Has Been Heroes Nintendo Switch Review

Releasing March 28th in the US and April 4th in the EU/AU

The game will release on the four major platforms of PC, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.

Description from the developers:

Has-Been Heroes is a challenging, lane-based roguelike game of strategy and action, featuring a band of heroes on a quest to escort the King’s twin princesses to school! Players control three characters during the journey and must focus on coordinating melee attacks, managing cooldowns and combining hundreds of different spells to create devastating combo effects, all in order to defeat an endless army of undead, summoned in their path by the Great Ghoul! The rewarding strategy game features irreverent humor, expanding world maps and increasing levels of difficulty, compounded by the specter of permadeath. The massive quantity and randomness of spells and items, as well as additional unlockable heroes allow for thousands of new experiences, forcing players to change their playstyle each time they start a new game.

STORYLINE:

The teeth of time chew on even the bravest of champions, and there comes a time when wizened old mages and warriors are just one last

adventure away from retirement. Thankfully, a young rogue joins the heroic Has-Been Heroes, for who else can read the tiny text on those potion bottles and assist the rusty crew? The rogue comes along not a moment too soon, for King Fortinbrax has summoned his oldest, most trusted heroes for a final, epic quest. The heroes must escort the twin Princesses Avaline and Beatrix to a faraway Academy (to school!)- but the road is long and

fraught with peril.

FEATURES:

Control three characters across three lanes, coordinate their attacks and spells to defeat an incoming horde of enemies!

Plan your route carefully on the randomly generated maps filled with surprises! Travel through merchants,spell vendors, treasure chests and other crossroad locations to boost your characters powers but be vary not to succumb to the darkness.

STRATEGY:

Knowing the heroes and their advantages and weaknesses, and combining that with learning the items is the key to successful runs!
Don’t waste time in battles – every millisecond counts! The pause button is the most important in the game.
There’s a battle progress bar at the top of the screen. When it starts nearing the end, the battle is about to end. The enemies will flee – you don’t always need to kill all enemies, sometimes survival is enough. Not letting the enemies flee will give you a small bonus though!
Study the map and plan your route carefully; sometimes the shortest way to meet the final boss is the best, sometimes you might want to do more battles to collect more gold for better items and spells. Remember: backtracking will use candles!
If you run out of candles, you will succumb to the darkness if you try to re-visit a path you’ve already gone through once.
Acquiring any item gives an automatic +50 max HP health to the hero picking up the item.

Has Been Heroes Review

So from the creators of the Trine series another game has finally arrived and it’s named Has Been Heroes! Developers Frozenbyte have a proven track record with the Trine series, Trine, Trine 2 and Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power have been released on a total of eight different platforms and sold more than eight million copies!

Now with Has Been Heroes finally making it’s way onto the four big platforms come April 4th, unless you are a lucky US owner who will be able to get playing on March 28th we are expecting big things from Frozenbyte’s latest development!

The game starts with a small cutscene telling you the story behind the heroes that you will soon be in control of, basically your heroes were once brave warriors defeating all that stood before them. Once peace came over the land one by one the heroes gradually left and disappeared but now the king has summoned his heroes once more! One final task, the most epic of them all…… taking the twin princesses to school!?

During this cutscene it’s clear to see there is an attention to detail with good voice acting and beautiful drawing!

Home Menu:

Upon selecting Prologue it will take players through a short story and tell the tale of how the three heroes all met but at the same time it’s a tutorial to get everyone up to scratch with the games controls and the basics of the game itself. Once the heroes are all teamed up and seen the king to collect the twin princesses the main game will begin.

Once training is out the way the journey will begin!

With the Prologue out the way and the main story started, there is a small map in the bottom right corner, it’s on this map players must select the spot they want to go to, movement is a little strange at first due to moving with the right control stick and then pressing RB to select the location to run to. When I say strange I don’t mean it in a bad way either just a weird different way because movement is usually controlled with the left stick only but after a few minutes it feels natural anyway! Maps are made at random and the path chosen is completely up to the player, some paths will reveal places to buy and unlock items and spells, while others will lead to battles against an army of opponents until finally reaching the last spot on the map to take on the maps final boss! Another feature the game carries is a candle system on the map so you can only move around the map a limited amount of times, this will make players decisive on route as when the candles run out it’s game over!

Huge amount of unlockables on offer

Going back to the items and unlockables Has Been Heroes offers players hundreds of game-changing items and spells, which will boost the heroes’ powers and making each run unique! In total the game features over 300 spells and over 200 items. There is also a fair bit of character variety with 12 playable characters some of which to unlock and over 200 different enemy forms but the only gripe I have with this is so far most have been skeletons.

Mix of a few classics with Trine being key and a hint of Plants Vs Zombies

Eventually a battle slab will be selected and will thrust players straight into battle, the system reminded me very much of plants vs zombies from years ago. Graphically it is also shares a similar art style to the Trine series which are a previous series from the developer, it does have to be said the draw detail is great and for it’s art style looked fantastic as well as having no performance issues what so ever on the Nintendo Switch playing in any mode.

Combat can feel strange at first but after a while you will be stringing combinations together!

So onto the combat controls and mechanics, new players will need time to adjust to this as at first it can feel a little awkward but you will be shifting characters and combining attacks in no time. The L button on the controller stops and starts time so that’s key to getting the planning done before enemies close onto the characters position and take out the team, characters all have an amount of HP and block counters, after blocking the amount of times the character can handle they will start taking damage, once HP runs out on any character it’s game over and players will be sent back to the games main menu to start all over again. Each character is controlled with either X, Y or B and once selected they can be sent to attack the enemy on their lane or moved to another lane if another character has just gone out to attack, this is also the time that items and spells can be used. Players can’t constantly attack either as each one will have a stamina dial to fill before that character can actually launch an attack, the whole setup of the combat system is extremely tactical and will require careful planning to ensure that none of the team of heroes end up getting taken down. As the match comes to a close a bar along the top of the screen will get shorter showing an end to the battle is near and sometimes enemies will flee, stopping them will gain players a small bonus.

The game is certainly not for anyone who gets frustrated easily as players will be required to play over and over again as dying is not if, it’s when!

Although this is frustrating to have to start again every time it does seem to make the game very addictive and always makes you come back for more to try a different route, tactic and approach!

Ideal for the Nintendo Switch

Playing the game on the Switch was great! With the ability to jump in and out of the game for a few battles fits perfectly with the Nintendo Switch’s portability and the type of game that Has Been Heroes is, also no noticeable framerate issues or graphical problems make this game for the Switch a pretty good buy compared to some on the e-Shop.

Verdict:

Has Been Heroes is an addictive game with a nice art style, good voice acting in the cut scenes and huge amounts of content to unlock and use. Although some will find starting again frustrating, it’s addictive to just have one more go but the pure difficulty of the game maybe to much for some players and repetitiveness may also drive some away. However the game does play perfect on the Nintendo Switch and ideal for gaming on the go as well as being one of the better, reasonable prices titles on the e-Shop at the moment!