Hero Siege is a paid (one-time purchase + DLC with a subscription option) ARPG in a pixel art style. However, not everyone may appreciate this style, as I’ll explain in a moment. The game draws inspiration from the Diablo and Path of Exile series, but I get the impression that the developers didn’t have a clear vision for their own game and instead focused more on trying to replicate mechanics from those titles, using only different descriptions for mods or item names. Are you familiar with Mageblood from Path of Exile? Yes, it’s here too, but under a different, more ordinary name. Item names, while sometimes funny and fitting the game’s style, are often rather bland. The same goes for NPCs—they don’t really matter, and their names are impossible to remember.
Hero Siege offers over a dozen different characters to choose from (unfortunately, a few are paid), as well as plenty of skins, additional chest slots, and visual effects. There wouldn’t be anything special about this, but the art style I mentioned at the beginning makes me see no reason to buy these visual extras. What’s more, the prices for many of them are absurdly high. On top of that, there’s a subscription model here, where you get access to emotes, a set of stylized cursors, and your own hideout (unlike in PoE, where you can get a hideout for free). However, the store’s extensive selection bears no relation to the lackluster gameplay.
The high difficulty level (even on Normal) means we often die unnecessarily here because, despite the game having been around for so many years, the developers still haven’t properly balanced the gameplay or the characters’ defense. You end up in situations where you’re playing a “glass cannon” build, and bosses (in too small arenas) and often even regular mobs kill you with just one or two hits. Switching to Nightmare difficulty makes you lose the desire to play when you realize that your DPS is too low, your character’s defense is nonexistent, and the prices of items for your build are too high. Once you reach level 100 and start leveling up to the Master levels (Incarnation), you realize that your build is simply trash unless you start grinding to collect a ton of gold for the right items.
The map layout is incredibly bad. For one thing, many of the maps have traps (frustrating and unnecessary), and on top of that, the devs decided to turn Hero Siege into a lesson in jumping from one tiny section of the map to another. There are often obstacles on the maps, such as walls or buildings, and the choice of colors and outlines for objects makes it hard to tell where the path is and which way to go.
The social features are limited, and there’s no way to teleport directly to a teammate’s location or invite a player from within the game. There’s also no group or private chat—which is simply mind-boggling—nor is there a way to create a team match directly in the game (you have to save and exit first).
Instead of focusing on much-needed balance changes and adding essential features, the developers prefer to sell silly skins or cute little cat pets to teenagers who are excited about that sort of thing. After many hours of gameplay, the whole experience becomes tedious, and you start to realize it’s a dead end. You come back to play a little more, but that initial good impression of the game faded long ago. The game isn’t heading in the right direction at all and doesn’t pose any real competition to other titles in this genre.
