explore one zone at a time and will find the occasional treasure chest you can’t reach or door you can’t open. Typically, by the end of the zone, you’ll find the item that unlocks that door or acquire the power that lets you reach those locked boxes. So, as you explore, you’ll unlock a double jump, wall climb, swimming, and even air dashes, but these powers are mostly utilized in the locations in which they’re found or zones that come up afterwards. Progression is supposed to be entirely linear, so while you can glitch your way into some fun sequence breaks, the developer intended route is very obvious and marked on the player’s map at all times.
The instances where you may need to completely backtrack to significantly earlier zones due to a key or traversal power you unlock are actually quite rare. Most new exploration abilities you acquire are used in the zone in which they’re found, with the amount of backtracking needed being pretty rare, especially to contemporaries in the genre. So, if you don’t like the typical Metroidvania thing of constantly revisiting earlier locations every time you get a new power or key, then Frontier Hunter may be streamlined enough to match your tastes as it’s more similar to Astlibra Revision than Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Boss fights in Frontier Hunter are usually treats where you get to flex your mastery of the combat system against some large, nameless creature. The boss fights aren’t particularly difficult, even though the bosses all have super armored attacks, the aforementioned blue aura, that will teach you when to back off. Thankfully, bosses also have a very easy to fill stagger gauge that puts them into a period of helplessness where you can freely beat on them and unload super attacks from your characters, one after another.
The combat, exploration, customization, and crafting are all very well designed even if the exploration is more segmented into levels. The visual design can be a pretty mixed bag- the main characters look great and are animated pretty fluidly, but every so often you’ll come across an enemy with an attack that looks disjointed or low budget, which makes sense since this is a Chinese indie developer. As far as the soundtrack goes, Frontier Hunter has great backing tracks, especially in exploration areas since that’s where you’ll be spending most of your time. Stone Sea, a delightfully bright and upbeat track that plays as you explore an environment nearby a beach, is a personal favorite.
All in all, Frontier Hunter is a great time. It’s not as labyrinthine as other labyrinthine platformers you can find on Steam, but marrying special attack commands, spell casting, and tremendous amounts of customization do a lot to set it apart from its peers. At $25, it’s a good deal cheaper than titles like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, for example, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is closer to something like Richter Mode in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, where you need to do simple motion inputs to deal with enemies and obstacles regularly.
If you’re only into Metroidvanias that absolutely make the most of every single square of their map and cause regular backtracking, this title likely won’t be hardcore enough for you. This may also not be a good choice for players who don’t enjoy quarter-circle or down-up inputs, as players will be needing to do them regularly to dispatch foes. However, for anyone else who enjoys 2D action titles, especially with a cheery anime aesthetic, Frontier Hunter can be an entertaining adventure. Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is a 2D platformer that fills a fun niche and provides players with a great time at a fair price.
Developers: IceSitruuna
Platforms: Epic Games Store, GoG, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam