Heroes of the Seasons

Heroes of the Seasons is a fun turn-based boss-rush RPG developed by Starmage. Utania Village is getting into its Christmas spirit, decorating and preparing for the holidays when Frinch, the Goblin King, threatens to ruin Christmas and destroy the village! Mayor Nelly must come together with the great mercenaries in their village and save the holidays from Frinch and his waves of not-so-merry men! The most significant parts of HOTS are its boss-rush system and combat. The combat is typical JRPG style, with different characters, different moves, and classes. There will also be a lot of time spent organizing your party! Your party must always consist of a tank, a nuker, and a support class, all of which you can change whenever you play a new stage. There are a few of each class you can pick from, all of which have their very own move set, buffs, and de-buffs. Some characters are better suited to be paired with others in my own opinion, so I’d always recommend exploring different parties until you find a set that you’re most confident with! Make sure you cover all of the elements, too, as this will simply make combat so much easier. When you finish a stage, your mercenaries will reset their level and stats back to 1, but you keep all of your items, gear, and gold for the next stages. Replaying a level will also unlock you new mercenaries for the first 3 replays, so while unlocking the extra characters you will easily accumulate a nice bit of gold and items to progress. The stages themselves consist of a repeated pattern - mob waves > boss > camp > mob waves > boss > camp and repeat - until you beat the final boss and some nice shiny rewards. Due to the way the save system works, I’d also recommend you save after you complete every stage. If you fail and get a game over it does not take you back, instead returning you to the main menu. Therefore saving before you even pick a stage will save you from getting locked into one that may just be a little too hard for you to manage. I found sometimes a stage would surprisingly hit me hard and I really struggled with it, so always be prepared for difficulty spikes. HOTS’ art is great. I loved the character designs and how unique each one was - as well as the lovely music accompanying each stage and area. You can also wind down after each stage in a cute little home and decorate it with Christmas items in preparation for holiday situations! If I’m completely honest, JRPGs of this style are not typically for me. They usually consist of a lot of walking around and combat that I just do not find fun. However, the approach taken here with the combat system’s variation of classes and mercenaries I enjoyed. If I didn’t like how a character played, I could easily try another and see if I prefer those skills. The boss-rush focused gameplay was also much more fitted to me, as the game's pacing does not have so much time taken up by walking around. Instead, you are jumping from combat to combat with some downtime to work on your party build. The story is also easy and simple to follow. I think playing this game during the winter holidays would also come with an extra bit of charm, which I’ll have to try myself! Overall, based on my opinions above, I actually have to recommend HOTS especially if you like wave-based games, or boss rushes. Short and sweet with a lot of replay value, you can also easily treat it as a pick up and put down game for short bursts if you lack the time for much! I’ll definitely be picking this one back up to play more this Christmas, and I recommend you do, too! Otome Lovers wishes to thank [i]Starmage[/i] for providing a free review copy for this game. [quote]Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote]

