Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption

The game is a good nostolgia kick with a lot of references to bygone games, notably Quest for Glory. If that is your thing, then yes, this is a good game for you. A few things I think are problematic? 1) The time. The game time flows eraticlly, and everything takes significant time to do, even talking or walking. Further you're really hemmed in by mandatory events such as class, dinner, curfew, and bed time. These break up the flow of the game quite badly, and you're constantly trying to figure out how to spend what little time resource you actually have. This annoys me somewhat because I see no reason to go eat dinner if I have a pocket full of 8 apples. I see no reason to not have the function to stay up all night. 2) The romance. This is just dumb. Why does every adventure game or RPG think we need a romance component? It's all but forced on you. Why can't you just not be into it? It doesn't really add anything to the actual story. 3) You. Honestly your character is a jerk a lot of the time, the options for responese are often lacking, and there are just flat out occasions where you know there should be a different answer, and all the answers it gives you end up with a bad end. Not that you can't happen some, but when your character SHOULD know something different, it'd be nice to act upon it. This happens two cnversations pretty early on. I would have liked a bit more of an alignment development where you could mold your character into one who was say studious, adveturous, wily, or some such in terms of his conversational skills. 4) The unnecessary hostility of the administrator. This goes back to the problems with Harry Potter-ism where the teachers and professionals in the school, well, lack professionalism or accountablity for their own actions. I find this a poor mechanic and really unappealing as a story device. So, it's a good game, just slightly flawed, and lacks in pacing.

Pretty bad, honestly. I wanted to like this, but there just isn't much good to say about it. The story, setting, and characters are all just uninteresting. It's extremely grindy, and you'll spend a lot of your time just building up stats through scheduled training as if you are playing a friggin dating sim. There just isn't much of an open world feel to it when your time is so strictly limited, and I think the scheduling aspect really makes the game suffer. Without the scheduling/dating sim aspect it would be an extremely short and subpar QFG game where you can only play as the thief. The puzzles are all extremely easy, although sometimes designed in a baffling way. For instance, there's a storyline where you need to catch this thief who is stealing apples and crap. To do this you need to first ignore it completely for about a week despite constantly being told you hear noises in the night, and then finally get up in the middle of the night when you are arbitrarily given the option. It really seemed at this point like I was just going to get a game over for failing to catch this thief, but nope I was doing everything right by doing jack shit. You then have to set traps for it three nights in a row in pre-determined spots (and you have no options to set traps anywhere else). I redid the first night of this a few times since it really seemed like I was screwing it up, but nope, I was doing it right. I like the idea of a turn based combat system for these games, but the implementation isn't any good. A lot of the time there will be enemies off screen that you have no way to target or look at, and once they are on the screen they are almost near enough to attack you. In a game with such a focus on throwing items this seems pretty unforgivable. The enemies also move very slowly, which makes combat an absolute chore to sit through if there are three or more enemies. Without these shortcomings combat would be really meh and uninteresting, but not actively terrible.

When I decided to play Hero U, I was afraid that much of the praise came from players that wanted to revisit Quest for Glory and praised it due to their nostalgia. Well, after having finished it I can say that the game is fun, well written and entertaining. I never played Quest for Glory, and after having finished Hero U, I liked the world and the storytelling so much, that I'm seriously considering playing those older games. Characters and story are well portrayed. The text is witty and fun to read and the Persona like approach to day management (mixture of school and dungeoning) is fun to play. Graphics are functional and pretty, specially the still pictures, but the animations of some characters, specially the main character, are often way too mechanic. Watch any videos displaying the main character walk or run and you will understand what I speak about. Beyond the adventure-like game, there's also a full RPG game. There's a number of dungeons that spawn enemies every time that you visit or revisit a section. Enemies can either be sneaked or fought, and perhaps this is the weakest part of the game. Combat is perhaps too easy, with little in the way of gear or tactics. With the exception of a few boss fights, there's little serious challenge for the hardcore RPG player. Perhaps because of this, the game has little to no grind, so you're not pressured to kill the same enemy 200 times to get enough money to buy the gear needed to progress. That makes the game to flow, to tell its story and sweep you into it. So, overall, what you get here is a good and fun adventure game, with a well written story and a pretty decent RPG to boot. Totally recommended

The Coles could have rested on their laurels and produced another clone of their widely popular Quest for Glory 1-4 and glided on nostalgia, but instead they decided to expreiment with new mechanics, similar to what they tried to do in Quest for Glory 5 (which had mixed reviews), and for that alone they deserve respect. However, unlike QfG5, Hero-U is a lot more successful. Long time QfG fans will find the familiar sense of humor, continuation of the world building of Gloriana, puzzles with multiple solutions, and RPG elements. However, where the older games were essentially adventure games with RPG elements, Hero-U tips a lot more towards RPGs with a bit of visual novel thrown in. And it works quite well! Also the combination of a huge map and a real time system gives you a sense of urgency we last saw in QfG2, which is something that new comers might find a little bit daunting at first. Time management becomes just as important as exploration and puzzle solving. Do you continue searching the catacombs, or do you call it a night since it's late and you have class in the morning? This kind of decision making keeps the game from becoming just a repetetive "school sim". The game is not prefect. There are still some bugs, the game world can sometimes feel too open ended, and some puzzles can get a bit frustrating especially since time is ticking (travelling from one location to another takes time) which limits your ability to meander around. All in all, it's a rewarding game that encourages multiple playthroughs and a worthy successor to the QfG name. I for one cannot wait for its promised sequel!

I'm a big fan of Sierra-era adventure games, like a lot of other reviewers. Howerver, this game really is different. That's not a sin of course but if you expect to go back in time and revisit QFG, that's not what this game is about. I only have about 3-4 hours of play but I decided I was not going to play the game anymore. Simply put, the game is boring and feels grindy. The concept is repetitive, the environments feel stale, the writing is funny but the interactions with other NPCs feels childish. Some quests are simply solved by waiting for the event to trigger itself... try as you might, you just cannot solve some quests without waiting for some in game trigger - thus wasting precious time trying to accomplish something that the game hints at but simply cannot be done! That's very frustrating. Combat is sub-par.... I think this game might be aimed at younger gamers. The "harry potter school" feeling is nice. There is progression and the hand painted graphics are nice. I'm giving it 3 stars because I think some of the 5 stars reviews are nostalgia filled and do not really do justice to the actual expercience.