The extraction genre has traditionally been dominated by shooters, but Bellring Games decided to shake things up by creating an extraction Soulslike set in a dark fantasy world. It’s admittedly an unusual combination, but also one that immediately caught my attention. The real question is whether these two very different genres actually play nicely together.

Mistfall Hunter takes place in a realm devastated by a war between native and outer gods. The blood spilled by these fallen deities gave rise to the “Gyldenmist,” a corrupting fog that mutates creatures and drives them mad. Players take on the role of Gyldhunters, venturing into the ruined divine realms to battle monsters, clash with rival hunters, and scavenge for valuable loot before hopefully making it back out alive.

The enemies have weak points that need to be identified and attacked.

This is not a typical Soulslike with a standard single-player campaign. You can play solo or team up in groups of three. You fight enemies, complete various objectives, and, naturally, collect loot along the way. Progression rewards you with talents – development points that allow you to build your character much like in a traditional RPG. However, the action takes place on the developers’ servers, meaning that even when playing solo, you will encounter other players and need to fight them.

The latter can pose an even greater threat than the ghosts and skeletons you have to contend with. The basic difference is that all these monstrosities are controlled by AI, which unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired in Mistfall Hunter. And human opponents have plenty at stake: all the weapons, armor pieces, and other valuable items they have painstakingly looted.

An electric arrow will snap you out of it.

The game offers six different classes, ranging from heavily armored warriors to archers and stealth-oriented characters. Each class comes with its own weapons, skills, and talents. They also play remarkably differently. While one is best suited to close-quarters combat, another is designed almost exclusively for ranged encounters. In those situations, positioning becomes crucial: come too close and you can be dead in an instant.

Combat in Mistfall Hunter feels satisfying, although you will first need to experiment with the different classes and their builds to find the setup that works best for you. The Precision Free-Aim system also brings an interesting twist to combat, allowing you to identify an enemy’s weak points and target them.

Quite the fancy helmet.

You can switch the character class at any point, but doing so comes with a trade-off: you lose access to weapons and other items restricted to the class you were previously using. Accumulated development points, however, are not lost. Instead, they are returned to the pool and can be freely reassigned, allowing you to develop the character’s talent trees.

Interestingly, even if you stick with the same class, you can reset your talents at any time and rearrange them from scratch. This gives you plenty of freedom to experiment with the abilities available in the game without having to create an entirely new character every time you want to try a different build.

The protagonist’s pockets are surprisingly roomy.

Mistfall Hunter looks and runs quite well. It’s hardly at the cutting edge of graphical technology, but the visuals are consistently solid, helped considerably by some strong art direction. Dark fantasy rarely gets boring, after all. Both the characters and environments are visually appealing, with detailed textures and some surprisingly impressive water effects standing out in particular.

Performance is similarly impressive. Mistfall Hunter delivers a largely stable 60fps and appears to be very well optimized, with noticeable hiccups being few and far between. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by just how smoothly everything ran considering how chaotic encounters can become.

Matchmaking was also relatively painless when playing solo, with matches usually found within a matter of seconds. Naturally, assembling a full team takes a little longer, with matchmaking on the first map generally taking just over two minutes. Things become more problematic on the second map, however. At the moment, there’s no option to tackle it solo, meaning everyone is pushed into team matchmaking and wait times can become noticeably longer. Hopefully this is something the developers can address sooner rather than later, alongside adding some much needed variety to the current selection of maps.

Go here, do this… Just don’t forget to come back.

The music in Mistfall Hunter is beautiful. The game also features voice acting. The main character is silent, while the NPCs do the talking. I am not sure whether this was intentional, but some of the voices sound oddly grotesque. Our guide, for example, is a white raven who speaks with the mannerisms of a thirty-year-old petty thief.

There are a few things that could be improved in terms of interface and usability. For instance, you can’t transfer all items at once when looting a character or a chest. Instead, you have to select every single item individually, which can get annoying.

A little boat ride for some sweet loot.

The game also feels strangely unintuitive when played with a controller. I am not sure whether the unusual button mapping fully accounts for that or whether something else comes into play, but I had a much better experience using a keyboard and mouse. That setup hardly feels perfect either, though – the key bindings, to put it mildly, are peculiar. For example… F10 to cancel matchmaking? Seriously?

Mistfall Hunter is a pleasant surprise. I usually tend to steer clear of online-focused games, but the satisfying combat and addictive gameplay loop kept me coming back with genuine interest. It certainly has its flaws, including matchmaking issues, underwhelming enemy AI, and some questionable control choices, but the overall package is a solid one, wrapped up in some attractive visuals. At a launch price of just $23, it also feels reasonably priced for what’s on offer, making Mistfall Hunter a surprisingly easy recommendation for anyone intrigued by its unusual blend of Soulslike combat and extraction gameplay.

Mistfall Hunter is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Mistfall Hunter was provided by the publisher.