[h1]An Actual War on Christmas[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] The basic premise is that Utania Village has to hire mercenaries to protect their festivities from the Goblin King Frinch, who hates Christmas enough to wage war on a small village that celebrates it. We don't really get a reason from him other than how he finds it annoying. Things escalate when it turns out that [spoiler]Frinch's assisstant, Gobi, reveals that he's just using the king as dumb muscle and starts hiring other Christmas-haters to join the war effort. The next hater is Lord Aldwol, an evil lovecraftian alien who hates Christmas despite being from another planet. Then we get Matria, the BlueSkies setting's Satan equivalent, whose reason for hating Christmas is a little more understandable since it's associated with her rival goddess. Eventually, Gobi himself becomes the boss of the final campaign, where he reveals that he actually has a very understandable reason to hate Christmas: Vyena's Holy Order slaughtered his people on Christmas day while hypocritically seeing themselves as the heroes. That is indeed a sad story, but there is quite a bit of whiplash considering that Frinch and Aldwol hate Christmas for much pettier and comedic reasons. Regardless, it is heartwarming when the party manages to make peace with Gobi and get him to celebrate Christmas alongside them.[/spoiler] I do worry that I'm missing a lot of context for this setting, since it's supposed to be a spinoff of the BlueSkies series. The Christmas part of the story is mostly self-contained, but [spoiler]Gobi is actually the apprentice of a major character in previous game[/spoiler]. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] Your mercenaries will always get reset to level 1 at the start of a campaign. While this is to make it so that players won't feel compelled to overlevel and stick to one team, it does end up creating a meta based on who has the most useful skills at an early level, which could make it hard to use late-bloomer characters that don't learn essential skills until way higher levels. The game uses a weakness triangle system like RPS, but it also splits characters into three general roles: nuker, tank, and support. However, this means even if you build a balanced team, that means whatever type your nuker is bad against will likely stay on the battlefield the longest. I ended up going with a tank + double nuker strategy so that my two nukers will be able to cover each other's type weaknesses, even at the cost of non-item healing from support character. Fortunately, if your DPS is high enough, you can probably kill most bosses before you run out of items (each one has its own cap). In higher-level gameplay, you'll also get a lot of powerful skills with the instant property, which encourages you to buff up and deal devastating attacks in the same turn. This, along with how high the base damage of enemy skills are, made the game fit the Rocket Tag Gameplay trope in that both sides are trying to burst each other down ASAP. The idea is that if you can thin the enemy numbers quickly, you won't have to endure as many powerful attacks, which makes offense the best defense. Adding to the weakness system, I feel like the meta favors characters that start with both single-target and AOE options over characters whose skills hit random targets. I personally don't want to rely on RNG to hit type weaknesses, thus my preference for single-target skills I have full control over. This is especially important when enemies have counterattacks and reflect states, which can make random-targeting skills backfire. You can buy items in the village, but it usually takes a lot of story progress to get the inventory to change, except for decoration updates which are more frequent for some reason. The good news is that all campaigns are perfectly beatable with whatever equipment tier is available to them during your first try, but it does feel weird to unlock the 10k armor at the same time as the 150k armor. After I beat the game, the dev added more consumables to the gift shop, which can help with the inventory management aspect and give the player a sense of progress. On the flip side, having a longer gap between equipment tiers does mean the player will waste less money on equipment that could quickly become obsolete, so it does make shopping easier towards the end of the game. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 8.5/10 Although the story has emotional whiplash towards the end, I still enjoyed Gobi's villain arc and I'm considering getting into the BlueSkies series just to see if he'll ever make a reappearance. I'm personally not used to boss rush gameplay and I mainly play JRPGs with a more traditional gameplay loop and sense of progression, but I think the game is balanced enough, even if it does seem to favor DPS. I did find the glass cannon party builds fun in their own way, since there is a dopamine rush when you manage to score a lucky crit with an AOE skill or permanently remove an enemy threat before it can do anything.

Es un juego simple pero muy divertido. Se centra básicamente en los combates, una especie de "roguelike". A medida que vas avanzando vas desbloqueando nuevos mercenarios con diferentes habilidades, por lo que es importante conocer bien a cada uno de ellos para formar un buen equipo. La curva de dificultad se nota, el Modo Normal que a priori puede parecer fácil se puede hacer bastante duro. Recomendado para gente que le guste los combates por turnos y busque una dificultad satisfactoria

Disclaimer: I have been playing the developer's games since their early free gigs. And I can say, with utmost certainty, that Starmage has improved tremendously. I am looking forward to her future projects to come. I enjoyed Heroes of the Seasons. The graphics, artwork, and overall presentation are superb. The battle animations feel satisfying. Battle balance was okay with what I have played so far. I beat Crisis Mode. But beware, there's a rather big difficulty spike from Jam Mode to when you first play Normal Mode. I plan to resume this weekend. You can unlock mercenaries as you progress. Each mercenary is very unique, and there's so much care put into each character's theming and skill set. There's a Replay value in this game. It can be addicting. I was given a key, but I am buying a couple of copies for my colleagues who are into RPG games of this genre.

I got to try this early, off steam, and really enjoyed it! It has a few issues, but overall is the kind of boss-rush type game one can easily enjoy, especially with the replayability it has. https://youtu.be/4kS6IlLF7lE

Very enjoyable RPG game with addictive combat, gameplay, variety of party members and abilities, items and equipments to explore! Cute artwork and graphics, very colorful and bright, great animations and banger soundtrack! I especially liked the Matria boss soundtrack. I was following the story very carefully, a classic children's tale leading to a very cool twist! Buy the game now you won't have regrets ^_^ Starmage deserves it and has done stellar job!

The combat is pretty fun, with lots of unique playable characters and equipment, offering quite a lot of replay value. The music in the late game is epic, too.

