Boot Hill Heroes

First thing that I have to say is congratulations to the developer for making their game. I know that's a silly way to start a negative review, but I can tell that the developer was interested in their project. However, their skills seemed to lack in certain areas, and I think they focused too much on aspects that weren't as important. Needless to say, [i]Boot Hill Heroes[/i] is very rough around the edges. Navigating your character around is annoying at times, because a ton of areas are relatively tight in space, and your character clips on so many objects. The developer went with an [i]Earthbound[/i] style layout where some areas or objects are skewed diagonally, such as streets, houses, beds or tables, etc. And there are objects lying around that you have to interact with, and the hit boxes for those are iffy. You have to keep edging your way around things (e.g., tables) to get the right position to pick something up. NPCs also have obscure hit boxes, where you have to get nearly one pixel next to them before they will react. Sometimes I'd have to hit the interact button multiple times before anything happens. Or you have things like overlapping hit boxes. One time I was trying to talk to an NPC and it kept interacting with a poster behind them. And of course that applies to any object that blocks your path. I had lots of places where I'd have to keep moving away, then up/down or left/right to readjust the character so they'd fit into something. There's very little leeway for moving around objects, unless the developer forgot a hitbox around an NPC, etc. One of the NPCs right at the beginning of the tribal village didn't have a hitbox so you could walk through them, while the other one had the above issue of needing just the right spot to talk. Now, here's one aspect where I think the developer incorrectly focused: [i]the number of NPCs and the "uniqueness."[/i] Every NPC is differently designed than another, but there's quite a lot of NPCs who don't look... great. And they also have different names in their dialogue to try to make them as unique as possible. While the goal is commendable, it doesn't add a whole lot when 80% of them are non-critical and only give one dialogue box of general info. The sheer number also makes it easy to forget them, and as said before, not every one is drawn that well. It would've been much better to scale down areas and actually focus upon NPCs as stronger characters instead of tallying them up. Along with the idea of art in the game, it's imbalanced in that the developer tried to make large areas and tons of creatures, but then things like battle screen backdrops, wanted posters and other "story" cutscene art seem poorly done. The backdrops for battles in particular are not good to look at, and some look like smeared colors. There's a clear difference in quality between the pixel art for areas, design of characters, design of enemies in battle, and the backdrops in battle. Now, onto the actual battles. The way the game works is you have different types of weapons (i.e., direct melee, guns, bows, throwables, etc.) that you swap between, but you also have to equip your combat moves, called "Vantages." A lot of the damage-dealing Vantages correspond only to specific weapon types, so if you end up swapping weapons, you likely have to swap your Vantages. The fact that Vantages are literally basic attacks as well as "skills" makes the swapping bothersome. It's nice if you really go into customizing, but having to swap even the most basic attacks back and forth is silly. Plus, as far I'd gotten, I felt like the Vantages were a bit wasted. You can unlock a lot of them, but many of the default abilities seemed to work fine the entire time. No enemies had really made me think "I need to use something else." You can unlock more Vantages by defeating enemies while wearing new hats, which I did. And I also collected as much treasure as possible (including armor and hats in chests) on most screens. But still, nothing seemed like an absolute must to use because basic abilities worked alright, and most battles ended in 2 to 4 turns unless enemies avoided damage. Also, I haven't bought anything from the shops (nor even sold anything) unless required by story moments, because I never felt like I needed to. So the Vantage system is somewhat of a good idea, but I don't think the battle system really made it worthwhile. And on the flip side, if the battle system forced you to switch skills often (i.e., because of enemies requiring different skills), then it'd become tedious with swapping back and forth. Also, one more gripe about the battle system is scrolling text blocks. I forgot to mention so far that your characters (and enemies) build up attack gauges. And whenever enemies attack, it pauses battle (including gauges) and you see a text block appear on the right side of the screen, which scrolls all the way across to the other side. Only once the box disappears does the battle resume and the gauges start loading again. Sometimes those messages are pretty long and it can take 3 to 5 seconds before battle resumes. And the more enemies on screen, the longer you'll have these time gaps. It was especially frustrating when I was fighting 4 mice and it kept stalling, because there's no way to skip the box. There is a "Slow/Normal/Fast" option for battles, but even on Fast, the box still pauses combat and moves at the same pace as Normal. So the game pausing battles like that started to get on my nerves a bit, especially since there are a lot of enemies spread around areas. There was one area which had to have close to 20 enemies running around on it, if not more. That's too many enemies for one place, and I think I only gained one level across those battles, so I feel like there should be a lot less battles and everything should be rescaled. Now, to round this out with the story. So far, besides random NPCs giving some general info, the most I'd learned was about the Saints-Little Gang you see at the beginning of the game. I'm almost 6 hours into the game and the only "big" cutscenes were like 3 different versions of introducing the same gang. I had met what seemed to be all of the party members from the game's trailer, but had yet to build a whole party. The game boasts a 4 person party and even highlights co-op, but this far into the game and there was still no party. You keep meeting the party members and make 2-person groups, and then they keep leaving. And the game seems to go at a relatively mismatched pace. It leads you into believing big things are going to happen but keeps derailing them, or you wind up in weird places and have to do fetch quests. The point I decided to give it a rest was when I had to go hunting animals (in combat) with a mandatory weak weapon. An NPC expected me to return with some materials that you get from RNG distribution. I killed probably 10 of the enemies before getting enough of the materials (antlers, in particular), and prior to that had a few battles where they'd also ran away when I got them low on HP. Finally, I got the materials and went back to the NPC and they said to get my weaponry imbued with powers. I found that you could upgrade weapons and that the antlers were part of a recipe to increase attack power. I went to increase my current main weapon (and not the weak knife), but the NPC wasn't happy. The game wanted me to use the materials I had just farmed to upgrade a weapon I was sure I wouldn't use again. I didn't want to have to farm for more or spend money on it. I wanted to upgrade a weapon of my choice! So there is where I quit. The game started off fine but then leaned into a half-Earthbound style without the charm, and just failed to hold my interest. My current plan is to drop this and play the sequel. Since it's been a few years between the two, I'll see if the developer has improved on various aspects.

