After working on the Trine trilogy of physics-based adventure games, it's safe to say that Frozenbyte knows its way around the fantasy genre. Continuing in the grand tradition of sending three adventurers off on a harrowing quest, Nintendo Switch has now been graced with Has-Been Heroes, an RPG that blends elements of the roguelike and tower defense genres in an attempt to bring a unique experience to Nintendo's newest platform. While it's safe to say that Has-Been Heroes is indeed unique, it may stray a little too far off of the familiar path.
Your adventure begins when the King summons you to embark on a highly important quest: escorting the kingdom's Princesses to school. Right from the beginning we're introduced to the game's running gag that, while once highly respected and idolized, your characters' time has come and gone and they have been reduced to little more than glorified Crossing Guards. While the world and characters are deeply embedded in fantasy tropes, it's all presented in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, making light of the idea of infallible heroes and casting the characters in a more vulnerable light.
Your characters and the combat are introduced early on in a tutorial that does well to welcome new players to the world of Has-Been Heroes, then it's right onto the meat of the game. Stages are all set up the same, placing your heroes in three horizontal rows that span the length of the screen. Enemies gradually enter from the right, also maintaining an orderly march in the designated rows. In true turn-based fashion, you are able to attack or cast a spell whenever one of your heroes' meters fills up, so timing your attacks is critical. Though commands can only be given when it's the appropriate character's turn, the whole thing plays out more along the lines of a tower defense game or, more bluntly, a Plants Vs. Zombies clone.
While the concept is simple, the controls are, in a word, baffling. Rather than sticking with the tried and true method of pressing A to select a character and pressing it again to attack or cast a spell, the controls are instead assigned to the three rows that your characters occupy. The X, Y, and B buttons are each mapped to separate rows, and pressing them will essentially activate the character that is positioned there, allowing you to then command their action. Melee attacks are executed by pressing A, then you can have your characters swap rows after an attack action has been completed.
If you elect to cast a spell rather than perform a melee attack, the left stick or D-Pad can be used to navigate a small menu that is always present at the bottom left of the screen. Spells are then selected with the R trigger and cast with a second tap of R. The same commands are used are used to navigate the over world map, except the right stick is used to move from one location to another on a map menu on the bottom right of the screen, again with the R trigger making selections.
Normally it's not worth exploring a game's control mapping in depth in a review, but the inputs here are so cumbersome that they actually make the game more difficult to play. You can eventually get a good rhythm and flow once you've figured it all out, but it's easy to lose your place when the battles grow more hectic. In what can at times be a fast-paced game, the controls should not be your greatest enemy. It's also worth noting that there are no options to remap the inputs. Rather than sticking with the classic RPG trope of flooding the screen with pop-up menus, Frozenbyte took a gamble with a unique control scheme that doesn't pay off.
The roguelike elements come in both on and off of the battlefield. Each time you start a new game a whole new map will be available to explore, and you never know how many enemies might show up with each battle that you encounter. The roguelike nature of the adventures keeps things interesting, but this can also either make or break the game. Rather than just running into battles on the map, you can also find treasure chests, merchants, and a spell vendor that resembles a sort of fantasy gashapon. The maps are always different, so where you go, who you battle, and what you collect is determined entirely at random.
The randomization of the maps and encounters is a great way to keep a repetitive game feeling fresh and draw its players in, but it also leaves too much up to chance. There is such a huge swing between a successful run and one that ends early that it's difficult to determine whether or not this game is genuinely difficult, or if it's just unfair. Even if you're a great strategist and you can get into the rhythm of battles, there's no accounting for sheer bad luck. It often feels like the game's biggest joke is that it's actively working against you, but it's happening in a way that bullies its players more than welcomes them to laugh along with it.
Conclusion
Has-Been Heroes is a game that is full of great ideas but gets dragged down by poor execution. The way it combines RPG and roguelike elements with basic tower defense gameplay has so much potential that it unfortunately can't live up to in the face of imbalanced difficulty curves and unwieldy controls. It feels much more like a proof of concept that, with time and updates, could some day lead to a great adventure.
Comments 65
That's a shame, although I have to say there seemed to be something a little off about the game from the trailers, at least in my opinion :/
5 ouch
I liked it was ook for a budget game
I say 7/10
Not surprised in the score. All the videos I have seen so far felt disappointing and incredibly chaotic.
The whole UI almost taking up half the screen is bad design as well and terrible for playing on the Go on the small screen.
The gameplay also feels very cheap you have seen on a million F2P crap mobile games to-date already.
Couple that with terrible controls.... yup giving it a 5 seems even generous.
