It started off as something that could have been one of my favourite games and ended up dropping the ball completely. Alright, lets start with the good and we will go from there. An interesting premise and setting. Nice characters. Neat and interesting locations, rather unorthodox level design. A cool upgrade system giving you a lot of flexibility in that you can always reset your skills. Plenty of loot, both to gather and an interesting crafting and development system. It has a nice soundtrack, but it becomes a bit repetitive after a while. And instanced combat system where you fight encounters in real time, however they become quite stale due to the rather simplistic enemy AI and limited encounter design. The length of the game and the developers ambition end up being the games downfall. The game goes on for around 40-50 hours. That should have been cut in half, because after a certain point you can tell the developers lacked resources to maintain quality. Encounters are basically all the same with different enemies after that point. The tone of the setting is ruined in an attempt to keep it interesting. The plot and characters fall apart in an attempt to keep intrigue and suspense. The story goes into absurd power fantasy territory and obviously falls apart at the ending because of the plot holes and an attempt at a meaningful ending. Less impressive loot the further you go. The map design becomes more stale. I cant really recommend it to the general person, because whatever things you did appreciate about the game, they will ultimately sour the longer you play. It clearly has its strong points, though. If you focus more on the combat and ramp up the difficulty you might end up having a lot of fun. There are things here that I like in this game a lot. Its clear that the people making it put a lot of heart, passion and effort into it. I just wish that at a certain point they said "Okay, lets stop here."
Ill be honest, I barely played this. Less than 15 minutes. However, I can tell right away that its a decent improvement over the first game and more closely resembles the series as we know it, but still significantly behind the third one in the technical aspect. Its still cumbersome to control for a game of its type and thats pretty unancceptable since controlling and managing will take up most of your time. Also considering the amount of alternatives available. Graphics and sound are fine for its age, but thats about it. Some mention poor balancing towards the rougher side and cheating AI. The only thing it can possibly offer is the story, since in all other aspects its inferior to its successors, especially Heroes 3. But at this point its easier to just read up on it. As far as I know its not bad, but definitely not worth the trouble. If youre new to the series, just start with HoMM3. If youre a veteran you can confidently skip this, youre not missing out.
Perhaps back in its day it was interesting, but nowadays it falls short on many levels. First of all, there is no explanation at all who you are and what you are doing. I know this game is based on a comic book, but I dont know nothing beyond that. It takes away from the setting as I have no context for what is happening. Not even environmental storytelling. The environment and sound part are alright for a game its age, nothing more. That leaves only the gameplay to carry this title. It has mainly 2 sides to it. The combat and traversal/platforming. I didnt play too long, but the combat wasnt particularly satisfying. The fighting areas were usually small and narrow and even when you were in larger areas you could usually knock the enemies out before they noticed you. Enemies also constantly respawn, which forces you to keep moving, since otherwise they will consume your ammo. This makes it difficult to properly search through areas and navigate levels. Since this was designed as a console game it incorporates a fair bit of traversal mechanics you could see in platformers. Jumping through obstacles, climbing walls, finding hidden paths. They are fine, but usually simple and given all the previously mentioned shortcomings, dont really do anything to elevate the game. There is also a system of upgrades and you can gather collectibles that adds lives. But the final straw in all of this is the level design. It is pretty long and often confusing. In order to progress you need to find key fragments in different levels to unlock further levels. I usually try to check everything, but when I saw I missed a certain fragment and that meant going through the level again from the beginning I knew I needed to have good long thought of whether it is worth it. And as it turns out, it really isnt. I think this title was fine as a console game way back in its day, but today it falls short in too many areas. You are much better off trying out other games.
A classic of the video game industry. Almost a work of art. I used several mods to make the experience better, but its just some visual enhancements. Its a narrative drive action adventure game more than anything else and its fairly linear despite having an open world setup. Visuals are alright considering its age, voice acting is decent and the era appropriate music is quite fitting The story revolves around a man called Tomas Angelo and his life in the Salieri crime family in a fictional US city in the 1930s. There is nothing more I can say other than its a very well presented story. Now for the gameplay. It consists of 3 things. Driving, combat, interacting with the environment. You drive around town either performing tasks or initiating tasks. You have shoot outs with rival mobsters and fights with thugs. You need to get or move items that are needed to progress your objectives. Most everything tries to make you feel that you are in the environment that is depicted. The vehicles you are drive are slow and sluggish as they were back then. Cops will chase you if you commit crimes outside, including speeding, driving a red light, crashing into a car. Aiming and reloading is slow, if you reload you lose any remaining ammo in the clip. Atmosphere is key. However, there are quite a few downsides in the gameplay as well. You will often notice game rules apply to you, but not the AI. Firefights can be hit and miss as it depends more on the level design. Melee combat is frankly atrocious. You are staggered if you are hit with a melee attack. Annoying in a one on one, unworkable if more than one melee enemy against you. There can be some glitches and weird AI behaviour. There are some things to do after you complete the main campaign, but I wouldnt say its anything major. Despite having some flaws, its still a pretty solid game for what it sets out to do.
