Heads Will Roll: Reforged

Note: There is a range of difficulty levels to choose from. I'm sure the game is enjoyable no matter your preference. This review assumes the highest difficulty. Beautiful game to play blind on permadeath mode. Took me around 10 deaths before I felt pretty comfortable with the systems, and began progressing substantially into the story. With each death, you accrue bonus points to upgrade your next start a bit. It's quite a nice idea. By the time you are becoming competent, you will have a solid foundation to begin really conquering the game from. But if you are careless, no advantage will save you. You will be put into situations where you don't know the best decision. Perhaps there isn't one. At times you will find yourself in over your head, just trying to hold on. It has always been fair to me, and allows just enough slack to press on through misfortune. Whether I felt I should be a coward in one moment, or pragmatic the next, or risk it all for honor and glory, the game never let me down with how things played out. They put a lot of thought into everything! The combat itself is great and it is challenging. It takes some time to understand, but it makes a lot of sense and you'll figure it out just fine through experience. There are plenty of surprises and interesting scenarios to experience. It ages like wine as you get better. The roleplaying is refreshing, providing you with reasonable & interesting choices for a variety of characters. Much better than the cartoonish nonsense of most rpgs. Rarely are your choices clear cut. You have a lot to do outside of battle. It's a well made and unique effort. The graphics are beautiful to my tastes, but don't expect a lot of flashy effects or mind-numbing "cinematics". The art style has a lot of character, and the ladys are actually gorgeous. Runs absolutely flawlessly and doesn't eat up my laptop's battery. Overall, this is a great game that's worth the price even when it's not on sale.

This is one of the first, non-adult (NSFW) visual novel and I must say I am hooked. The combat is just deep enough to have strategy but not too deep to grasp. I am on Chapter 4 and can't get enough.

If you enjoy this type of game, this one is well done.

- Character creation does NOT mean "roll random stats and gear until you're kinda OK with it". - Lots of complex skills for no good reason that make leveling fragmented and you can only level specific stuff at specific locations or times. E.g. you can practice fighting at the war camp, but the game never tells you how long you'll actually be there for long term - there's a meter, but given how easily the character will tire, it's useless. And why split combat skills into strength, agility, coordination and about 2 or 3 other attributes for a turn based game with 0 flashy combat? - The combat feels random, luck based and is as interesting as waiting for a stationary rock to move: you select what you'll do from a list, there are 2 dice symbols and no idea which is meant for you or the enemy's retaliation (or at least I think that's what it was) and you do the move, the enemy does his move (it's "realistic" with having only men fight) all in floating text above them, no animation whatsoever. Hell, if this is what you go for, make it text only game. Why a visual novel if you can't properly, VISUALLY convey good, exciting combat? - I hate the art style and how everything in the game looks. - The writing is decent - I suspect the game was initially written in Russian and translated into English and I see no grammatical errors or strange phrases; not the standard usually -, but dry as a bone left in the middle of the desert. Again, why make a visual novel with poor visual and dry writing? You have poor results in exactly what the genre is known and beloved for. In short, I hate this game with a passion and can recommend a pure text game that has better combat, writing and mechanics and is cheaper on top of all that: The Great Tournament on Steam (the only PC platform they sell on as far as I know, mobile versions of their games also exist). For less than 6€ you get far more than what HWR:R tries to do and still has the gull to ask for over 12€.

A great Game with a nice and interesting Story and a good roughlike Mechanik. 7/10