It really does feel similar to the mobile iOS game Oz: Broken Kingdom, but that one just felt better executed overall.
It looked quite interesting, expected higher score. Although I wasn't interested in getting it.
Never wanted it anyway.
Instincts - 1
Nintendo's Nindies push - Nil
Quite damning. I was reading the Metro's review I think it was at the weekend and they gave it 4/10. Seems none of the reviewers on Metacritic like it either. It's a shame Frozenbyte don't seem to be as talented as they once were. At least we know that quality assurance that Nintendo are doing for Switch releases is working, right?
This game looked a bit odd and had a mobile game "feel" Happy I didn't pull the trigger. Moving on
Usually I'd be put off by so many reviewers giving a game a low score, but a lot of the negatives that most of them have been picking out don't really sound like negatives to me.
After looking around and reading some different opinions and a lot of them really positive, I decided to still pick the game up and give it a go myself and so far I'm glad I did. I've only spent a few hours so far so too early to give a well informed opinion but so far I'm having a lot of fun.
The controls and mechanics work just fine, took me like ten minutes to get used to them and then no problems at all. Has felt pretty easy so far, but I'm only a couple of runs in so plenty of time for that to change (and I'm looking forward to it).
Was contemplating ordering the physical release of this, glad I held back. I guess I Am Setsuna will be my 2nd physical Switch game.
I've ordered this. Yes the reviews are poor but it sounds like my kind of game. Worth noting the developers have said they will be supporting post-launch with updates/tweaks to difficulty
@Captain_Gonru They are perfectly fine, in my opinion. Reminds me a lot of when people were complaining about Kid Icarus: Uprising's controls, which are flawless.
Retail salesperson did his darndest to get me to preorder this. Glad I didn't.
This never looked that interesting to me.
I am enjoying but I can see how it is kinda imbalanced because it tries to be too many "things" in one game.
That's a shame, I was looking forward to this, as I love tower defense games. I'll keep an eye out for discounts and updates, but for now I'm gonna pass.
5, really? Then again, 5 in NintendoLife is around the same as 7 in other sites. Apparently, it's not a bad game, then.
I wish Metacritic would take different scoring standards into account.
I think this one might be worth checking out a bit later, I know i saw a video from Switchforce and they got a response from someone representing the publisher recognizing the problems and that they are working to balance the difficulty more and even stated they understood the complaints, but were working on it. I respect at least when a publisher recognizes and owns up to issues and is at least working on them. It does sound like there could have been issues with trying to get it put out to quick.
I'm assuming that this was done by a B-team as the A-team works on Trine 3. In fairness, I've never really liked any of the Trine titles, but they seem to have quite a few fans among players and critics. Folks tend to forget that even Platinum churns out some pretty weak stuff here and there, and I'm guessing that just like them, this was just done by a smaller, newer, and/or less talented team. Regardless, it's a shame that HBH landed with such a unanimous thud.
@KoopaTheGamer Based on the fact that films can have a score in the 60s and still be presented with a green box around it, it would seem that it's based more on the overall average scores presented by the critics. So it would seem the critics of games overall are to blame for the way things are. Apparently 75 is closer to the "average" score given out for games, which is kinda sad in its own way.
@KoopaTheGamer I kinda wish gamers would care much less about number ratings and especially aggregate numbers. They have their uses for assessing a general reaction by critics, but those user scores are almost useless and represent more about attention-getting negativity or marketing hype. As far as how much I like a game the aggregate critical ratings are usually not a great indicator.
Especially in this day and age where there's a glut of options! Catering to a niche of gamers who greatly enjoy a genre of game but 70% of gamers don't enjoy means that you aren't ever going to get a good aggregate but it could potentially be game of the year for 30% of gamers.
Sure, some games appeal to many, many critics or gamers, like Zelda BotW, but there are going to be many people who just won't like that type of game.
Gotta use your own tastes and the best reviews give some indication of the strengths and weaknesses so you can judge for yourself what the value of those is before you buy. Number rating is almost pointless. Except maybe as an actual damaging false indicator that matches gamers with games they don't like and ... heck, you could argue damages the entire industry.
After reading about the difficulty of this thing on the first day or so, I decided it might not be for me
Is this the lowest scoring switch game to date!
@Lord Vrooom is also crap and scored low.
I'm surprised at such a low score on this. Visually it DOES look like a mobile game (gameplay pacing however as evidenced by the control scheme does not.) I originally had zero interest in this game watching Treehouse in January, everything looked cheap, mobile and bad about it watching the video and I couldn't believe it came from Frozenbyte. It was a few NL'ers here (forget who) who played it at the hands on events that convinced me to pull the trigger on it after they described a surprisingly fun game. I went for physical (wow, might become a collectors item if it's so badly reviewed everywhere!)