Boot hill heroes is a 16-bit RPG. The story focuses around a farmer that becomes a legend when he is going to take down a notorious gang with the little help of some friends. Graphics are SNES style and the main character is easy to control using four arrows and space bar. Music and sound are quite good and they are inspired in spaguetti westerns tunes. The first steps and quests are a sort of tutorial where you can learn how to move, interact and fight against enemies. There are a lot of different kind of enemies. I don't like so much their re spawn and the fact that they pursuit you if you are near them. Fight looks like turn based but you fight in real time and you must block or hit depending an action bar and the actions available in each moment. Its easy but when you control more than one character is a little bit confusing if you play alone. I think is better if you play in co-op mode. The inventory management is not very intuitive. Items don't tell you what they do neither what is its purpose in the game and they don't show any stats and you must try it to know if they affect in some manner to the result of the battles. I think developers must improve it in the next chapters In the other hand, the story is quite interesting and there are a lot of thing to do. The map is also full of color and there are a lot of NPC to talk to. All are different, so I appreciate the effort of developers to show a game full of life. If you are tired to cast lightning balls, drink potions, and kill orcs, take your guns and be welcomed to the wild wild west. The game has achivements and trading cards too. PS: Thanks to Shade00

Wild Arms meets Earthbound. I like the gameplay and the look. I only wish they made it more aparent from the getgo that your dog is the save point.

This game is a treat. The battles are interesting, the characters are funny, the story becomes quite engaging when the plot thickens. The villains are well realized and so is the situation between the Native American village and the white settlers. The game visually pulls inspiration from [i]Chrono Trigger[/i] and the more obvious [i]Mother[/i] series. One of the more reoccurring villains early on has a laugh that rivals Kefka's from FF6, and the music is outstandingly, impressively identical to the music in that game somehow. Not sure how they pulled that off, but the composer should be complimented a good deal for this feat. I am halfway through the game as I type this. I will complete it soon and begin the sequel [i]Boot Hill Bounties[/i] at some point. I quite recommend...

have 3 hours because i idled for cards long ago Decided to try it later and OMG the combat part was so bad that i think this game shouldn't have been made in the first place 1/10

the game looks like it would be enjoyable but i cant get past the music. there is no option to shut off the music and it NEVER stops.

nice game

Boot Hill Heroes is one of the best RPGs I've played in recent years. Exceptional storytelling, awesome soundtrack, and an interesting combat system. I went into this game expecting a mediocre RPGMaker experience to clear out my backlog, not something that was going to get me hooked and begging for more.

The Earthbound-esque visuals and great music drew me in, but what really hooked me was the surprisingly deep combat system, in which most battles play out more like a puzzle than a slug fest. The multiplayer feature is a neat gimmick, but you only really get a full party at the very end of the main campaign. There's still a good chunk of post-game content to play, but by that point it's not exactly beginner friendly. For those wanting to play with friends, hopefully the sequel will spend more time with a full roster.

Pretty immersive - I played the whole thing with my girlfriend in a few days. Those nostalgic, sprite style graphics are quite charming. There's a big lot of indie games like that, I know, but some developers are especially meticulous in their pixel art as in this case. The plot is not as sophisticated as classic titles' (only people who played Chrono Trigger and the such will get what I mean), still amazing anyway, carrying a handful of quick-witted lines. Besides, the ethnic aspects were kindly depicted and that's a major plus... I hope that there really is a sequel. 8/10