Disclaimer: I played the "jam" version of the game previously and provided some feedback to the dev, who I know from the community. This review will be as impartial as possible given that. A small, fun RPG with some unique themes and mechanics, and a VN-style storytelling approach (to be fair, the game is pretty light on storytelling, but it's fine for what it is). The structure is pretty basic: The bad guy wants to ruin Christmas, and your band of mercenaries has to stop him by fighting waves of monsters, punctuated by the occasional bosses as well as interlude scene where you can shop, talk to your team, or even decorate your mercenary lodge with various furnishings you can buy. Emphasis is on fighting waves of monsters and bosses, of course. Most of the "time spent" is on combat, with team management being second. The combat is definitely solid, though it has its quirks and generally favors an all-offense approach, but the reason I think this game holds up is the depth of team management, which includes being able to take 3 party members from a very extensive cast on each run, upgrade their gear, level them up, etc. And while each mercenary resets to level 1 after a run, you keep the gear upgrades and money to accelerate team building in subsequent plays. This also ties into the fact that each playthrough unlocks a new mercenary, adding to the replay factor. (plus the multiple modes of progressively higher difficulty) I will say, after a while having to repeat the same mode 3 times for all the new mercs gets repetitive and I wish you could instead buy them with money or some other mechanism that's less grindy. But otherwise it's a fairly satisfying loop of finding increasingly busted party comps to stomp through the game and unlock new goodies. Pros: Tons of mercenary variety, weapons & armor, etc. Base building if you care for that kind of stuff Humorous and light-hearted story lets you focus on bashing waves of monsters Solid battle mechanics overall Lots of unlockables / replay value Cons: Need to replay each mode 3x Theme novelty wears off after a while Damage scaling sometimes feels wonky and favors trying to DPS race most things A few skills spam so many status effects so quickly it's hard to tell what is going on I haven't beaten the hardest modes yet, but having full cleared the first two modes and started the third, I'd give it a 7.5 / 10, with the potential for that rating to go up once I've had a chance to assess the most challenging content.

Really fun little surprise of a game. The boss rush mode is the highlight—quick, engaging runs that never feel like they overstay their welcome. What kept me coming back though is the ability to mix and match your unlocked mercenaries, which makes every run feel different and lets you experiment with some really fun team combos. The characters have a lot of charm too—there’s some light, flirty dialogue that gives the game personality without overdoing it. And the art is great—Starmage’s work really makes the cast stand out, with some genuinely adorable character designs. Simple, stylish, and replayable. Easy recommend!

Every year since like 2020 I've picked up some sort of game that fits for around or near the December holiday season. Sometimes I do multiple. This year I opened up with a banger here in Heroes of the Seasons. The story is simple enough. You got some villains who want to wreck the holidays for the village of Utania. However, Mayor Nelly ain't taking this one sitting down! She finds mercenaries to hire at the tavern and you're off on several stages of escalating difficulty. You have a small set of mercenaries to choose between at the beginning but that roster quickly expands as you tackle the stages of the game. Every time you want to take on a stage you may choose 3 of these mercenaries. They are broken down this way, by an elemental typing (Physical, Arcane, and Force) and by role (Tanker, Support, Nuker). The game recommends you take one of each role and typing, but you are by no means restricted to doing this. Here's what happens generally as you pick stages in this game: 1. Some villain will appear to want to stop the Christmas holidays in Utania. 2. Characters start at level 1 and will proceed to tackle some easier battles to earn XP. You'll generally fight about three rounds of battles, with the third being a boss battle of some sort. 3. You'll reach a checkpoint, and have the opportunity to save, restock items, and talk to your hired mercenary team for some free stat upgrades, 4. Proceeding from here the battles will get trickier. You'll have a total of 3 battle sets with 3 checkpoints, and then the finale set will have either 1 or 2 major boss rounds. 5. Win and you'll receive a large monetary bonus and other unlockables like new mercenaries, gear, and stages. Sometimes you'll need to replay stages several times so you can buy all the accessory upgrades and equipment you'll need to proceed further into the game. Stages go pretty quick though, so it's generally not that much of a hindrance. Some of the later stages get really difficult! You're going to want to really time your item uses well. I'm looking at you Cameo Stage 1 and your Dove Mode challenge! It felt so good when I figured out what to do to win that one. It honestly goes up there as one of the hardest boss battles I've played in an RPG this year! I would recommend you experiment around with the mercenaries and see which ones you like best. I personally settled on Cade, Quint, and Joanna as my late game team but you could absolutely destroy the game with other setups! It's honestly a lot of fun, and an easy game to recommend to fellow RPG enthusiasts who also want a game that fits the holiday season. I definitely want to play another Starmage game one day after my experiences with this one. Especially if they focus on team building and item management in any way like this game handles it.