The game's not perfect, but part of it is it's just odd. The controls really aren't a problem EXCEPT for switching lanes. Combat works fine. Lane switching is unnecessarily complicated. The randomness can be its weak point, at least until you fully comprehend the nature of the randomness. But you have to go into "New Game" with the understanding that you are likely going to lose. It's a game about endlessly losing, but collecting new stuff as you lose. (The story starts out with the characters dying after they walk out the door and get on the road to adventure, then resurrecting....that's not a story element, that's the theme of the game.
So yeah random battles sometimes flood you with WAY too many enemies, and I've still yet to beat the skeleton boss. Got past the wizard boss in one go, but then got flattened by the pirate boss, etc.. I think I need to find a lot more gear and permanent spells to get further. It's not a "great" game, but it's not terrible. I just wish the difficulty weren't quite so oppressive, or I had a better idea of exactly what I was leveling up and where.
It's definitely a better game than the review makes it seem, but you do have to embrace more game over screens than Breath of the Wild. You're SUPPOSED to be unable to keep up with the hordes when you're still too week for them. Upgrading or knowing how to, is the real challenge I've yet to master.
This game looked off from the get go. I'm glad I waited for the review. I never cared for tower defense anyway. Oh well. Still playing Zelda anyway
PvZ clone? Wat?
Hmm...I was hoping it would have some bite but oh well.
So glad I ignored the reviews on this one. Having an absolute blast with it. I don't find the difficulty unfair—as you play, you unlock better spells and gear, and then you're able to get a little farther each time—and it has that one-more-time addictiveness to it. The lane based combat is fantastic as well. It requires just the right amount of brainpower to work out the math to stun enemies perfectly while managing character position and spell readiness. To me, for $20, this is a steal. I don't typically play these types of games, but this one captured me. Will definitely be looking into other roguelikes. At about 7-8 hours in, with 3 of the 6 main bosses cleared, I'd personally rate this an 8.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE Well well.. Has Been Heroes is at least something representing a game, a game that next to nobody likes, but still a game. Let's first wait for the day RCMEDIAX and Skunk Software make the switch.
A bit sad to see this review. I am absolutely loving Has Been Heroes. I am consistently getting better, learning how to deal with new encounters, etc. Hope those who would actually like the game will find a way to try it despite reviewers piling on over difficulty. Frozenbyte would be wise to release a demo.
Doubt I'll bother with this one. I've seen it getting a fairly negative reception almost everywhere.
It'll perhaps be worth a shot if I find it in a bargain bin, or they do a worthwhile sale on the eShop. Yes I know that's not likely to happen.
@jwfurness What you said. I'm at about 12 hours, having killed 5/6 main bosses for the initial storyline. This is not an easy game nor does it have a shallow learning curve, and therefore many people seem to dismiss it outright, but everyone I have talked to that has played past the first couple bosses seems to really enjoy it. Has Been Heroes is probably my favorite Switch game at the moment after Zelda.
@aaronsullivan Yes, I do realise this. But sadly some gamers blindly look at scores. It would help if Metacritic would actually show, if reviewers liked the game or not. For some reviewers, 5 is a bad review, for some it's average.
I'd say the review is not an unfair summation of the game, of course some people are going to enjoy it a lot more than others... I guess it's only human nature for people to assume those that disagree are wrong.
Ah, another review from a person who didn't understand the core mechanic of the game. It is quite sad to see such a good game get knocked around by reviewers who didn't bother understanding how the game plays, and just crying that it is too hard.
There is a reason the game pauses constantly, because it is used to plan out your tactics in the game instead of blindly hitting enemies. The reasons why you are constantly getting swarmed is probably because (seeing how you didn't mention it all in the review) the enemies get stunned when you hit them exactly for the amount of stamina they have. Then when you hit them after they are stunned (preferably with a warrior or rogue to maximize damage) they get KNOCKED BACK TO THE END OF THE LANE. The reason why the swapping exists is to facilitate you moving around WHILE PAUSED to maximize the number of stunned opponents you have (also when you run back to the starting spot you deal damage and extend the stun duration). At no point you should be saying "oh why can't I control anything" especially when you can pause whenever you want and plan out tactics.
The second thing is that while the game does ramp up as you go along, that is the point, and you are supposed to make meaningful choices in the purchases you make as you go through the stages. You often want to pick spells over items, because they provide more utility during fights than items which are often a straight stat increase, which means you want to spend money wisely instead of throwing it away at the gambler.
