There’s a minimalist approach to storytelling that a lot of metroidvania games traditionally take, letting their world speak for itself and typically telling the rest of the story through text boxes and an occasional character sprite. Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune aims for loftier narrative goals with a load of fully animated cutscenes that place the characters and their adventures on equal footing with the importance of the side-scrolling exploration and action. Unfortunately, these moments are so rough and shoddy that they ultimately bring an otherwise decent gaming experience down several notches.
Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is a mish-mash of fantasy and sci-fi tropes run through an anime filter, and that grab bag honestly leads to some interesting ideas. Your protagonist is Erza, an Imperial Hunter aboard a cruising skyship heading to an unexplored region. Despite her calm & cool appearance, her introductory cutscene has her livestreaming from her bedroom about planet ecology to her fans and getting embarrassed when her dad shows up in the stream chat. Alongside her, you also get to play as minigun-wielding and Erza-obsessed fangirl Ciara as well as masked fighter Nia.
Hot-swapping between three playable characters at any time adds a lot of fun new layers to the metroidvania action that I was really impressed by. Each character has their own specialisation, and plenty of new weapons to equip and abilities to unlock that help diversify their playstyles even more.
I struggled to lose myself in the fun of these characters and the multi-biome sprawling map they explore, though, because of how frequently the game comes to a halt to dish out an unremarkable cutscene. While character models in Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune look fine enough from afar, they’re much less impressive to look at in dynamic, close-up cutscenes, and their animation is distractingly robotic. It’s hard enough to care about these moments when they look so rough, but a lot of the writing in them isn’t anything memorable either – for some players, the heavy reliance on goofy and fanservice-y anime tropes in these scenes won’t do them any favours either.
Lackluster cutscenes aside, there’s a comfortable, cheesy charm to Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune that I really do appreciate. Attack animations are far sharper than what you witness in story scenes, and while some of them lack weight or oomph, the sheer volley of wild particle effects and glowing projectiles that sputter out every time you land an attack or dish out a super move are just fun as hell.
Plus, the wealth of customisation in the game really helps make it worth seeing things through to the end – from equipment-enhancing orbs dropped by enemies to new abilities that grant access to locked parts of the map, and even a huge variety of costumes for each character, it always feels like you’re unlocking something new and shiny that helps keep your attention even through the lowest points of the game.
Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune isn’t setting a new bar for metroidvanias by any means – but it’s gaming comfort food that’ll feel easy to sink your teeth into if you’re a fan of that kind of atmosphere. Even the most patient of corny game enthusiasts will likely be put off by how frequent, unpolished, and often unskippable the cutscenes in this game are though.
