Does Hunter the Reckoning share the same lore as Vampire the Masquerade? Does it have to be the exact same lore and universe?

I am trying to avoid the lore and any metaplot from V5.

Which version are you playing? The 5e version is apparently much different from the previous.

IIRC, the older edition of Reckoning is set in its own private universe. While it is linked to metaplot events occurring across the games (which have a weird maybe yes maybe no shared universe thing going on that I'm not even going to try explaining here), it doesn't require knowledge of other games.

EDIT: Hunter: The Vigil, if that's on the table, is definitely not linked to any prior lores or metaplots.

I'm not playing any of them currently.  I own a bunch of stuff for V5 and was turned off by the lore.  I am looking at Renegade's new Hunter 5.

I haven't bought the book and I don't intend to, but based on the website previews they're trying to repackage the basic premise, structure and jargon of the prior edition but with the Imbued (basically slayers but grimdark, meaning they die like flies) stripped out of their own game. The monster hunter orgs are universally demonized as ethically compromised but the independent PC hunters are the real heroes.

It doesn't sound attractive to me, except for the simplified agnostic mechanics which sound like they would be useful backported to Hunter: The Vigil. Vigil just strikes me as more interesting because the orgs were all so neat and thematically diverse, as well as giving you the option to invent your own as you please.

And of course Paradox is designing the IP to be strip-mined for crappy video games, so actually being a functional RPG is probably secondary at best.