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REVIEW: Heroes of Ruin (3DS)
13 years ago
HEROES OF RUIN (3DS)
Genre: Roguelike RPG
Developers: N-Space (Geist, Goldeneye 007 DS, Duke Nukem: Time to kill...)
Publisher: Square-Enix
Players: 1-4
Played for: around 9 hours
Two 3DS reviews in a row ? oh well, it just means I didn't have much time to play on home consoles XD
Anyway, today I'm gonna review a recent release in Europe, wich will also reach North America later this month: Heroes of Ruin. The game tries to bring a genre that is usually exclusive, or focused, on the PC platform: the roguelike RPG...think of games like Torchlight and Diablo :P The genre involves a lot of dungeon crawling, looting and skill-use, as well as quick-thinking to get out of dire situations.
So, let's see how the game came out!
GRAPHICS
Heroes of Ruin certainly doesn't come off as a graphical showcase for the lil 3DS...it uses low-polygon models and the art direction of the characters isn't really anything special that will stick in your mind, the design of weapons, armours and characters/enemies being generic for the most part, though a better art direction has been put in the environents...while the game doesn't use high-quality models, the environments make use of an impressive bump-mapping effect and good construction of the level itself...the dungeouns are randomly-generated, but there are a lot of quite nicely-made scorches nìand the impressive and very deep 3D effect helps with that, making the player actually stop for a moment to glance at his surroundings, just because they look nice.
the game animations are nothing of special, just generic roguelike stuff, though I'd like to mention that I dig the way some of the cutscenes are drawn, being shown through semi-animated pictures, wich, as an artist, I can't help but appreciate the hand-drawn skill of XD
Unluckily, despite the game not really using big graphical resources, it's affected by quite a bit of a framerate problem, dipping slightly below 30 fps for most of the time and, in more concitated moments lagging quite a bit.
GAMEPLAY
The game plays just like you'd exect a roguelike to be...you have normal attacks and a skill tree to choose from and grow along with your character. At the start of the game you'll be able to choose from 4 different classes, all of wich specializes in a certain field, magic, close-range, long-range, tanking...depends by how you want to play :P
The game also lets you customize your own character even if the customization is very limited, even though you'll barely be able to "enjoy" the look of your hero with how the game rarely zooms in on the characters. The growth of the character though is much better and, while it isn't anything of special in depth and variety of skill trees, it's good enough to keep things interesting and, maybe, fitting for beginners of the genre.
The game itself isn't very challenging, but not easy either if you just barge in the middle of enemies randomly like that :P though I'd see it as perfect for beginners of the genre.
The online features are VERY extensive as you can pretty much play the entire game online, being able to join or quit games in any moment, have voice chat with friends and/or strangers and the game also features a very convenient difficulty auto-set in case players jjoin or leave, making monsters consequentely stronger or weaker and it works very well, I must say!
the boss fights are also worth a mention for involving specific strategies that make use of the surroundings in a smart way. Overall, the game is like a small-scale roguelike, wich is a perfect fit for a portable console, wich doesn't need long-play sessions, though the most seasoned roguelike players could feel this limits the gameplay depth and character growth.
The side quests of the game are interesting as they are quite a few and while they're mostly the usual fetch quests or "defeat random enemy" quests they do have a slight level of depth behind them as some involve optional boss fights or give you more info on the lore of the game world.
oh and another online tidbit...the framerate strangely doesn't seem to suffer of being online or offline, it's the same for the entire game, for the best or the worst.
STORY
Like I mentioned earlier, the story of the game is told through small cutscenes, using the in-game engine (wich isn't too great for cutscenes as the characters don't move their mouth while talking) or hand-drawn cutscenes. nothing big, as well as the story itself, wich is failry cliché for the fantasy genre, even though the lore of the game is at least interesting enough to be slightly fascinating at the very least and it does push the game forward at least.
SOUNDTRACK
One of the highest points of the game actually, as N-space hired a movie composer right for the game, who came out with quite the very nice epic and orchestrated themes, one of wich, the main theme, has the potential to stick in your head for being memorable and epic as it should be for a fantasy world like this...an example here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN-munYmvms
FINAL RATING
Overall, the game is fun enough, nothing mindblowing, but at a cheaper price it could be a fun purchase, though the game does certainly gain a lot more points if played online...with up to 4 players, full voice chat feature and very high online potential, the game could be appreciated among the avid online gamers, also showing off the potential of the 3DS online, wich will hopefully get a boost with the Miiverse update after the Wii U release...
beside that, the game has a bit of a framerate problem and the genre itself is niche and rough around the edges, as well as a bit simplistic trying to be accessible to beginners too.
that's why I give this game a...
7.9/10
missing the 8.0 point just for a bit due to a few flaws that could've been easily avoided, Heroes of ruin is still a nice example of how a roguelike could be done on console or handheld and, hinting to a sequel, I hope N-space will improve over what they learned with this game, as it shows a real potential for a genre that still doesn't have a real competition on the platform.
Genre: Roguelike RPG
Developers: N-Space (Geist, Goldeneye 007 DS, Duke Nukem: Time to kill...)
