Honor Quest

"When we demand more linear games, we don't mean having waves of enemies on straight hallways!"

- Some YouTuber

Honor Quest is an action role-playing game developed by Courageous Soft with the Unity engine and released on October 20, 2024. It was proclaimed to be an indie-style spiritual successor & homage to Monster Hunter. After a disastrous launch, it was then delisted on April 10, 2025 (though it did get a physical release in time), after 6 months after launch and nearly three years of development, with Courageous Soft filing for bankruptcy after millions in debt.

Gameplay
The game plays more like typical action RPGs like Diablo, with a 3D style perspective similar to Monster Hunter. As usual, pressing Square is the primary melee attack while Triangle is the secondary melee attack.

Enemies/bosses have life bars over them, indicating how much health they have left.

Loot is indicated in the following rarities; white for common, green for rare, purple for epic, gold for legendary, and rainbow for Mythical. They can also be enchanted through gems as well.

Why It's Dishonorable

 * 1) While it's trying to capitalize on being an indie-style spiritual successor to Monster Hunter, it fails to innovate by making most of the early game missions straight hallways where you just take on waves of enemies. While you can craft weapons, it relies on the looter-slasher style of having the monsters drop treasure chests that have "Legendary" (Gold) to "Mythic" (Rainbow) gear. It's also one of those RPGs where you're stuck to the same protagonist as there is no character creation and his appearance is always the same, similar to Too Human.
 * 2) Unbalanced weapons. While the game innovates by having magic weapons as Monster Hunter doesn't even have much in terms of mage-style builds/weapons, the game makes it so that the magic weapons do even more ranged damage. Even worse, enemies are programmed to do more damage at melee than at range, making the game essentially force you to use ranged weapons and punishing you for not using them. This game does not have elements and utilizes the cookie-cutter "physical/magical" damage separation. A majority of the bosses/monsters do not have any magical damage resistance, rendering the other weapons; the Great Sword, the Long Sword, Dual Blades, and Sword and Shield worthless except for one Mythic-rarity weapon (see below).
 * 3) *Gear-wise, there are armors, but they're mostly re-skins or palette swaps of each other, and all they do is increase your defense. There are only three stats in this game, HP, Attack, and Defense. There isn't even a leveling system at all, meaning your only method of gaining stronger is to further boost your gear stats.
 * 4) The Staff-type weapon is the most broken because it can fire a ranged projectile that seeks enemies. Typically, the staff/bow-type weapons would do less damage to compensate for being ranged to balance out against melee weapons, but nope, the game designs the Staff-type weapons with much higher damage output than even the Great Sword-type weapons. In terms of the melee weapons, they tend to have clunky combat animations and are not fun to use;
 * 5) *The Great Sword's 2nd swing animation is so long, that it's more practical to just spam-cancel the same first attack pattern over and over because the first animation takes 1 second to perform, while the second attack in the pattern takes 2.5 seconds.
 * 6) *Hero Man for whatever reason never slashes straight with the Long Sword, despite it being based on katanas. Instead, he holds the Long Sword sideways and not upfront like the Great Sword while attacking. Not only is that very impractical, but it makes it seem like he doesn't even know how to wield a katana in battle. Plus, despite it being mid-weight, Hero Man uses it as a fast-type weapon, faster than the Sword and Shield despite being a lightweight weapon. This contradicts the Great Sword, as while Hero Man has trouble with a heavy sword, a katana that he slashes the improper way he has no problem with.
 * 7) *The Sword and Shield are the worst because the damage is too weak and the sword isn't even long enough to be practical.
 * 8) *There are only two Dual Blades, and one of the Mythical-type weapons, Sabrina & Talia, is a ripoff design-wise to the Blades of Chaos from God of War. What's bizarre too is that the Sabrina & Talia are much longer than the other pair of dual blades, the Cyclone, and the game's hit detection is based on the weapon's model size, making the Sabrina & Talia feel more like a pair of two oversized swords that Hero Man has no problem wielding, yet he's hardly able to wield a great sword.
 * 9) Enemies do not receive any knockback and barely react to your attacks. On top of that, your character also does not receive any feedback from taking damage, even on heavier ones. Some attacks like the Dragon's Fire Breath can hit you 100+ times, killing you instantly regardless of how much health you have left because there is no hit reaction. A streamer even showed that the Dragon's Fire Breath hits for an infinite number of hits because the developer forgot to put any hit detection delay on the Fire Breath attack, which even if the Fire Breath does only 1 HP per hit thanks to the Defense stat being raised high enough, it ends up instant-killing you because of how many hits it registers per second. Sound familiar? (Zelda CD-I/Yaris)
