Star Wars: Hunters review – Are you not entertained?!

Let’s think back to February 17th, 2021. We see the teaser for a game called Star Wars: Hunters, a team-based hero fighter from the company Zynga. Fast forward to 2022 as the company announces the delay of the game. Now, in 2024, the game is released for free on iOS and Nintendo Switch, and friends, it was worth the wait. It’s a lot of fun and so far works very well. Let’s activate those targeting computers and talk about Star Wars: Hunters.

As I said previously, Hunters is a hero arena fighter in the style of Overwatch. Your goal varies from winning objectives for a certain amount of time to killing as many of the opponents to reach a goal. What separates this game from others (at least for me) are the heroes and locations you’re fighting on.

I’m a huge Star Wars fan, so seeing maps on locations like Tatooine and the forest moon of Endor made me excited from the get-go. We did get a hint of some of the characters included in Hunters, like Rieve, in the novel Hunters: Battle for the Arena, which came out in March of 2023. Multiple characters in Hunters make their first appearance there. It’s worth reading if you end up enjoying the game and want to know more about each character and some of the world-building behind Hunters.

The characters are all unique and interesting to at least try once or twice while figuring out what kind of playstyle you want to go for in competitive play. So far, I’ve enjoyed Zaina, the support from the New Republic; Imara Vex, a Bounty Hunter extraordinaire with a great damage output; and Sentinel, an Imperial Stormtrooper hell-bent on showing the Galaxy what the Imperial Stormtroopers can do with his tanky stature and railgun. Each of these characters bring something different to the table. Beyond that, you can play as Aran Tal, Diago, Skora, Grozz, J-3DI, Rieve, Utooni, Sprocket, Charr, and Slingshot as of right now.

Some characters are locked when you boot up the game. You start with a small group to play while you’re learning the game. Hunters comes with a Hunter’s Path progression, which unlocks characters when you get enough Hunter Tokens, which you can collect by playing. If you’re impatient or end up trying a character in an event like Matchup Mixup (more on that later), you can unlock the character using crystals you get through progression or through the game store. I would suggest using the Hunter’s Path just so you’re making sure you fully understand a character before moving on to a new one.

Alongside the Hunter’s Path, you can purchase the Arena Pass, which at the time of this article unlocks Aran Tal, a Mandalorian dual pistol fighter who has great movement abilities but goes down quickly in the middle of a fight. Beyond the character, you’ll unlock everything from credits to crystals to cosmetics. It’s worth it for anyone trying to collect all the items in the game as it does give quite a lot of items during progression.

The game looks great given the platforms it’s on, and considering there is very little lag online, I’m happy with the result we have. While it’s nothing massively impressive, the graphics are cute and fun and fit the world of Star Wars. On top of that, I’m just happy the game fully works. I’ve yet to have a crash, yet to see any glitching through walls, mostly all characters are balanced. So, I’ll take the graphics looking a little plain at times for the game to work this well from the start, especially because the game is free-to-play.

Moving on to the modes, you have three main modes right now: events, casual, and ranked.

Events are game types with a little twist, you’ll have random characters assigned to you during your match. This is really great for forcing yourself to try new characters and you can actually level up the characters you use even if you don’t own them quite yet.

Casual is where I try out specific characters before jumping into ranked. It consists of the game types Squad Brawl, Dynamic Control, Power Control, and Trophy Chase. Squad Brawl is simple: get more kills than the other team trying to get to a specific number. In Dynamic Control, your goal is to control points that move around the map, so you’ve got to keep your head on a swivel looking for the next location. Power Control has three specific control points and you’ll get points as you control a point. If you hold two points you’ll gain points more quickly. Finally, Trophy Chase is where you have a player on your team hold the little robot and you gain more points the longer you hold it. During that time you won’t be able to do your best abilities, so be sure to give it to a teammate who can run around pretty easily.

These game modes are a lot of fun and pretty fast paced. There aren’t any levels so far that have multiple rounds, it’s generally once you hit a threshold you’re done. If at the end, the teams are deadlocked, you’ll have Overtime, but that generally ends pretty quickly in my experience.

Lastly is the Ranked Mode. I don’t generally play ranked, but because I wanted to be able to talk about it, I jumped in with my friend. We ended up doing decently well, getting myself to Bronzium I which is right before moving to Chromium. This was after winning 13/15 matches in ranked. Not bad, and it was fun creating teams with friends.

Let’s now discuss matchmaking, because it was VERY easy to get my group together with us on different platforms. You login with a Zynga account, get everyone’s information, and you’re good to go. I played on my Nintendo Switch from Georgia, USA while one of my friends was in Scotland and another in Los Angeles. In the 15-20 matches we played, we never had issues with lag spikes or anyone disconnecting. The only thing we found was that if someone on their phone moves to another app for any amount of time, it will boot them from the party. Not a huge deal as sending invites is really quick, but it was an issue a few times while I streamed the game.

For being a free game, Star Wars: Hunters shines with the easy gameplay, fast paced games, and unique Star Wars characters. Try it yourself on the Nintendo Switch and iOS devices today.

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