Publisher: Square-Enix
Players: 1-4
Played for: around 9 hours
Two 3DS reviews in a row ? oh well, it just means I didn't have much time to play on home consoles XD
Anyway, today I'm gonna review a recent release in Europe, wich will also reach North America later this month: Heroes of Ruin. The game tries to bring a genre that is usually exclusive, or focused, on the PC platform: the roguelike RPG...think of games like Torchlight and Diablo :P The genre involves a lot of dungeon crawling, looting and skill-use, as well as quick-thinking to get out of dire situations.
So, let's see how the game came out!
GRAPHICS
Heroes of Ruin certainly doesn't come off as a graphical showcase for the lil 3DS...it uses low-polygon models and the art direction of the characters isn't really anything special that will stick in your mind, the design of weapons, armours and characters/enemies being generic for the most part, though a better art direction has been put in the environents...while the game doesn't use high-quality models, the environments make use of an impressive bump-mapping effect and good construction of the level itself...the dungeouns are randomly-generated, but there are a lot of quite nicely-made scorches nìand the impressive and very deep 3D effect helps with that, making the player actually stop for a moment to glance at his surroundings, just because they look nice.
the game animations are nothing of special, just generic roguelike stuff, though I'd like to mention that I dig the way some of the cutscenes are drawn, being shown through semi-animated pictures, wich, as an artist, I can't help but appreciate the hand-drawn skill of XD
Unluckily, despite the game not really using big graphical resources, it's affected by quite a bit of a framerate problem, dipping slightly below 30 fps for most of the time and, in more concitated moments lagging quite a bit.
GAMEPLAY
The game plays just like you'd exect a roguelike to be...you have normal attacks and a skill tree to choose from and grow along with your character. At the start of the game you'll be able to choose from 4 different classes, all of wich specializes in a certain field, magic, close-range, long-range, tanking...depends by how you want to play :P
The game also lets you customize your own character even if the customization is very limited, even though you'll barely be able to "enjoy" the look of your hero with how the game rarely zooms in on the characters. The growth of the character though is much better and, while it isn't anything of special in depth and variety of skill trees, it's good enough to keep things interesting and, maybe, fitting for beginners of the genre.
The game itself isn't very challenging, but not easy either if you just barge in the middle of enemies randomly like that :P though I'd see it as perfect for beginners of the genre.
The online features are VERY extensive as you can pretty much play the entire game online, being able to join or quit games in any moment, have voice chat with friends and/or strangers and the game also features a very convenient difficulty auto-set in case players jjoin or leave, making monsters consequentely stronger or weaker and it works very well, I must say!
the boss fights are also worth a mention for involving specific strategies that make use of the surroundings in a smart way. Overall, the game is like a small-scale roguelike, wich is a perfect fit for a portable console, wich doesn't need long-play sessions, though the most seasoned roguelike players could feel this limits the gameplay depth and character growth.
The side quests of the game are interesting as they are quite a few and while they're mostly the usual fetch quests or "defeat random enemy" quests they do have a slight level of depth behind them as some involve optional boss fights or give you more info on the lore of the game world.
oh and another online tidbit...the framerate strangely doesn't seem to suffer of being online or offline, it's the same for the entire game, for the best or the worst.
STORY
Like I mentioned earlier, the story of the game is told through small cutscenes, using the in-game engine (wich isn't too great for cutscenes as the characters don't move their mouth while talking) or hand-drawn cutscenes. nothing big, as well as the story itself, wich is failry cliché for the fantasy genre, even though the lore of the game is at least interesting enough to be slightly fascinating at the very least and it does push the game forward at least.
SOUNDTRACK
One of the highest points of the game actually, as N-space hired a movie composer right for the game, who came out with quite the very nice epic and orchestrated themes, one of wich, the main theme, has the potential to stick in your head for being memorable and epic as it should be for a fantasy world like this...an example here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN-munYmvms
FINAL RATING
Overall, the game is fun enough, nothing mindblowing, but at a cheaper price it could be a fun purchase, though the game does certainly gain a lot more points if played online...with up to 4 players, full voice chat feature and very high online potential, the game could be appreciated among the avid online gamers, also showing off the potential of the 3DS online, wich will hopefully get a boost with the Miiverse update after the Wii U release...
beside that, the game has a bit of a framerate problem and the genre itself is niche and rough around the edges, as well as a bit simplistic trying to be accessible to beginners too.
that's why I give this game a...
7.9/10
missing the 8.0 point just for a bit due to a few flaws that could've been easily avoided, Heroes of ruin is still a nice example of how a roguelike could be done on console or handheld and, hinting to a sequel, I hope N-space will improve over what they learned with this game, as it shows a real potential for a genre that still doesn't have a real competition on the platform.
....this game is closer to what diablo is, and is not a roguelike. a roguelike is a very specific kind of rpg, and just being a dungeon crawler does not make something a roguelike.
Though I guess they all fall under the Dungeon Crawler genre.
I actually thought the models looked pretty good, though in terms of texture quality (models and environments alike)... They could've done way better and I've seen it done way better in other 3ds titles. ^^;
For the rest I completely agree with your review. It's a nice game to kill the time as long as you don't expect too much from it. =3
I'm rather picky when it comes to games. X3