 * 10) Very short length. Unlike Monster Hunter which utilizes quests with objectives on non-linear maps, it uses a linear stage selection structure similar to Babylon's Fall in the sense that each stage consists of waves of enemies followed by a boss fight each set in a different setting. A few of these stages are just one boss fight. There are a total of 17 stages and their average length ranges from 5-6 minutes (on the four boss-only stages) to 10-15 minutes on the normal stages. One YouTuber even stated that it took him only three hours to beat the game from start to finish, as within 1 hour of the game, he was already on Chapter 8. He even said that with this kind of structure, unlike Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, which both utilize this structure, this game makes it so that there is no real reason to play the stages again aside from farming an extremely rare weapon from one of the boss-only stages. Said weapon, the Infinity Blade (a reference to the game), has a 100% Maximize (the stat that lessens the gap between the lowest damage denominator and the highest, similar to what Monster Hunter has with the Affinity system) and 25% critical chance buff, making it the most broken Greatsword in the game, and farmed from the first boss-only stage or the fifth Chapter. One streamer even got the Infinity Blade on his first playthrough, which he then used and realized that the Infinity Blade was an "easy mode" weapon because of how broken it was as the enemies were defeated more quickly with the Infinity Blade.
 * 11) *In addition, instead of an endgame campaign/2nd campaign for after the storyline, the game just pads it out with two additional loops; "Hard", and "Hell", each requiring you to beat the game to unlock Hard, and to unlock Hell you need to beat the game on Hard. Also, there isn't any story and the enemy placement is the same, but with higher stats and different equipment drops. A data mine of the game suggests that this game uses a "multiplier" code for enemies/bosses in Hard/Hell, with enemies getting 2x the health/attack in Hard, and 4x in Hell.
 * 12) *On top of that, unlike Monster Hunter and more similar to Babylon's Fall, the game combines both the single-player storyline and optimizes it for a 4-player co-op. Not only does the game look very redundant to replay the same stages over and over and fight against the same waves of enemies, but it also makes the game feel more like a typical mobile RPG than a proper console game. Plus, the game consists of 75% waves of enemies on straight hallways and 25% being bosses. There are only five generic enemies (ignoring palette swaps) and six bosses (excluding the final boss) in the game.
 * 13) The story is an idiot plot where the Hero Man causes several unlikable decisions that leads to the Villain stealing the Artifact and each chapter is just him chasing the Villain from area to area on a straight line.
 * 14) The controls are sometimes slippery at best, where the metallic floors in some stages can make controlling Hero Man much more difficult. In fact, this game only uses five buttons. Square/Triangle for attacking buttons, Circle for interaction, Cross for Jump, and R1 for lock-on, with the addition of L2 for blocking if you're using the Sword and Shield. That's it.
 * 15) The game oftentimes tries way too hard to be hip and trendy. For example, Hero Man says in one cutscene "You mad, bro?", and is followed by him dabbing. One of the Mythic weapons (staff) is even called the "Troll's Problem", a reference to Trollface. We also have Hero Man taunting the Salome Witch, one of the bosses, by calling her a Karen during the opening cutscene where Hero Man and the Salome Witch get into the standoff that begins the battle. Additionally, Hero Man in one scene utilizes a shovel called "Shovel Ware" to dig his way inside the Villain Guy's castle.
 * 16) The enemies in the game aren't any better. There are three types of wolves, blue wolves, yellow wolves, and red wolves, which are just palette swaps of each other. Aside from their unique attack, all of them do the same thing. The only four other enemies are goblins, skeletons, orc knights, and five palette-swapped ghosts that have unique attacks. Most of the time, enemies will just run up to you attacking you over and over, which can make the early game frustrating especially if you're using a melee weapon such as a heavy sword. This is bad enemy design 101.
 * 17) The protagonist's animations, to start, feel like they're pre-rendered stop-motion frames. For example, Hero Man's sword and shield attacks look like they're missing several frames or as if they're in a weird stop motion, despite the game running at 60 fps. Like Super Dungeon Bros, the animations in this game feel like they're running at a much lower framerate despite the environments/camera/etc being at 60fps.
 * 18) The loading times are awful for an indie game that is only 12GB in size, lasting 15-20 seconds. Allegedly, according to a data mine into the game's code, the long loading times are scripted, where the loading times are programmed intentionally to last 15 seconds under the guise of "loading" the game.
 * 19) Terrible camera. Like The Legend of Korra, it goes for a more zoomed-in camera approach, with ranged enemies being able to attack you off-screen. The camera even goes forth to zoom in and out randomly just to spawn more enemies.
