C9 Review IGMC 2015 Submission: No Heroes

Cloud Rating:

No Heroes

Ok, this one was cut a little short due to a game breaking bug. :( I know. Started out beautifully. I'm a sucker for original, custom drawn artwork and No Heroes did not fail to deliver:

The name of the game, No Heroes, paired with the relaxing, easy listening piano music at the title screen really makes me wonder how exciting this game will be. With no heroes and no exciting, amped up music I really don't know what direction this one is going.

Anyhow, I start up the game and am immediately greeted with a resolution selection. Pretty nifty. However I checked out the options menu after the game started and changed resolutions but nothing seemed to make any difference except when I put it to "1" and half the game screen seemed to just disappear. So I set it back to "2" and went on my merry way.

The first scene loads up and lo and behold nothing exciting is going on. But I am at one of my favorite places. The bar!

The author did a VERY good job with the introduction, cutscenes, and NPC personalities. I could sense the self-loathing of our hero, Seth, right from the beginning. I loved how quickly, fully, and interestingly the back story was told through Seth's memories of what happened to his girlfriend/wife/partner whatever you wanna call it, Elizabeth. But I digress. Seth starts out a seemingly asshole. Tricking that boy like that. That's not cool, Seth.

I loved the fact that sometimes you had a chance to skip battles. But in all honesty, the battles were really way too easy to ever need to skip. I suppose it's just to save time but never once, even in "boss" fights, did I ever feel threatened. Depending on whether it was a group of enemies or just one enemy, I just spammed the same skill over until I ran out of ether then just attacked normally while my ether built right back up. And with Elizabeth... man, talk about OP. Cast that super-destructo spell and if it doesn't 1-shot all the baddies wait a couple rounds since she gains like 1/4 of her ether back every time. For supposedly being inexperienced at dealing with those ghosties, she sure can pack a punch.

I didn't get too far into the game before I ran across my first bug. First and foremost I must say that it was a neat idea to make the player able to jump across gaps and on top of pillars and whatnot the way you can. But in the temple area with the green mossy stuff all around I accidentally jumped into the center by the row of pillars and could not find any way to get back up. I started walking around randomly pressing the enter key and he seemed to jump up in air and warp to the ledge on the right side again. No idea Seth knew Instant Transmission. That didn't really bother me much since I was able to move on.

That Elizabeth chick sure does talk a lot. And does stupid stuff for such a smart person. If you were in a ruins, thousands of years old, by yourselves, and you ran across some ancient electrical device (assuming these ancient people even knew what electricity was, let alone harness it in robotic killing machines) meant to rip a person limb from limb, AND you knew that's what its purpose was, would you turn it on just to see what happens? Didn't think so. Seth must really be blinded by love to continue to protect her from her self-fulfilling death wishes.

Barely escaping with our lives (Well, not really barely. The battle was pretty damned easy. See above.) Elizabeth falls into a friggin' hole in the ground. She is just a magnet for bad luck. It's no wonder that eventually not even Seth was able to protect her from whatever fate befell her. Anyhow, she finds a mural and some writing and wants you to stay the night there so she can study the writing. You basically tell her that it's a bad idea, but apparently she just looks at you and gives you a pouty lip and bats her eyes a couple times and you instantly give in.

And this is where my story ends.

It's probably my own fault because after she finally decides she wants to leave, she wakes your ass up (she really is such a control freak), and tells you it's time to go. Well, I made the mistake of walking back up to the mural and the whole pouty lip, eye batting, staying the night sequence starts over again. It's like that movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray replays the same day over and over and over again. Seriously, there's no escaping the sequence once you make this mistake because the last place it leaves you at, there is only one direction to step. And that step starts the whole sequence over again.

Don't do it.

Seriously...

So, in conclusion I really thought the creativity of this project was something else. From the jumping-over-stuff puzzles, to the step-on-the-right-symbols puzzles, to the avoiding conflict, to the wonderfully built mountain town at the beginning. I loved it all. But it wasn't all that original from what I gathered. Typical RPG battles (Though it wasn't the standard 1st person view, default battle system. Kudos for that.), typical wallowing in self-pity storyline (Very well written, however. But damsel in distress, once was a hero, had a falling out and started feeling sorry for himself, something happens that makes him need or want to be a hero again, etc. I MAY be wrong here as I didn't get a chance to get too far into the game but from what I saw.) I did love reading the story and following along even though it seemed like it was pretty predictable, honestly. It kept me engaged.

I had a blast playing along and the ease of the fights made me feel superior and mighty even though it probably would have gotten boring after awhile of that. But the intuitive puzzles were a nice touch, too.

Annnnnd lastly, I'm sure you'll agree that this game seems like it'd be a great 1-time play through. I didn't really get a sense of needing or wanting to play it more than once, however. And for those reasons, I am giving No Heroes 2 clouds!

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