[b]TL; DR[/B] [i]Heroes of a Broken Land[/i] is an awesome never-ending dungeon crawl, it fills a niche I did not know I needed, but with that said it is still a niche and it will not appeal to everyone. Even as a fan I think that it gets tedious in larger worlds, and higher difficulties as the game balance starts to breakdown.
[b]Note[/b] edit the difficulty if you play on large worlds.
[h1] Story & Presentation [/h1]
You are a wizard, and along with the rest of the Council you connected yourselves with the heart of the world. You used its power to usher in a golden era of prosperity, but it did not last long, your sins corrupted the heart and the world shattered, breaking into countless scattered fragments. You doomed the world, all you can do is try and reforge it, purifying whatever fragments you can find. You can do your best, but your quest will never end, the Council will struggle for eternity to make amends, but they can never undo what was done.
As for its visuals, well the game looks as one might expect from the screenshots, the enemies are pretty charming, but they do not look intimidating, especially early on since they are so small, this gets better later as the monsters grow in size over the course of your playthrough. Yet I do like some of the later enemies a lot, they combine different arcane elementals to create some disharmonious monsters, and that looks cool, works well, and it sort of makes sense from a narrative perspective.
However, the aesthetics and the art direction of the game are more striking. The giant crystal wizards and the floating broken world is very memorable, so it is a shame then that the broken world is not carried over into the worlds that you explore. Instead of gaping voids in the landmass and an endless black beyond your fragment you have water, and simply a border where the map ends. Still the worlds are mostly empty with no real civilization left, only a few enclaves of struggling heroes, which gives of a sense of the apocalypse that the world has gone through, and I find that evocative.
You also get a few options to customise your adventurers, it is not all that robust, but it is a nice touch, and you can always import your own portraits if you so choose.
The weakest aspects of [i]Heroes of a Broken Land[/i]’s visuals are probably the combat effects, it is very spartan and simple, but hey it works, and I do not mind that a sword is just a line slashing across my enemies. However, it is definitely not very interesting.
As for the audio… The music reinforces the melancholic atmosphere, and this pervading sense of loss and longing for the world that was. These melodies are very clear in my mind, I can remember them surprisingly well even when I have gone months, or even years since my last playthrough. So, as you might expect I think that they suit the game well, and that they are lovely, however, there is a very limited amount of music, and it is all piano. Despite my complements, I do switch and listen to something else when I play longer sessions or multiple days in a row, otherwise it is a bit too much. It is especially egregious for the final dungeon because you are there for a while, and it only has a single song looping infinitely.
The other sounds are not really worth mentioning, sword strikes, magic and whatever else, have alright sounds, nothing sounds terrible, but nothing sounds fantastic, everything simple does its job, and that is fine.
[h1] Gameplay [/h1]
[i]Heroes of a Broken Land[/i] has to generate its world, and you get an alright amount of customisation. You can change things like loot frequency, adventurer strength and most importantly difficulty. Playing worlds larger than Normal without touching these settings is a silly move and you will likely regret it. A Huge world is huge and since dungeons get stronger and stronger the further away they are… Yeah you should customise your difficulty.
A broken land is swarming with monsters, undead, and spirits out of control, so heroes and civilians will flock to your crystalised form to seek shelter in the shadow of your immobile majesty. In return they will help you on your quest, they will delve into dungeons at your behest, and you will choose what structures are built in your vicinity, guilds, potion sellers? Whatever you want!
You will be building stables, both around your statue and around other settlements that you happen to ally with, as well as getting as many Adventurers as possible, the alternative is journeying day after day across a broken land searching for dungeons, questing for the Elemental Pillars, and doing your best to keep everyone safe from marauding monsters. This is a requirement on Normal or larger shards otherwise you will be overwhelmed.
This is also where you make your most important decisions, choosing your party compositions, what classes they use, how you promote them, how you hand out your loot and what skills to buy from your guilds.
Magical attacks become increasingly important as you get further and further away from your Wizard, which is why classes with [i]Energize[/i] are so important, once upgraded it regenerates mana extremely fast so you can throw the most powerful spells each and every turn. Without it you are stuck with duds and forced to chug potions every turn since enemies get so annoyingly durable, but this is not much of an issue if you play on smaller shards.
[h2] Dungeoneering [/h2]
Most of your time in [i]Heroes of a Broken Land[/i] is spent in dungeons, these vary in size, design, difficulty and monster types. Sometimes areas are sprawling single floors filled with beasts, in others it is an increasingly narrow spire or just a small square occupied by roaming monsters.
A few have specific entrance requirements, perhaps you need to work on a world quest for them to appear, progress the main storyline, or perhaps you need multiple powerful parties to be able to tackle it. The multi-party spires are especially fun since they are relatively short and simple despite playing three groups of adventurers at once.
Regardless, there is a lot of environmental items to interact with and these are great and rewarding. Recovery fonts, and secret walls are classics, but you also get shrines for permanent buffs, cages for extra adventurers (sometimes an early Fae, which is very useful), but most of these can be traps designed to hurt you. Being ambushed by captive monsters when you are not ready for it can be dangerous, decreased stats even more so, not to mention all the other malicious objects like summoning circles or jammers that obscures your map.
This all creates dungeons that feel diverse, interesting and fun to explore, especially when different parties need to help each other progress. They feel so fun that it is almost remarkable that they were not designed, the fact that they are generated is amazing, but they do feel less immersive, varied and intentional than those from [i]Strahd’s Posssesion[/i] or [i]Eye of the Beholder[/i]
Combat is the other things you will be doing, and it is very important but there is not much to say about it. It is turn-based, and you need to have versatile kits and be able to deal with numerous elemental weaknesses, resistances, and absorption, and you need to keep an eye on your mana reserves or be quick with potions.
I like how you learn about enemies as you fight them, the interface gets increasingly busy with direct information on their health and resistances, but it remains so easy to read. That, your adventurers growing in strength, as well as your own understanding of different monsters make for a satisfying gameplay progression.
The only issue I had were with monsters getting very spongy in the endgame, and the fact that multi-party bosses feel very disorienting to fight. Other than that, [i]Heroes of a Broken Land[/i] is a fantastic title for people looking for a never-ending dungeon crawl.