 * 20) There is a hidden ability that was so useless, nobody knew it even existed until some gamer found that out a month later because it wasn't even mentioned in the tutorials/controls, the game has a hidden "taunt" ability. How you do it is that you have to press Circle for 2 seconds and then Hero Man provokes the enemies with the enemies turning red with smoke. However, what this does is that it makes the enemies 50% stronger (data mine suggests it's multiplying their damage output and even their HP), and have their loot/drop rate increased by 100%. The problem is that because the damage buff they receive is multiplicative, you end up dying much more quickly and the reward isn't even worth it, because unlike the taunting system in Bayonetta where it makes them take even more damage in exchange for it, all it does it makes the enemies even stronger, basically making the taunting system basically just a "press X to die" button. Not to mention that this provoked buff on enemies is permanent. Bosses cannot be taunted.
 * 21) The graphics in this game feel outdated for an indie game released in 2024. It feels like an Xbox 360/PS3 game graphics-wise. Allegedly, the devs decided to utilize Xbox 360 standard graphics and have the game run on 60fps on all platforms. Still, given this game had a Nintendo Switch port, though. In terms of co-op, it even reuses the outdated 4-player corner UI that bad games like Super Dungeon Bros, Fat Princess Adventures, and Ghostbusters (2016) also utilized. One reviewer even said that this game's cartoon-like art style made it feel like a bad F2P mobile game with micro-transactions.
 * 22) There are no items or treasures to be found in the game. Instead, gear is acquired after the end of each stage, which is then revealed in a Babylon's Fall style.
 * 23) The final boss, Villain Guy, is literally a joke, as all of his attacks face forward and you can basically attack him from the sides over and over and you won't take any damage.
 * 24) In terms of this game's environments, there are only five; castle town, forest, mountain range, caves, and volcano, with several of the Chapters using the same environment where it literally feels like the same stage but with re-positioned enemies and waves. In fact, one of the chapters, Chapter 16, is a palette swap of Chapter 11, both comprised of the same structured hallways and same waves but with different enemies.
 * 25) Game-breaking glitch: In Chapter 11, there is a chance that one of the enemies will end up walking into a wall/obstacle and getting stuck, and with no way to get it out and move on to the next wave of enemies, you have to restart the entire stage.
 * 26) Little to no challenge. While there is a sense of challenge on the boss/monster aspects with the "Respawning Restricted" system that was used in Destiny and Marvel's Avengers, the fact that your health regenerates so fast makes boss fights almost trivial. Not to mention, unlike Monster Hunter, there is no time limit and players can respawn infinite times and be revived by allies infinitely.
 * 27) The main protagonist, Hero Man, looks like one of the knights from Castle Crashers.
 * 28) Many of the achievements only serve to artificially pad out the game;
 * 29) * Hell Hero requires you to beat all stages on Hell difficulty. The fact that the bosses take too much health (15 minutes, about comparable to Babylon's Fall level of sponginess and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, which calculates to 500+ hits of them doing the same attack patterns over and over, and enemies taking like 40+ hits with also barely giving any reaction to your attacks), makes this an absolute chore. One person even state that one of the stages on the Hell difficulty took him twenty-seven minutes to finish because of how spongy the enemies were and the fact that they barely did enough damage to even be considered a challenge, and that was without using either the Infinity Blade or the Sabrina & Talia weapons.
 * 30) * Millionaire is an achievement that requires playing the same stages over and over, as it requires you to accumulate one million gold. Given how the best enchantments for your gear only cost 10,000 gold and you get 1000-2000 per stage, this will take nearly forever without hacking. The only players that had gotten this achievement mainly are from cheaters.
 * 31) * Collector is essentially a collect-a-thon achievement, in the sense that you have to acquire every weapon, including each of the Mythical rainbow weapons that only drop from bosses. That includes the Infinity Blade (Greatsword), the Troll's Problem (staff), Sabrina & Talia (dual blades), AceGuard 5000 (sword and shield), and Demon's Desperado (long sword), and not only that, you have to finish each weapon's crafting path as well.
 * 32) Overpriced. The launch price of this game was $70, which for an indie game, has very little content and Xbox 360-standard graphics.
 * 33) Blatant sequel baiting: After Hero Man leaves the lair, the main villain (Villain Guy) comes out of the ruins to reveal that he's not yet dead, with the screen cutting to the credits. This ending is just weak as it's just the protagonist beating the final boss, and then leaving afterward, which then shows that the villain survived.

