Has-Been Heroes

There are some good ideas in Has Been Heroes, such as the way it uses multi-lane battlefields to make us use strategies that involve switching between the strengths of three different heroes to achieve victory. It's a recipe for fun that manages to last for a while. Eventually, though, the heavy emphasis on the luck of level generation, the frustrations of enemy repetition, the poor tutorial, and the tendency to overrun you with tough enemies spoil the whole. Hard games are great, but there are limits.

This roguelike’s cool combat system is held back by a terrible structure.

As a console game, I can't recommend it, but if you're the type of person who plays your Nintendo Switch on the go, it at least is something you can pick up and play for a bit without much thought. Has-Been Heroes would benefit greatly with touchscreen controls on a mobile device, as the gameplay seems tailor made for it, but alas it doesn't support the Switch's touch capabilities and isn't available on phones. But hey, at least it features HD Rumble, which is easily the most over-hyped and overrated feature of the Switch, so there is that.

Has-Been Heroes is as tough as nails and built for people that like to lose over and over again. The combat offers an interesting twist on a familiar mechanic, but never really evolves beyond that initial learning process. Some of the whimsy present in the Trine series has been carried over here, but not enough to balance out the punishing difficulty.

Has-Been Heroes is a game that is full of great ideas but gets dragged down by poor execution. The way it combines RPG and roguelike elements with basic tower defense gameplay has so much potential that it unfortunately can't live up to in the face of imbalanced difficulty curves and unwieldy controls. It feels much more like a proof of concept that, with time and updates, could some day lead to a great adventure.

Despite all of these complaints, Has-Been Heroes isn’t a terrible time.

Has Been Heroes had the potential to be a very good game, but some gameplay issues and weak narrative, don't let this game to break the walls of mediocrity. Combats are hard and based on luck more than anything else. Has Been Heroes is a fun game to play in its genre, but you must deal with its problems too.

Has-Been Heroes heroically treads the line between strategic brilliance and overwhelming frustration to result in an experience that will leave many feeling like toppling the Great Ghoul’s evil army is an insurmountable task. It is in the game’s difficulty and lack of accessibility, then, that sees these wearied heroes falter. Which comes as a great irony when you remember how ridiculously simple their quest had first sounded.

While Has-Been Heroes can draw someone in really quickly, it will wind up losing them just as fast. It's fast and fun, and the mix of roguelike and pseudo-tower defence elements actually work quite well together. The core concept here is entertaining enough, but the lack of variety winds up souring the experience sooner than it should.

Has Been Heroes has a unique game play mechanic, but fell short on explaining it properly for new players to the game. I really would have enjoyed the game much more had the system been explained properly. It would have saved me a couple of hours just fumbling around the game’s UI and online resources, and actually just had me enjoy the game from the start. With bland environments, but a rather pleasant aesthetic, Has Been Heroes is an above average game that will keep your attention for a few hours. Even though it has plenty of heroes for you to unlock, I’m not sure I could keep playing for longer than ten hours as I think the repetitive nature would be to much to handle. I would say wait for a sale on this one, as $19.99 might be a little too steep for my liking.