It is just sad to see a game that I really like get slammed by reviewers who don't understand how to play, especially since it happens all the time (i.e. W101, DKC:TF, and STEAM) because the game is "too hard."
Games are only hard when you make them hard or if the mechanics don't work.
@DanteSolablood I am a bit troubled that the review doesn't mention the games vast collection of unlocks and how those change the game. Other than that, I wouldn't say the review is unfair, just doesn't align with my experiences of the game.
@neoepoch It is troubling when reviewers don't understand a key mechanic of the game, though the fact so many reviewers can complete a game without picking up on something so important to the game is possibly a flaw in itself. Can I ask how well explained the pausing mechanic is in the game?
Based on reviews, I will most likely pick this up eventually, although it is further down on my list
@neoepoch Yep...thinking the same thing.
Guess I'll wait for a sale......whenever those come to the Switch eShop....
@neoepoch To be fair to the review, I'm sure the reviewer understood the stamina system just fine. The game is still quite hard, and depending on the random rolls, especially early on, you end up against hordes WAY too large with way too much health compared to your damage output to actually subdue them fast enough along with your weapon recharge rates. Plenty of battles are doomed to failure. I could still be missing important techniques, but even going for perfect stuns and such, there are a lot of battles early on that with the new ones arriving and the ones that you've pushed to the back, they still come faster than you can possibly stun and damage them, as they take 3+ rounds of being stunned to be dispatched, and that goes double for bosses. Of course as you upgrade and get more spells that gets easier, but it takes some grinding through failure to start making progress to that point. THAT is the part I think critics might be missing.
@KoopaTheGamer Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes have always been a blight to the industries. But they only work because the public seems too bizarrely obsessed with evaluating subjective content by a fixed distilled number. I was floored when I discovered people were doing that at ALL...who would look for a single average number rather than read review descriptions? But apparently, the masses are dumber than most would suspect, even if you're a cynical pessimist
Was starting to worry every game released for the Switch was going to get an 8 or 9 review score whether or not it actually deserved one, this is pretty refreshing if unfortunate for the game itself.
100 % agree with this. Just a bad game.
I've just barely started, and the mechanics feel good, but JESUS CHRIST they chose the WORST FONT STYLE AND SIZE IN THE HISTORY OF ALL GAMING for the dialogue at the beginning. What the hell were they thinking?
I wish I saw this review before buying it. I wouldn't recommend anyone paying over $10 for this (at most). Controls actually didn't bother me either. And I like challenging. But this is just RNG trash. When you get a good map layout, sure, strategy is important but a majority of the time the RNG simply doesn't give you enough chances to gain spells and items or gives you ones that won't help enough for the boss. I've cleared it a few times but just... it doesn't even feel fair, the RNG is ridiculous.
I was hearing damning things about the controls in early quick looks and stuff as well. Made me shy away and I'm glad I did. From your description here they are downright insane. Maybe if they patched in the ability to remap controls to something more intuitive this would be a bargain purchase but as it is, hard pass from me.
@NEStalgia "you do have to embrace more game over screens than Breath of the Wild."
Well, crap. That many, huh? -watches Link ragdoll down yet another cliff-
@TheLobster Yup, it's pretty much like that...
It was pretty terrible, I would have deleted it quick if it was a free phone game. I got it free for trading games in, so at least I will end up ahead, being able to sell a game that I got for free.
@neoepoch if you have to spend more time fighting the controls than the enemies, the game is wasted.
You guys list this as an eShop release, but it was released physically and always has been slated to...
Still annoyed by fonts, but I can't put this game down! Absolutely love it. And the controls aren't hard, and I don't even understand why they sound hard. They're downright simple...
I'm really surprised at the bad reviews HBH has been getting. It's a very solid, enjoyable , albeit tough puzzle game at heart. You really need to spend a few hours getting to grips with the mechanics. There's a lot of sophistication under what appears to be a simple system at first glance.
You need to treat it like a turn based puzzler and work things out as you go. You should be usin the pause button very frequently. If you play it like an action game you will lose very quickly. Once you understand the finer details you can pull of some great combos. You also have to prioritise threats and realise that just because you can kill an enemy doesn't necessarily mean you should.
I'd give it an 8/10. I do think they need to do some minor balancing and other tweaks and improve the very poor tutorial. Fans of thoughtful, challenging puzzlers should definitely consider HBH. I reckon a lot of reviewers struggled with the initial high difficulty and wrote it off before getting to grips with it.
I'm really enjoying this game! I'm surprised by the review score - it's too low! My only criticism of the game is the Text size in game! it's a bit too small! but otherwise - a very slick production level. .