I didnt play that much, but saw enough to udnerstand that I dont want to bother anymore. As someone mentioned before, the AI on normal is very slow to attack, deals small amounts of damage and has bad aim and on the next difficulty its pretty quick to shoot, deals a lot of damage and has decent aim. Add to that that many enemies try to surprise you or catch you off guard with numbers. Its either boring or annoying. Too stupid or too try hard. No fun middle ground. And its a shame since the visuals are nice for a game its age, the story is simple, but action packed, there are attempts to make it more cinematic with enemy behaviours/animations/cuscenes, the guns sound and feel well, shooting with the stronger weapons will dismember enemies. But there were some other drawbacks as well. The levels sometimes could be too linear and sometimes confusing, enemy variety wasnt that great, certain areas are bugged and you can have issues moving. I tried getting the SoFplus patch, but it didnt work and with the options available its easier to try and play something else than try to fix whats not that good.
There isnt really much to say here. As much as you can respect the series for the heights its has achieved, everything in this game is very outdated. The graphics, sound, gameplay, UI, controls, storytelling. Its all on a very basic level. Its not bad, it still works and is still functional, but unless you want to experience the mid 90s and see how the series started, there is no point in engaging with it when its vastly supperior successor HOMM 3 is available. As much as you can respect it for pushing the boundaries back in the day and laying the foundations for the series, its no longer a worthwhile time investment. Its a bit shocking how much of a leap the series will make with HOMM 3 just 3 years later. So unless you want to get it for the nostalgia / history factor, move on.
Main focus in this game is to manage a community in a post apocalyptic scenario. To help people survive and avoid suffering. Simply surviving a scenario may not be that hard, but at the end the game gives a kind of recap of how well you did and what kind of leader were you. So you will generally aspire to do the best you can, in accordance with your moral compass, for the most amount of people. Game offers several narrative scenarios as well as endless modes (I didnt try those) in which you are given various objectives, starting resources and and obstacles that you need to overcome. Scenarios also have some unforeseeable events pop up that will add some extra challenge. The presentation (visuals and sound) are solid, game mechanics are straightforward with sufficient variables, there is an overall narrative for a scenario with flavor text, but no real plot or characters. The only real complaint one may have for this game is that in order to get the best outcome you are funneled into a specific set of moves/commands/behaviors at certain stages of the game that limit your choice of action. But that is normal for a survival game. There is also an element of waiting for key junction points, like gathering enough resources to progress further, but that is also something inherent to management games. Its good for what it offers and if you want to challenge yourself to get better outcomes then it will keep you busy for a while.
It amazes me a game like this has an overall high rating of higher than 3. I will try to keep this short and simple. This is a console game and it shows heavily. The camera is locked and its movent and position is bad. Movement is very clunky. Combat is janky, repetitive. Lacks finesse and impact completely. Progression system is primitive. Movement sets are mostly useless, easier to spam left mouse button. Your 3 characters are very similar in terms of their combat behaviour and combat is the main gameplay element. Graphics are weak for a game of this era and in certain places it shows. Sound is generally pretty good, so is the voice acting. Story seemed intriguing and atmosphere was generally nice. They hired some big talent for the voice overs and writting, but they should have saved some to make a better game. I was very inclined to give this one star, but Id be somewhat disingenuos because it does have some redeeming quality in its storytelling and atmosphere. I played through 2 chapters in an hour and this game has 10 chapters. As a whole its not complete trash, but unless you are coming to play this for a very specific reason I recommend against it. Because it barely qualifies for that 2nd star.
I think most people understand the basic principles of an ARPG. You go around becoming more powerful and slaying different enemies using different builds. Stories usually being on the lighter side. First with the simple. The story is there, it wont amaze you, but it works fine. You are a demon hunter that comesto a new place, its infested with evil, you do what you do best. Visuals are qutie pleasant. Simple, but the art style makes it work well. Now the gameplay. There are 4 main lements to your character. The weapons, the consumables, the powers, the destiny cards. Your character does level up, but main things that change are his health and destiny points/cards he can use. Abilities that you can use depend on the weapons equiped. You can equip 2 weapons at once. You have 2 consumables slots, which you can equip health potions, buff potions, damage items, disable items. You have 2 powers slots where you can equip demoin powers. You can a resource called overdrive by mainly dealing damage and once you have enough of it you can use a demon power. Destiny cards are your buffs. Damage on crit, vampiric attack, more money found, armor, etc. You have a certain number of slots you can use and the cards have a value, you cannot equip more than the value you have. The value increases by leveling up. All of these are connected through transmutation. You use transmutation to increase your items values by sacrificng corresponding ones. Thats why I say this game is meaningful, as most everything that drops can be used in transmutation. The main downside to all of this is that it can get very grindy in the long term. Some weapons are more fun to use that others. None the less I thin this system works well well. It can be slightly janky at places and some things could be more explanded upon and refined, but its a very solid experience for what it is.
You play as a redneck in a weird version of Ancient Egypt, try to clear out pyramids filled with monsters, gather weapons, buffs and money and repeat. In between runs you get a chance to buy upgrades to make the next run easier. There are also "classes" in the game. Presets where you get special starting weapons, skills, etc. Outside of shooting there is also quite a bit of platforming involved. Main issues is that the items you get play quite a big a role as to how far you will go. Not sure if its part of the roguelike charm or some more balancing would have been in order.
