Glory of Heracles DS
Nov. 20th, 2013 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroAn amnesiac Heracles runs into another immortal named Leucos during some "Ancient Greek base jumping" (aka, falling off cliffs and surviving because they're immortal) and sets out to find out what the heck is going on. And probably be all heroic along the way.
"Herc," Leucos and their third companion Axios are prone to occasional giant bouts of stupidity regarding things that are supposed to be secrets, like the fact they're immortals or that Leucos is actually female. When they start meet other Heracleses, those guys generally manage to be even dumber.
The main plot of the game revolves around something called a "Crasis," which spreads out an immortal monster's soul over dead humans so they can't really be killed. That, and a series of dudes who all think they're Heracles. Around the halfway point--about a dungeon before the game revealed it--I figured out where this was going. A bit past the halfway point, you get a new overarcing quest: Destroy the Taphoi to keep Typhon from being revived; apparently as a test from the gods to see if humans are worthy. (The Taphoi are the tombs of the elder gods who Zeus' crew overthrew.) The gods are not happy about your soul-split immortal crew, so you have to prove you're worthy of sticking around.
The game is very linear and rather trope-heavy. (And boy oh boy, does it love amnesia!) The early quests are all pretty standard, generic hero stuff: Get through the illusionary forest. Fight monsters that attack your boat. Rescue a child from an abandoned mine. Fight more monsters that attack your boat. Get though another haunted forest. Rescue a princess from a tower. The later quests become a long string of "go to the next thing and destroy it." There's basically no freedom and little in the way of sidequests, and nothing plot-wise we haven't really seen before (well, besides the overwhemling abundances of Herculeses). I'll admit, the plot reveals are actually decently paced, given the length of the game. That length feels rather padded, though.
The game liberally puts in names and places from Greek myth, with random mishmashes of actual legends and things they just made up. (Kinda like any mythology in a video game, really. It's just rare that Greek myths are used so heavily.) If you ever wanted to use a giant horse to battering-ram your way into Troy, this is your chance. Also, knowledge of Greek myths allows you to figure out who your main character really is at around the three-quarter mark.
The game really wants you to use the stylus for everything, but button controls are active for most things as well, and it's nice to have the option. As you play, you unlock various stylus-based minigames to power up magic and skills in combat, but those are also technically optional.
Various colors of "ether" accumulate on the battlefield, which you in (in addition to normal MP) to use magic. (If there isn't enough, you take HP damage from "Reflux".) You're expected to use a lot of magic, and you can recover MP often by "overkilling" enemies or using various skills, in addition to "flowers" on the map that restore it (and Inns and various items). Though some magic and skills also increase in MP cost as your levels go up, so max MP gains as you level up are a wash.
You get a temporary party of nymphs with elemental magic for the first dungeon area, which is helpful for getting a sense of how the game is played. The game is also very nice about tutorials, popping up an explanation whenever a battle effect you haven't seen before appears. Which is good, because you'll be seeing new effects and skills well into the game: There are a boatload of status ailments; combat can actually get impressively tactical as you consider moving between front and back rows, limited MP, limited ether, inflicting ailments and debuffs, skills that activate automatically, and auto-activating equipped items. Also, many attacks still deal damage and inflict special effects on a "miss". (And to balance your giant list of skills, by later in the game bosses can get half a dozen attacks each round, in addition to their special gimmicks.)
You learn spells and skills by praying in front of certain statues and then gaining a level--which means you could need to grind after reaching a shrine to actually unlock useful spells or skills, and that overgrinding before reaching a temple can lock you out of skills for some time.
There's a day-night cycle on the overworld, but as far as I could tell, it doesn't do much.
Every trope for new items and equipment is hit at some point: You get "rusty" items in treasure chests, which you need to bring to the "Polisher" shop to make usable. You also can find various vendortrash to combine at the Smithy into (usually) better weapons than what is for sale. Your party members scold you if you try to steal items out of dressers in houses (There's a rarity in jrpgs, though Ultima 4 did it decades ago) but treasure chests are fair game and there are herbs everywhere for you to pick and use as healing items. You can also unlock skills on your equipment at the Alchemist shop for a fee.
Apparently this is the fifth game in the series (which dates back to the NES), but the first to make it to the states. In a bunch of ways, this feels like an alternate line of evolution for the jrpg since the NES era; where other game lines simplified systems while increasing pre-battle customization, this pushed more of the advanced tactics into battles, left everything numerically complex, and left you with limited build options. There are no sidequests and it's rare that new equipment you find isn't automatically better than what you have; and you have very little opportunity to backtrack and virtually no reason to do so. But a random battle can take ten minutes because the monsters are mountains of HP with tons of special abilities that you need to weaken, distract and wear down.
The dungeons tend toward the "space-filling path" side of things, with what puzzles there are being entirely dependent on hitting switches to open paths. The later ones are more complex and therefore require either guessing / backtracking or an FAQ, but not a lot of thought. They get credit for having a really good minimap system, though.
A niceity: You can move through other people in towns without being blocked. The game is also decent about saving; allowing it in towns and on the world map and prompting you to save before entering a dangerous situation. (That is, until you hit Heaven's Gate, the "Disc 1 Final Dungeon", which can take 2+ hours to complete and has no opportunities to save, which is utterly unforgiveable in a portable game. There's a "suspend save" feature, but it's not the same.)
Credit to them on a bit of world-building: Many of the towns have "farm" areas as part of them. Given that I usually have to fanwank the economic systems of video games, it's cool to see the designers put something like that in.
Overall: The plot was amusing but ultimately routine, with the caveat of "Add an extra point if you're a casual fan of Greek mythology." The game itself played like an evolved NES rpg, entirely linear and lacking in customization but with super-complicated in-battle tactics. Also, hard enough to require periodic grinding. I'll call it "middling," and I can't see myself replaying it.
