Disney's Hercules

Good old game, to bring back memories!

This may be nostalgia talking but I loved this game SO much as a kid. No clue how many hours I spent but I'm gonna have to spend some more.

I think a lot of people considering this are primarily interested in getting to play through the movie, so I'll address that upfront. This is one of the better in that regard, this in part because some of the stuff that's in the film lends itself extremely well to taking a few minutes of screen time and turning it into a level that is substantially longer. You actually get to fight Medusa properly here rather than her only being in brief montage. This also really fleshes out the training which works incredibly well as tutorial segments. When you're in the city you deal with the disasters, etc. One level that has you flying on Pegasus and fighting in midair was so fun that I fondly remembered it a full 10 years after having last played it. There are lots of games that I forget much faster than that. You get to wield Hercules’ sword and super strength. In addition, you get to wield the powers of the Gods which are cool additional weapons. There’s way more variety to the weapons in this than, say, The Lion King, which is overall better, and Aladdin, which blows both of them out of the water. Unfortunately, there are a number of things where this just makes some really bad decisions. Part of the problem is that this approaches the design as if Hercules is just as vulnerable physically as, for example, Aladdin and Simba when that isn't the case at all. The film specifically chooses to make him relatable through his clumsiness and that could easily have been the approach here. Instead of having you move around at the speed of a mech suit, have you move fast and force the player to make sure we're ready to make a quick stop because if we move too fast we might bump into something and break that thing or injure someone. Instead of Hercules having a health bar, have it keep track of the public's faith in him, which decreases every time he makes a mistake, at least for the chunks where he's canonically impossible to hurt. Certain levels are tedious.

Definitely my favourite of Disney games. So well done. Thank you GoG.

Always wanted to replay this classic game and now it's possible, thanks to GOG.