Heroes of Arca

Heroes of Arca might be the biggest dissapointment I've ever experienced on Steam. It is not a bad game per se, but has some flaws which sucked the enjoyment out of it for me personally. My biggest concern is that while the game seems to offer different choices when it comes to allocating your skillpoints, only one approach is feasible (i.e. investing points into your minions). Even the developer himself admits that successfully finishing the first area can already be a challenge if one skilled "wrong": "unforturnaly, it will be a realy hard to defeat Master without creatures of level 5". If you skilled "wrong" you are stuck with grinding exp to make up for that mistake, making the game very repetitive because you'll end up losing most fights and always have to fight a copy of yourself then, too. On the one hand this allows for quicker collection of EXP, on the other hand it becomes boring pretty fast. Moreover, the effect of chance (or RNG) seems just to powerful - even if you do great for 80% of the fight, lucky rolls from your opponent can turn the tides of battle extremely quickly. Due to these points, the combat, which is the focus of the game, is just not fun if you took the "wrong" approach to skilling. The graphics are also a bit dull (they look quite nice in the preview on Steam, but scaled up they lose fidelity), which is unfortunate because the hand-drawn sequences are very nice. I cannot say much about the story because I was unable to progess very far due to the aforementioned imbalance, and the game was just not fun enough for me to start over or attempt to grind more EXP. What little I saw of it was nothing of out the ordinary, but the story is certainly not meant to be the focus of this game anyway. It is also unfortunate that the information provided in the game is a bit lackluster, because the developer wrote a guide for Heroes of Arca which provides some information which could avoid frustrations such as mine if one read it before starting the game. Because having a fun beginning is important for long-time motivation in a game and the factor of RNG seems to dominant for a tactical game I do not recommend the game in its current state. TL;DR: Game is okay if you know that you should spent all your points into your minions on the first island and don't mind losing battles due to unlucky RNG; otherwise it can be frustrating.

СКЕПТИЦИЗМ – гносеологическая позиция, подвергающая сомнению возможность познания действительности. Последовательный скептицизм смыкается с агностицизмом и нигилизмом.

Heroes of Arca is a strategy + turn based rpg which reminds me of the heroes of might and magic series. The game starts off with a good story and background narration. Players control a "summoner" type of character, moving around the map, engaging in various battles. There is an experience bar for players to level up, allowing players to customise their character's build +++ The Good +++ 1) Optimised well, barely any lag or bugs. 2) Beautiful backgrounds, 3d models and nicely drawn art 3) Casual fun and easy to play, learning curve is easy, decent tutorial. 4) Music fits the genre well, upbeat during battles. 5) Plenty of settings for players to change while in-game, such as difficulty and game speed. 6) There is strategy mixed in, based on how players skill their character and their battle choices. 7) Unique battle system, very different compared to the strategy games in the market. --- The Bad --- 1) Skills are abit unbalanced, some skills are perpetually useless while some are overpowered. 2) No skill reset, very unforgiving once players learn the 'wrong' skills, their character becomes useless when playing at higher level stages/mobs. 3) Extremely grindy, players will have to keep grinding just to get a sufficient level to beat the next stage. 4) Too dependent on luck, dice rolls rarely are wonderful, while plenty of times it can lead to frustrating results. 5) Lack of variety on summons and monsters. Personally, I feel that Heroes of Arca is a rough gem in the making. It is beautifully drawn, the game is optimised well, has a unique battle system, good concept and story. However, there is definitely room for improvement as it gets really challenging at later stages, especially if players skilled their characters wrongly, and are forced to grind just to get more EXP for another level-up. The battle system is also heavily dependent on luck, which can result in frustration at later stages. This game will probably appeal to players who enjoy challenging turn-based strategy RPGs, and also casual players who are looking for a quick fix of strategy without dwelling too much into the mechanics. Final Score : 7 / 10

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Wow, I'm impressed by how thoroughly not fun this combat system is. It feels like every time something goes wrong, you try to come up with a plan for how to get yourself out of this hole, and then the system is so random that you don't actually have any power to do that whatsoever, so your only hope to win is a super lucky roll that will carry the day. The way the system works is that each character takes 3 actions for the turn. One you choose, two more randomly chosen based on the one you picked. If all 3 are the same, you get to go again. The ammount of randomness this induces just makes the game miserable- Need to keep that squishy mage alive? Tough ♥♥♥♥, the best you can do is make the odds *slightly* in your favor, but not really, since all the summons have two chances to attack before your next move, so even if things go perfectly, it's probably dead anyways. Oh, and story. The story was boring enough that I was skipping lines before the intro cutscene was over. Don't waste your time.

You what'd be fun? A tactical RPG where 2/3rds of your actions are randomly chosen for you! Sorry, this game looks like a lot of effort was put into it and if you don't mind the heavy element of chance in the fight it could be fun, but it really isn't for me.

I've played both the first Witcher game and Trigger Man, so I can't say this is anywhere remotely close to coming near to being the worst combat system I've ever played with. That said, putting aside such extreme considerations, the combat system just isn't fun, and feels like a sloppy, poorly balanced, poorly coordinated RNG-fest. Since the entire game is based in moving combat node to combat node.. well.. The framework for the rest of the game [narrative flow, character-building] seemed passable, but is held back by the combat system. Worst part is, I think the fundamental concept of the combat system is a suitable one with potential to be fun.. the problem is that the implementation feels sloppy, half-arsed, confused, and just unfun. Elements need to be better balanced and structured, RNG needs to be less emphasized, combat options need to be expanded, "deck-building" needs to be further developed, tactical depth needs to be made more complex, pacing needs to be improved, underlying mechanics need to be both more visible and intuitive, and that's just the things off the top of my head. The basic framework allows for a good combat system to be developed on top of it, but what's currently present is just.. lacking. Enough so that, were it not for the aforementioned games setting my expectations of "bad" so very low, I'd be entirely confident in labeling this combat system as being such. Well, it's free, and it'll take you all of 10 minutes to form an opinion on the game. Regardless of how flawed and filled with shortcomings the combat system is, it lacks any of the severe aggravation of more infamous combat systems. So hey, it may end up being unfun, but at least it won't feel like torture. Gotta appreciate the small things? This game is certainly not worth playing over anything sitting in your backlog, but if you're absolutely desperate for something I can't say there's absolutely no chance of someone being able to bear through this game's flaws. That's.. about as warm a recommendation as I feel comfortable providing, however. :P P.S. Despite the game page's claims, this game appears to feature absolutely no strategy gameplay elements of note. It seems likely the developer misused the term of "strategy" where they instead meant to say "tactics" (though, as I noted above, the system fails to meet the more nuanced expectations of that term, as well).

Others have described how random the battles are with outcomes being more about luck than the actual skills that you build. You can easily wipe out one opponent at x level and then get stuck in an endless cycle of losing when you meet that same opponent again. I spent two hours trying to beat a level 16 that I handily beat in a previous match. I am currently level 21. Furthermore, as you progress, the battles get longer and longer. Despite the fact I am probably somewhere about midway through the game, each major battle is taking somewhere between 15-20 minutes. Hence, when you lose, it quite sucks. Not to mention that every time you lose, you have to battle "mirror" you--another tedious battle that takes around five minutes, but one you are at least guaranteed to win. And, you have to win the battle with your mirror before you can reface the opponent you lost to. I didn't rage quit this game after two hours of fighting the same battle over and over, but more like extreme annoyed quit. Furthermore, some of the main reasons that I love rpg games are because of the stories and also exploration. I think there was a story, but it's so thin that I don't remember what it was, and there is no exploration. You just move from battle to battle in a sparse overworld and that's about it.