Pre-launch
The game was first revealed in a Nintendo Indie World direct on April 17, 2024, under the subtitle "Fight Your Way to Victory!". The game received mixed reception from the game, with some of the bad reception criticizing the game for its bad graphics. Eventually, the game's trailer ended up with more dislikes than likes, with many people saying that it looked like a bad mobile game from mid 2010s.

Another trailer was revealed in September, which revealed that the price was going to be $70 USD across all platforms. By that time, many YouTubers saw it as potentially the worst game of 2024, seeing that it looked very mediocre graphics-wise for an indie game and how it shamelessly borrowed elements from other games, most notably Monster Hunter, Diablo, and even Babylon's Fall when they saw the 10 minute clip of the gameplay.

Post-launch
Honor Quest received negative reviews, getting a 23 on Metacritic from 12 critics. IGN gave it a 2/10 "Painful", stating that it feels incredibly underbaked and feels like a linear stage-driven game with RPG elements slapped on it. GameSpot gave it a 3/10, stating that this kind of linear system does not work on RPGs at all, and while it was trying to capitalize on being a spiritual successor to Monster Hunter, it ends up insulting the game franchise. One YouTuber, who gave it a 2/10, stated that the game wasn't even worth $10 and that it was that bad, as he described as the game as pure shovelware on a full price tag. The review embargo didn't even arrive until 2 days after the game launched as the game didn't have very much marketing.

It was reported from Courageous Soft's bankruptcy that only 84,541 digital copies were sold, which wasn't enough to break even on the 10 million debt that they were sitting on due to the delays and troubled production. Alongside the bankruptcy, the game has been delisted off Steam, the Nintendo eShop, Xbox Marketplace, and PlayStation Store as the game was digital-only, though Limited Run Games did make a physical release as part of a collector's edition. After the delisting, the links where its Steam page would've been instead redirected the user to the "Welcome to Steam" front page.

Courageous Soft was listed as number 3 on "Top Twenty Worst Indie Devs", on Game Rant, stating that Honor Quest took way too long to be considered 3-years in development worth it, and says that a competent indie dev could do what they did in only 1 year and still wouldn't be any better. WatchMojo listed Honor Quest as number one on the Top 10 Worst Games of 2024.

"Indie devs can be hit or miss, but mostly a hit, but Honor Quest is an example of an indie dev that was a big miss. The game sells itself as a spiritual successor to Monster Hunter but ends up rehashing things from other bad games, like Babylon's Fall. The game feels like one of those F2P mobile games that ended up being slapped for a console release. The enemies are just pure recolors of each other, with bosses just being damage sponges, and none of them even respond to your attacks, which you can't either. You can die instantly because when you take damage, you let out zero reaction, making them easily kill you in seconds from a ton of hits, making it possible for certain enemies to stun-lock you to the point where death is an inevitability. The game barely has any form of a story and is the same objective over and over (the plot revolves around some villain who hops from place to place in literally every chapter). The game is littered with the same enemies on straight hallways over and over. The game flopped so hard commercially that it caused its dev to file for bankruptcy and the game to be delisted because it was digital-only."

- "So Bad, It's Horrible" TVTropes