@McGruber Physical Release unfortunately isn't out until next week in Europe - and only available directly from GAMESTOP.ie. .
Surprised the reviews are this low, but hey...it's only $10? I thought it was $20. For $10 I'm open to checking it out, I had fairly mild interest before, but seems like a game that is fairly polished for that price point (tldr the article, just per my own initial video impressions).
I think they had a cart version too, if they dropped the price bc of the reviews, hopefully the move to physical didn't hurt profits too much.
If Has Been Heroes deserves a 5 for killing the player a lot, then so does Super Mario Maker. I died much more in that game trying and failing to get a Tetra costume. At least Has Been Heroes doesn't give me the laughing troll lips every time I fail. It gives me new items!
But really, I'd bump it up to a seven. It suffers early on from leaving the player to figure things out on their own after a measly tutorial, but I was never frustrated enough to not sally forth once more.
@MadAdam81 Then clearly you haven't played the game that much. I'm not sure how you "fight the controls" since it is probably as simple as it needs to be without excess button presses.
@DanteSolablood The game pauses every time you do an attack and also tells you to press L to pause and unpause. It doesn't specify that it is important, but obviously playing the game in real time without the pause would be extremely unmanageable and seems fairly obvious to that extent.
@ap0001 The game is actually really good.
@NEStalgia I disagree, while the game is difficult I feel that if you manage money well enough in the early stages where it is just stamina management, then you will naturally get the tools (i.e. spells) you need to clear the rest of the worlds. There may be times where you are just going to not be able to win the game, but it is mostly due to the lack of getting spells which are the most important resource in the game, and lack of understanding of spell and status combos that help clear hordes of enemies. Additionally, there are certain enemies that speed up others in an AoE around them, but if you use your eyes and brain you can determine that after a short time and plan accordingly. It seems to me that the reviewer didn't make it very far due to the lack of understanding of the mechanics and didn't want to learn how to improve their own play and is placing fault squarely on the game being just bad in general.
Is there some obtuse mechanics? Yes, but playing more and being observant will quickly get you far in the game. Being able to handle an L is also something the people need to learn to deal with. I probably lost more games than won, but I use that to understand mistakes and avoid them in the future.
@neoepoch Thank you for the reply, I have since watched a few reviews including one from the TotalBiscuit which effectively says that the game is great fun but hurts itself with poor tutorials & missing basic fit & finish.. which does tie into people being able to miss some of the game's nuances.
However, having only heard other people's opinions and not played the game myself I'll refrain from commenting further.
Garbage game! My brother bought it on my Switch; we spent hours wrestling with cumbersome controls and sporadic difficulty spikes, and neither of us could get past the first post-tutorial area after trying every strategy we could think of. A perfect example of the WRONG way to make a game challenging. I deleted that crap off of my system the very next day.
I don't know why this game is getting lower scores. It is an amazing game I have put several hours into it and it has drawn me away from LOZ: BOTW and BOI for the past several days I have been playing this game only on my switch.
I seriously think reviewers these days just play a couple of levels in each game and if they don't figure it out by then, then that's it. That is probably because they want to review every game out there and these days at least 50 games come out each day. This game got penalized because it has some new concepts and reviewers didn't get them in what little time the spent playing it.
I think it's a must buy for anyone with a switch console.
i got this retail import it is really tough & punishing but still quirky fun. Nice little game to beat your head against wall for a little bit.
Gamestop had this game on sale for $10, so I decided to give it a try. I really really want to like this game, but these controls are ROUGH. I can think of a couple quick fixes for an alternate control scheme that would be much easier. Sooo... why couldn't an entire development team figure this out? I'm certain that once you've got the rhythm and strategies of the gameplay down, the controls make more since. But its a heckuva learning curve getting there. A "Basic/Pro" option would make this game exponentially more accessible.
EDIT: I've gotten a hang of the strategies and combos as well as the control scheme. I feel like I was a little too harsh in it's difficulty. Its not an RPG where you get stronger as you play. Its a lot more like Spelunky + Plants Vs Zombies than anything else. I adjusted my expectations of what the game is, and feel like there's a better game than what I gave it credit for. Still not a "Must Buy" by any means
I just got the physical copy of this game as a gift for my birthday. At first I was very frustrated with the controls and the extreme difficulty and the fact that I did not know what I was supposed to do. The person who gave me the gift urged me to keep playing! I did and finally made progress.....a little! Honestly, I both hate this game and yet can't stop playing it. I can now win normal battles but I can't beat the boss yet.
The worst control in the game is moving to the next area of the map by using the right joystick! I hate this! Other than that, it's not too bad.
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