Heroes of Ruin (3DS)
As the title of this action role-playing game implies, Heroes of Ruin takes place in a fantasy world that bears the marks of a troubled past. In the land of Veil, a great war ravaged the land and threatened to leave little worth saving, but an unexpected savior came in the form of powerful beasts who took hold of the remaining lands. Known as Ruinlords, these beasts were able to quell the conflict as few wished to challenge them and the survivors of the war were given time to rebuild. Despite this premise it can be hard at times to see the marks of such a devastating war in the lands you travel through, although based on a scene following the game’s ending it seems there might have been plans to do more with the concept in a sequel. The hub city of Nexus you end up frequenting more than any location bears little mark of this ruinous conflict, but you can still see small bits of this central idea appear in locations like the coastal tombs and the forest haunted by the elven society who were wiped out, the game perhaps not elevating them beyond the typical ruined locations common of its genre but still able to justify its title well enough.
As for what the Heroes of Ruin will be doing in this world, the story centers around one of the Ruinlords, a great sphinx named Ataraxis, becoming comatose after a mysterious curse afflicts him. Any who can provide help in curing Ataraxis are offered great riches by the ruling class of Nexus, the people fearing the loss of a Ruinlord could leave this bastion of civilization in danger by the monsters still roaming the world. Your character will end up being the one who ends up on the right path to get answers on what happened as you follow different leads and recruit the help of people who better understand the situation, the early dungeon exploration of the game taking some time to start introducing the more important details but once everything starts to become clearer later in the adventure there is a rather complex thread of political machinations and secret plots that start to make the plot something worth paying some attention to as the climax approaches. The shift from a narrative that mostly seems interested in explaining why you’re heading to a new location to a slightly more layered one does not work as well as it could have since many more characters become defined by late game revelations when previously they were hardly a presence, but Heroes of Ruin’s story does avoid being completely forgettable by stacking the back end with this greater interest in trying to whip up some energy so the finale has some stakes beyond just being the way you finish the adventure.
Heroes of Ruin allows up to four players to play together at a time as a team and appropriately enough the game’s hero creator lets you pick between four classes. There is a good degree of visual and conceptual variation between the options on offer, the Gunslinger a roguish sort who is the only one who fights from afar with his basic attacks and the Alchitect an elf who has a wide assortment of magical spells to learn, but the sword-swinging Vanguard is a lion-man not too dissimilar from the muscly Savage who gets in close with his bladed gauntlets. Their abilities certainly differ, the Vanguard favoring defensive and restorative powers to differentiate his role in a potential team, but whether you’re fighting battles on your own or in a group, you’ll soon learn the differences between classes don’t carry as much weight as you might expect. Most conflict, even when it involves a powerful boss character, will likely come down to leaning on your basic attacks, and while certain spells and abilities can provide brief and useful benefits, the situations that call for breaking out special abilities are rather limited. Enemies do like to guard so having a skill that can stun them or still get through ends up being the major role these powers serve since even special attack types can end up dealing less damage than just staying persistent with basic attacks and the only way to otherwise break those guards is a charge attack that leaves you a sitting duck as you execute it.
Healing abilities do sound like they’d probably benefit the team but healing potions are in such abundance that you can easily quaff one when you’re low on life and likely grab a replacement fairly soon. In fact, because healing potions are so quick to use and easy to find the game feels fine whipping out large foes that can tear through your health bar fairly quickly if you land a hit, the otherwise basic battle system able to be a bit more engaging when it gets a bit aggressive. A sudden cluster of enemies can be hard to manage and a foe who doesn’t get wiped out by a few swift hits will likely fight back hard enough to make you move more during the game’s action. Some bosses and baddies can have more interesting attack types even if there’s a common approach of making a certain foe temporarily invincible until you deal with their minions, the tough foe able to get in their licks rather than being steamrolled by a focused effort. Boss battles do often have opportunities to get more health potions during the fight though so the game can seem overly cautious even though checkpoints are also placed so you won’t have to retry a dungeon on death.
The game won’t just hand you easy wins at least, the player needing to invest in their character growth if they want to better survive the heavy hitters and swiftly deal with the rabble. Equipment is the main way you’ll be increasing your power, armor pick ups frequent but not always relevant to the character you’re playing as. You can sell your equipment even while in a dungeon though and that cash can go towards buying expensive but often fairly powerful gear in town, but even while out fighting your way through monsters you’ll still get a good drip feed of new gear to consider. Some will be straight upgrades to whatever you’re wearing but most of the time you’ll be asked if you value a strict increase to stats like strength and defense or maybe you would prefer a wider spread of stat boosts, and while a fair amount of your abilities aren’t truly necessary for success, you can invest in the stat they draw from if you do want to justify dabbling in them more often just for the sake of it. Earning experience through battle and completing quests will also gradually give you the means to unlock and upgrade abilities, the player only able to have three set for easy use in a fight at a time but passives can boost certain aspects of your hero.