"Herc," Leucos and their third companion Axios are prone to occasional giant bouts of stupidity regarding things that are supposed to be secrets, like the fact they're immortals or that Leucos is actually female. When they start meet other Heracleses, those guys generally manage to be even dumber.
The main plot of the game revolves around something called a "Crasis," which spreads out an immortal monster's soul over dead humans so they can't really be killed. That, and a series of dudes who all think they're Heracles. Around the halfway point--about a dungeon before the game revealed it--I figured out where this was going. A bit past the halfway point, you get a new overarcing quest: Destroy the Taphoi to keep Typhon from being revived; apparently as a test from the gods to see if humans are worthy. (The Taphoi are the tombs of the elder gods who Zeus' crew overthrew.) The gods are not happy about your soul-split immortal crew, so you have to prove you're worthy of sticking around.
The game is very linear and rather trope-heavy. (And boy oh boy, does it love amnesia!) The early quests are all pretty standard, generic hero stuff: Get through the illusionary forest. Fight monsters that attack your boat. Rescue a child from an abandoned mine. Fight more monsters that attack your boat. Get though another haunted forest. Rescue a princess from a tower. The later quests become a long string of "go to the next thing and destroy it." There's basically no freedom and little in the way of sidequests, and nothing plot-wise we haven't really seen before (well, besides the overwhemling abundances of Herculeses). I'll admit, the plot reveals are actually decently paced, given the length of the game. That length feels rather padded, though.
The game liberally puts in names and places from Greek myth, with random mishmashes of actual legends and things they just made up. (Kinda like any mythology in a video game, really. It's just rare that Greek myths are used so heavily.) If you ever wanted to use a giant horse to battering-ram your way into Troy, this is your chance. Also, knowledge of Greek myths allows you to figure out who your main character really is at around the three-quarter mark.
The game really wants you to use the stylus for everything, but button controls are active for most things as well, and it's nice to have the option. As you play, you unlock various stylus-based minigames to power up magic and skills in combat, but those are also technically optional.
Various colors of "ether" accumulate on the battlefield, which you in (in addition to normal MP) to use magic. (If there isn't enough, you take HP damage from "Reflux".) You're expected to use a lot of magic, and you can recover MP often by "overkilling" enemies or using various skills, in addition to "flowers" on the map that restore it (and Inns and various items). Though some magic and skills also increase in MP cost as your levels go up, so max MP gains as you level up are a wash.
You get a temporary party of nymphs with elemental magic for the first dungeon area, which is helpful for getting a sense of how the game is played. The game is also very nice about tutorials, popping up an explanation whenever a battle effect you haven't seen before appears. Which is good, because you'll be seeing new effects and skills well into the game: There are a boatload of status ailments; combat can actually get impressively tactical as you consider moving between front and back rows, limited MP, limited ether, inflicting ailments and debuffs, skills that activate automatically, and auto-activating equipped items. Also, many attacks still deal damage and inflict special effects on a "miss". (And to balance your giant list of skills, by later in the game bosses can get half a dozen attacks each round, in addition to their special gimmicks.)
You learn spells and skills by praying in front of certain statues and then gaining a level--which means you could need to grind after reaching a shrine to actually unlock useful spells or skills, and that overgrinding before reaching a temple can lock you out of skills for some time.
There's a day-night cycle on the overworld, but as far as I could tell, it doesn't do much.
Every trope for new items and equipment is hit at some point: You get "rusty" items in treasure chests, which you need to bring to the "Polisher" shop to make usable. You also can find various vendortrash to combine at the Smithy into (usually) better weapons than what is for sale. Your party members scold you if you try to steal items out of dressers in houses (There's a rarity in jrpgs, though Ultima 4 did it decades ago) but treasure chests are fair game and there are herbs everywhere for you to pick and use as healing items. You can also unlock skills on your equipment at the Alchemist shop for a fee.
Apparently this is the fifth game in the series (which dates back to the NES), but the first to make it to the states. In a bunch of ways, this feels like an alternate line of evolution for the jrpg since the NES era; where other game lines simplified systems while increasing pre-battle customization, this pushed more of the advanced tactics into battles, left everything numerically complex, and left you with limited build options. There are no sidequests and it's rare that new equipment you find isn't automatically better than what you have; and you have very little opportunity to backtrack and virtually no reason to do so. But a random battle can take ten minutes because the monsters are mountains of HP with tons of special abilities that you need to weaken, distract and wear down.
The dungeons tend toward the "space-filling path" side of things, with what puzzles there are being entirely dependent on hitting switches to open paths. The later ones are more complex and therefore require either guessing / backtracking or an FAQ, but not a lot of thought. They get credit for having a really good minimap system, though.
A niceity: You can move through other people in towns without being blocked. The game is also decent about saving; allowing it in towns and on the world map and prompting you to save before entering a dangerous situation. (That is, until you hit Heaven's Gate, the "Disc 1 Final Dungeon", which can take 2+ hours to complete and has no opportunities to save, which is utterly unforgiveable in a portable game. There's a "suspend save" feature, but it's not the same.)
Credit to them on a bit of world-building: Many of the towns have "farm" areas as part of them. Given that I usually have to fanwank the economic systems of video games, it's cool to see the designers put something like that in.
Overall: The plot was amusing but ultimately routine, with the caveat of "Add an extra point if you're a casual fan of Greek mythology." The game itself played like an evolved NES rpg, entirely linear and lacking in customization but with super-complicated in-battle tactics. Also, hard enough to require periodic grinding. I'll call it "middling," and I can't see myself replaying it.
