Battle Hunter

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Battle Hunter (known as The Hunter: A.R. 0062 in Europe) is a PlayStation game in the vein of a Roguelike or Tabletop Game. The players are assigned to create their own Hunter from an albeit limited character creator. During gameplay, four Hunters (with AI taking empty slots) are sent to find a Key Relic in a randomly-generated dungeon by searching through crates and fighting off the occasional Random Encounter. Whoever gets the best score wins, although there isn't much of a point to winning unless you're playing with friends.

There's a simple card system that affects speed (blue), attack (red), defense or evasion (yellow), and traps (green). Everyone can see each Hunter's hand, and there are 100 cards in the initial deck. When that deck reaches zero, the GON appears. Usually, this is a Hopeless Boss Fight but with an Exit card the person holding the Key Relic can teleport out and end the game.

Tropes used in Battle Hunter include:

• After the End (though without reading the manual you'd likely never guess.)
• All or Nothing: Essentially what happens if GON shows up while someone has the Key Relic. If he kills that person, everyone loses all of their cash and items, which means that aside from your hunter level, you basically start back at square one. Especially sucks if you got knocked around a bit in the process and lost a good chunk of your Max HP; with no way to recover it, you're better off just loading your last save file.
• Animesque: The game was made in Europe, but all the character art borrows from Anime.
• Continuing Is Painful: Lose all your HP and the cap is cut in half and you get teleported... somewhere. Also, you lose a turn to recuperate.
• Diabolus Ex Machina: The Key Relic makes every enemy and player (unless your friend is generous, which the AI is not) go after you to snatch it and claim victory.
• Expy: One of the ten colors for the heavily-armored character looks more than a little like Master Chief. One could even name him Chief if they so wished.
  • Granted, this came out in 2001, so it's more Hilarious in Hindsight.
• Game Breaker: Movement Speed. Just Movement Speed. Don't invest any points in offense or defense and just go pure movement speed. It becomes a game of chance, but the odds are in your favor. The player with the highest movement can easily get the most items, and if they get the item required for victory, movement speed makes escaping from any confrontation thereaftera breeze.
  • Arguably, even in (indirect) combat, these guys shine because they can make the most use of traps. Drop them all over, save up a few good attack and defense cards, and you MIGHT just be able to steal the item from the player who gets it before.
  • The cruelest tactic a movement-invested hunter can apply if someone else gets the target item before them is to litter the path to the exit with traps, ending the road with the movement-invested hunter himself blocking the path. From here, they can employ a purely defensive strategy until the uber monster known only as GON appears and play a game of chicken for surrender of the item. This is because GON will head straight for the player holding the target item, and if GON is successful in killing that player, it is a huge loss for evryone.
• Golden Snitch: The Key Relic is worth more than any other item there to be collected. Unless a Hunter gets at least five more items, they can kiss first place goodbye.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: To an extent, GON. There's an awful lot to explain about him, though:
  • First and foremost, GON only appears on the map when there's no cards left in the deck. This is only fair because it means the players will soon have no cards in hand, ridding the game of much strategy. As this Hopeless Boss Fight does result in a loss, they made it avoidable. End the level quickly, and you'll never see GON.
  • GON will always chase after the player holding the item required to win the game, only attacking other players if they happen to cross his path along the way.
  • GON's power is enhanced by risk. Namely, by the penalty for dying to him. If the player holding the victory item dies to GON, the mission is over, and every player in the game will lose every item they're holding, some of which can be quite powerful and rare. This typically will cause non-computer players to cooperate to end the level as quickly as possible when GON appears, even if they will not be the ones to win, just so they can keep their posessions.
  • GON is, indeed, of absurd strength, sporting insanely high offensive and defensive power that can tear through most anyone with relative ease. If you have the brilliant idea to protect the player holding the victory item by barricading a walkway from GON using the other three players, you'd better have three bodybags ready. His movement speed, which is also nothing to scoff at, means that fourth player should not take those three turns to run for granted.
  • Despite all this, it is possible to kill GON, and even without cheating or unfair amounts of character building. A small group with high strength and defense can work together to kill him. However, there is no reward for doing so, and this trope shows its stuff when he dies. Without skipping a beat, the warning sign will flash again, the awesome rock tune will kick back in, and GON will reappear, just as ready to go as ever. Effectively, this means the only decent reason one should try to kill GON is if he has the player holding the victory item cornered.
• Luck-Based Mission: The whole game, to some extent. Players "roll dice" to move, attack, defend and make speed checks. The dungeon is randomly made, placing the treasure boxes, Hunters, flags and exit just anywhere. The fastest game can last two turns if a player is within one move of both the key relic's treasure box and the exit. Also, there's a haggling system for selling the relics that's basically a coin flip between 10% and -50%.
• Mega Corp: B PHS is a classic Type 2.
• One Hundred Percent Completion: Getting all 100 relics in the game, though doing so earns you nothing.
• Palette Swap: There are eight character models to choose from in character creation. Each one has ten color combinations.
• Stalked by the Bell: Let the deck run out and the GON will eat everyone alive, starting with the person with the Key Relic or whoever gets in the way first.