There are essentially only four major dungeon themes in Heroes of Ruin and even when visiting different areas in a region you can sometimes spot sections that were clearly copied over for reuse, but the dungeons do manage to achieve a decent size for exploring for treasures and extras without dragging on too long or feeling like a perplexing maze. Having a map always visible on the bottom screen certainly helps and the game manages a fine pace when it comes to spacing out encounters, but what gives dungeons a little more oomph so they don’t lose their luster are the additional quests you can accept between excursions. The dungeon order of the adventure is fairly straightforward and after clearing one it’s wise to go to town and accept the available side quests before proceeding, these often adding a little extra to the dungeon in terms of what you do in there. While you will often need to make your way to a boss at the end for the main quest, these optional challenges can lead to unique enemies appearing or they might introduce a minor puzzle element. They are a bit thin on justification and sometimes are just a way to get an extra bit of experience and cash, but others do at least have an interesting concept. Nolan Hart is a strange tribute to the Uncharted and Tomb Raider series whose egotistical escapades make him one of the few side characters you’re likely to remember, but there are also interesting concepts like the goblins in the Frost Reaches who each have a different element of heroism they want to observe you performing so they can engineer an artificial hero. Sometimes you’ll get to choose a quest’s outcome like if you help the man turned shark monster come to terms with his fate or put him out of his misery but for the most part you’ll likely just have the dungeon you’re entering provide an activity a little outside the bounds of fighting the fairly common basic battles.
THE VERDICT: Heroes of Ruin is an entertaining enough action RPG at times but it can’t seem to quite commit to forcing the player to leave their comfort zone. Fights aren’t too difficult on your own or in a group, your abilities aren’t required too much, and the abundance of healing potions covers up the moments where the game does start to really fight back. The gradual growth through equipment, the extra considerations side quests add to exploring dungeons, and foes that do ask you to move smarter and manage more unique dangers do mean it doesn’t run out of small twists before the adventure is over though. Still, a fair bit of it blends together into constant basic attacks no matter your class’s supposed proficiencies, thus making it more about finding those few creative moments amidst the rather standard action.
And so, I give Heroes of Ruin for Nintendo 3DS…
An OKAY rating. Even near the end of the game, Heroes of Ruin is trying to think of nifty ideas to make a brief moment a bit more textured. Boss gimmicks, riddles, and side quests like the woman who keeps seeking your help to push back against the demon she improperly summoned give you something to latch onto between carving your way through groups of enemies without too much thought or effort. Then once things threaten to stagnate a bit too much, a sudden tough enemy or pack of pesky foes show their face and you get that moment of battle that does ask for a little more work than standing in place and attacking briefly. Since each class does have a range of skills the game didn’t need to be so reserved in how resistant enemies could be, the current idea of the guard best broken with powers or charged attacks a weak step but at least something to encourage the variety that would definitely benefit the moment to moment play. As it is you might sprinkle power use into fights often enough that your ability choices when leveling up can feel a bit impactful, and the equipment system does do a good job of asking you to balance what you want out of your options while making the choices distinct and drastic enough that you can feel the differences. Smoothing the story out so less is heaped on you near to the end, getting a bit more playful with quest design like the goblin hero-making, and truly diverging the way the core heroes could play would easily push this into the kind of game you might want to get a group of friends together to play, but as it stands the cooperative angle isn’t truly embraced in the action design. You can journey together, but it is mostly just smacking things all at once rather than finding unique niches or covering each other’s weaknesses.
Heroes of Ruin’s clean battle system does make it a fine fit for a game to play idly though. Popping into a dungeon, facing whatever foes lie within, experiencing the small shakeups the extra quests add to it, and capping it all off with a trip to Nexus is a simple but mildly addicting gameplay loop. There are appreciable changes to your character as they grow and get new gear and the difficulty not being too high does mean it’s easier to dabble in than something that truly demands deeper attention. It’s not too bare to find value in nor is it too deep that you’d need careful focus and smart play to succeed, this dungeon crawler capturing the basics of dangerous but segmented exploration often enough that its slightly repetitious approach to how things unfold won’t ruin the adventure.