Way of the Hunter 2 is not a game for impatient people.
There were times when I spent half an hour slowly walking through the wilderness, following tracks, checking the wind and scanning the horizon, only to either scare away the animal I was looking for or completely mess up the shot when I finally found it.
Strangely, that’s also exactly why I enjoyed it. Like the original, Way of the Hunter 2 sits firmly at the simulation end of hunting games. This isn’t about sprinting around the countryside shooting anything that moves. Successful hunting involves understanding where animals are likely to be, finding signs, approaching carefully and making sure you’re using the correct equipment when you eventually take the shot.
When everything comes together, it can be incredibly satisfying. The biggest addition this time is your hunting dog, an American Foxhound that accompanies you and gradually improves as you spend more time together. It can search for animal signs and, more importantly, follow blood trails after you’ve wounded an animal.
I ended up using the dog constantly. Tracking an injured animal was one of the more frustrating parts of the original game, particularly when a blood trail disappeared into dense vegetation. Having the dog pick up the scent doesn’t completely remove that process, but makes it considerably more enjoyable and gives you a genuine feeling that you’re hunting together.
The animals themselves are the real stars. They don’t simply stand around waiting to be shot. Herds move between feeding, drinking and resting areas, and approaching carelessly can send everything running long before you’ve even seen them.
There are two main hunting regions, one in North America and a game reserve in Africa, alongside a smaller Rocky Mountain area containing your main ‘Hearth & Hunt’ headquarters. The environments are huge, and moving between them gives the game some welcome variety. Africa in particular introduces animals including lions, buffalo, hippos and crocodiles alongside the more familiar deer, elk, bears and moose found elsewhere.
It’s also a beautiful game at times. Walking through a forest as the sun comes through the trees or watching animals through binoculars from the side of a mountain can look fantastic. There were plenty of occasions where I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing and just wandered off exploring. Despite this beauty, in motion the frame rate is a bit on the choppy side. It’s not world ending – this isn’t a game about twitch shooting, but it does take the edge off slightly.
The downside is that those huge environments can also feel extremely empty. You can spend a long time travelling without anything particularly interesting happening. That’s partly the point – this is supposed to feel like wilderness rather than a theme park – but there were definitely moments where realism crossed over into boredom.
The shooting itself is excellent. Distance, wind, weapon choice and shot placement all matter, and simply hitting an animal isn’t necessarily enough. The improved shot review is particularly useful because you can examine what happened afterwards, seeing the bullet trajectory, angle and where you actually hit. It means a bad shot can genuinely teach you something.
There’s also more emphasis on managing the ecosystem rather than simply collecting trophies. The animals have different ages and fitness levels, and deciding which animals to harvest can influence the quality of future populations. It’s a system that I initially largely ignored but gradually became one of the more interesting parts of the game.
Your lodges give all of this some purpose too. Being able to display your best trophies and gradually expand your main headquarters provides a nice sense of progression, particularly after you’ve finally taken down an animal you’ve been tracking for ages.
It’s certainly not perfect. Movement can occasionally feel clumsy, there are some technical rough edges and the missions aren’t always particularly exciting. The deliberately slow pace is also going to immediately put some people off. But I don’t think Way of the Hunter 2 is trying to appeal to everyone.
It’s a game about patience. Sometimes the best decision is actually not to pull the trigger, and I like that. Way of the Hunter 2 improves on the original without abandoning what made it interesting in the first place. The hunting dog is an excellent addition, the environments are beautiful and the underlying simulation is impressively detailed. Just don’t expect constant action.
Reviewed on PS5
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