HP Review
by Ron Douglas
Classic fare with wear and tear
- Graphics: 7/10
- Sound: 6/10
- Gameplay: 7/10
- Replay Value: 8/10
- Overall: 8/10
The Short Bark:
Legend of Heroes takes you back to an earlier time in RPG's, providing a charming atmosphere of 2D sprites blended with 3D environments and effects. This is all presented from a top-down isometric perspective coupled with a classic storyline of light vs. dark. With all the old style charm and presentation LoH offers, it still manages to provide a decent amount of modern flair and lots of gameplay with a very large cast of characters. For the more modern RPG'er LoH will seem a bit dated and slow moving.
The Full Bite:
Legend of Heroes is an RPG in the purest sense, chronicling a tale across kingdoms and the mythical lands history. At times the story can move at a somewhat slow pace, especially at the beginning of your adventure, which can be somewhat annoying if you're playing on the go and just want to get into the game.
As a young boy, the main character Avin encounters an attack in which his sister is kidnapped and he is forced to hide with an old sage who cares for him. As he becomes a young man he decides to venture out with his friend Mile to find his long lost sister Emeille . Soon he discovers that his mission is much more ecumenical than just rescuing his sister, the followers of the light God will soon collide with the followers of the Dark God and Avin will find himself caught in the undertow.?
The gameplay in LoH is exactly what you'd expect, battling monsters within a turn based combat system, leveling up, learning magic spells, meeting new party members and so forth. There is also a pet system where your pet will occasionally find items while walking about and aid you in battle as well. You can also reward and scold your pet, encouraging it to perform better, but overall the pet system is trivial at best.
LoH has quite a lengthy quest encompassing over 50 hours of gameplay, filled with story and plot twists throughout. Many side tasks and locations are provided to visit, but it's fairly linear overall. The story can be vague and drawn out at times, making it easy to lose your place or just be unsure of what your next destination is, so a good deal of that 50 hours will be spent wandering aimlessly or working through story sequences.
Reminiscent of Chrono Trigger you can see your enemies wandering about allowing you to easily avoid them while adventuring. This feature is most welcome as random battles get frustrating quickly in portable games. The battle screen is top-down as well, and your characters have a slight range of movement about the field when attacking. This adds a slight strategy to battles as you must consider where you character will be left standing after an attack.
Early on in the game the battles are pretty standard, you can get through them by hammering on the confirm button, but later on in the game you need to be on your toes, or the game over screen will become your good friend as the battles ramp up in difficulty more than you'd expect. Success depends on managing characters' specific battle traits such as melee or ranged attacks, and proficiency with magic or brute force. All characters also have "Deadly" moves which can be used after charging a gauge with regular attacks, which come quite in handy when confronting tougher bosses.
Overall presentation in LoH is enjoyable, the 2D sprites mix well with the 3D environments, but none of them ever wow or impress you. Dialogue sequences are accompanied by beautiful hand drawn anime style caricatures that change expressions to indicate their mood, adding more feeling to the exchange. Some of the more powerful attacks you learn will fill the screen with eye-pleasing colors and dazzling effects making them fun to execute.
The music is somewhat dull and forgettable, but threatens to get stuck in your head with its constant looping ; so you might find yourself turning the volume down often. Controls are fairly simple, but collision detection is somewhat odd, causing you to move around a bit before actually facing a character or point of interest.
By sticking to a tried and true formula, LoH is entertaining, familiar and lacks any major flaws, but doesn't aspire to be anything more than it is; which in a sense is its biggest flaw, but what it lacks in innovation it makes up for in charm. LoH is a recommended title for fans of the genre, it has a lengthy quest with a familiar style, a solid story, endearing characters and challenging battles.
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