Heroes of Ruin, the dungeon crawling Diablo like game, from Square-Enix London takes on a heavy challenge. For a long time Nintendo and it’s handhelds have been about a generation behind in online and multiplayer play. Heroes of Ruin looks to take on the online Nintendo world by storm with online play, daily challenges and even voice chat. But does Heroes of Ruin hold the torch for Nintendo Network or does it fall under the weight of its own ambitions.
The gameplay is pretty intuitive and yet expansive at the same time. You pick from 4 classes the Gunslinger, Vindicator, Savage or Alchitect that all have a completely different feel from one another. These four classes really allow for an expansive game experience and the game allows for you to have those experiences in it’s structure. There are four save spots in the game so you might as well try out all of the four types of characters. The character system they have in place allows for a much longer game experience with minimal story which is important for the 3DS hardware.
The hardware of the system definitely holds the game back a little bit. As soon as you start feeling like your in an expansive RPG world there will be frame rate issues and some kind of corny cut scenes. Take the game for what it is, an RPG diablo like game on a portable system. If you remember that then your enjoyment and outlook on the game will be much greater than the average Joe looking at a screenshot. The cut scenes become less cheesy and more adorable. The game has a story bit and that is a lot more than a lot of games in the same genre can say.
The story elements are a little bit lacking. Not in the amount of story necessarily, but the excitement from the story that Heroes of Ruin tells. After 3 or 4 hours of the game it felt more like an MMO than anything else. Clicking through the menus quickly and picking up all the quest I could felt rewarding to complete but if you asked me to explain the plot or the main points of the story, I probably couldn’t tell you. I just wasn’t really bothered to learn about it.
Where the game may lack in story it makes up for in mounds and mounds of content. Even though the storyline is only around 4 or 5 hours of content the side missions alone add another 3 or 4 hours easily. Plus there is also daily and weekly challenges that Square-Enix London has said will be updating for at least a year. Granted the challenges are a little boring, and granted the side quests are a little bit fetch questy, there is still a plethora of content available for the mobile adventurer.
The real way in which Heroes of Ruin shines is the multiplayer. Drop in drop out multiplayer is hardly done well on any console let alone a portable but Heroes of Ruin has found a way to do it. The multiplayer is addicting and somehow a completely different experience even if you are going through the same dungeons. The voice chat available in the game actually works, most of the time. The looting system is a little wonky but all in all the multiplayer gives the game even more legs after all of the story and content available.
Closing Thoughts:
A 3DS game that has loot, tons of content, a story and a significant multiplayer mode with online chat. If you would have told me all of those things would have been available 6 months ago I would have thought you were crazy. The game is not perfect but the character types and multiplayer more than make up for it. This is a must buy for me.
This review is based on a retail copy of the 3DS version of Heroes of Ruin
