Title: Heroes of Ruin
Format: Nintendo 3DS
Release Date: July 17, 2012
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: n-Space
Price: $39.99
ESRB Rating: T
You turn in a paper and it's returned with a note in red ink, "Needs more work". So you try again, you gather your notes you scratch up the smallest detail until you've talked the subject to death. The next note comes back, "Almost, See me after class". It's a frustrating experience for you. The teacher know what she wants out of this paper, but she find it hard to communicate to you in a way you would understand. Sure, you've done exemplary work, but she believes you're capable of so much more. That's a bit of what it feels like to play Heroes of Ruin. A show of promise, but it needs more work.
The story of Heroes of Ruin centers around the central hub of a town called The Nexus. The guardian of The Nexus is a sphinx like creature known as Atraxis. Something happens to Atraxis and a party of up to four venture off to find a cure for what ails the guardian. There's a decent amount of side quests in the perspective of the length of this game. The game itself, however, leaves something to be desired in length and depth. You're more compelled to continue based upon the blue exclamation marks and online play with friends.
The graphics of Heroes of Ruin leave a bit to be desired in the variety of textures and set pieces. The variety of textures is limited as veident by the lack of a robust character customization. The character races and concepts are designed well enough, but the execution graphically comes off as less than what it could be. The story is told through motion comic cutscenes in lieu of FMV. The level are gerenareated somewhat randomly, however, the aesthetics of those levels make them seem somewhat generic.
The music and sound of Heroes of Ruin is a bit bland. That said, the voice chat is crystal clear. Music in entertainment is currently trending away from melodies and focusing more on blaring fanfares to backdrop cacophonous grunts and battle cries engaged in battle. I couldn't begin to hum the main theme of the game as I couldn't really tell you the plot. It's not that memorable.
The gameplay of Heroes of Ruin is definitely the highlight. This is short-changed to players, because the main story clock in at 10-12 hours. The game's level cap is at 30. There's a calendar of daily and weekly challenges to keep the game going, but the option for players is to restart the game with one of the four different classes to keep it interesting. It's also unnecessary to farm for gold as your wallet caps at 99,999! This is a game that is dependent on an active online community. Either you have a group of friends willing to save Nexus, or you find lower level players to help and get your own completion rate to 100%. There is an online market for equipment that players can trade with each other. Playing as the gunslinger, however, I found it almost impossible to take advantage of this. Every time I approached the NPC to buy something he had nothing to sell.
Not a bad game by any means, and the gameplay keeps it above mediocre. I'm a little disappointed that this was the same developer for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which I found to be a better dungeon crawler and action RPG. But at a $40 price point, Heroes of Ruin seems to be more of gamble for all parties involved. For Nintendo, it's a demonstration of what the system can do even at this stage. Of course, how Heroes of Ruin will play with the XL edition is yet to be seen. We get a sense, however, that the online experience from Nintendo is improving and rising to the level of say Xbox Live. For Square Enix, it's a test of a more action-oriented game on a system that is still catching its stride. For the players, it's a gamble that either all of their friends will invest in a multiplayer dungeon crawler for the 3DS, or that there will be enough of an online community to keep the game fun.
S&S Rating: 7.5 / 10