I got the new client and now it wants to catch up to over 2 years of transactions. Should I just leave it ? I thought it would be tiny because of the fork. Can I play though ? Huc dropped in price by half as well. Guess its best time to buy in.
The fork will not impact the blockchain download size or rate, actually, but the new Huntercore client should help. Is that the one you got? If so, it will sync faster than the old QT client, and you can also enable blockchain pruning so you don't even need to download the full chain.
You can also download the blockchain files and manually put them in your data directory to make it go even faster, though. The blocks are stored in a slightly different format, so there is a different download depending upon which client you are using.
For the old QT client:
chain.huntercoin.orgFor Huntercore (pruned chain):
https://mega.nz/#!UFN3hIbQ!gr14wf0rW5BgJcP7q0QAyJpRaR9v3tdYCpVK0iUnl4sFor Huntercore (full, unpruned chain):
https://mega.nz/#!QYtgHIyA!Gh2gPlgHD9boj_Q0zvl8MXAVxFf-AvBN2Vbg_Wlenp8
As for playing the game, it is already possible to do so, yes. It should be possible inside both wallet clients. The Unity-based game client should also be working up until the fork height when connected to the old QT client.
You might want to wait a bit, though, depending upon your set-up and knowledge level. The Unity-based game client will shortly be upgraded to work past the fork with new gameplay updates, and will also be able to integrate with the faster Huntercore client.