Heroes Rise: The Hero Project

The main problem with this game is that instead of selecting choices that you want to make, you have to look at the wordings of the choice and try to GUESS what the developer think of those choices. Even worst, if you guess wrongly, you lose the game. I guess it is really like a reality game where you have to guess the preference of the judges, but it does not feel super hero worthy at all. Unlike the first game where I get the feeling of actually giving my super hero a personality, this one seems to be about making random choice with unknown consequence again and again.

Fittingly for a sequel, this is pretty much the same as Heroes Rise: The Prodigy. If you've played that and liked it, you'll like this one. If you didn't, then you won't like this one either. Both are too linear for my tastes, though to be fair the writing in this one has improved somewhat.

Considering the price (I got it for 4 euros), I really enjoyed this. Actually, I paid 4 euros for "The Hero Project" and "The Prodigy", but I had mistaken the order and played "The Hero Project" first. It took me around 4 hours or so to finish, but it was quite a nice 4 hours. It's definitely not an A-list story, I'd expected a bit more and it did end rather abruptly, but it's quite a nice little thing. I've wasted more money on A-list games that provided less entertainment. If you want a nice little distraction, get it. If you're hard to please, go write your own damn book.

So, after my disappointment with The Prodigy, I was set to never touch this series again - once I had gone back and finished it, of course. A family member assured me I was wrong and that the series got better in The Hero Project - to their credit, they were right. However, even in that case, THP barely struggles to make *average*. The writing style continues to be quite sophomoric and not in the entertaining sense of being young. It's sophomoric in the sense of awkward phrasing, juvenile handling of sex and bizarre, immersion-shattering rants about correct gender pronouns. It's immature and banal. Look, I get that more games should deal with sex and gender, and I get that interactive fiction is one of the best genres for it, but Zachary Sergi needs to handle it with a bit more deftness. Credit for attempting it. To Sergi's additional credit, there are some interesting choices in this game. I thought many of the ones relating to Null and Lucky were quite good and hard to choose from. Unfortunately, much like the previous entry in the series, THP suffers from the stark feeling of being stuck on rails with an author that's waiting to jump out and go 'aha!' at you for not picking the right choice (while giving you no indication of what might be the right choice unless you *pay for it as an in-game app store-esque purchase*. THP, however, seems to have less of those ridiculous options like The Prodigy had (infilrating and forgetting to take off your hero costume, anyone?) - so, that's some improvement. But it's still not embracing the strength of an interactive medium because good IF rewards choices and does its best to disguise the rails (eg; Choice of Robots). Much of the worldbuilding and setting continues to be a bit on the nose - again, it's very sophomorric. The fact that Sergi continues to interject 'slugger' into so many sentences as a catch all term that seems to be a general epithet, noun, verb, adjective and so on is lazy. Honestly, if there is one thing I could remove from this whole trilogy, it's this word. As a whole, the world feels very derivative of superhero comics and doesn't offer much in the way of originality. For a simple premise (superhero reality TV) the plot has too many characters (of course, expecting you to remember/care about all of them) and a slow development where things just seem to happen. I'm not sure how much control over my story I actually had, thanks to the aforementioned of feeling like I'm on rails. What's worse, is that the characters aren't particularly likeable - again, due to the writing style. So, what's good about it? Well, there's a fair bit of customisation. If you're looking to feel like you're in a superhero story and you want a bit of a self-insert fantasy where you can craft your dreamworld to exacting specifications then this is for you. If you want something that advances the medium of IF, offers interesting, branching choices with clever writing and wit - avoid. As someone who looks for the latter, I cannot recommend THP. Additionally, I ran into a bug near the end that caused me to need to restart my entire story. I won't mark the game down for that but it was quite unfortunate.

10/10 The best one within heroes rise trilogy To me, it has the most lengthy story ( 5 hours for one playthrough comparing to 3 hours for the other two The most difficult choice to make [spoiler] ( where you have to choose between dream and friendship [/spoiler] And the best conflict in the whole game It's not as good as the Prodigal, it's better

For a text-based game it's quite good, the writing's solid and it took me about 4 hours to finish, which is a fair length for a game this cheap, I mean, some of the more modern Call Of Duty titles have shorter singleplayer campaigns. Some people may point to the fact that the game is linear and that occasionally your choices may make you feel "Boxed In", however, the choices presented to you are great enough and of a large enough depth that you may deviate from the main story arc and play the kind of hero you may want to play, however you will soak the fallout for whatever decisions you might choose. In short; the game is good, and gives you more entertainment than expected of a game with such a small pricetag. Oh, and if you have the few extra units of whatever currency you possess, buy the bundle or the perfect legend guide + warning system. They help in the long run.

This was an infuriating story, without counting the “on rails” feeling that still exists from the previous book. I feel like half the time I have no control. There are feelings I want to convey to characters that I just cannot because it’s never dialogue option. Your MC getting in arguments with characters and immediately losing them when the person they were talking to just walks away from the conversation. Characters spitting out witty remarks to you and your character just lets it happen. Hell, the challenges feel so completely bogus, you can’t really make out how the scoring works half the time even with explanations. It still bugs me that my character is happy about things I MYSELF am very disappointed about! Spoiler Warning I really want to profess that the hero project made people who you thought were friends and love ones, be the most selfish people ever. Jenny, Black Magic, and Lucky were characters that I wanted to understand and get along with, but this stupid hero project brought the worse in them. Jenny was someone I thought was supposed to be your friend but is instead constantly forcing you to participate in her stupid investigation or you lose opinion on her and without trying to understand where you are coming from (needing the money and trying to help your grandma) she says its her way or the highway. What a completely unbelievable way of thinking when you know the MC got into this thing to help make life better for themselves and she is just becoming more direct competition while outright telling you to basically screw your dreams and leave the project because her job is much more important. Black Magic has completely changed, all she cares about is winning, she’s hardly there for romance and when she is there, its only because you decided to listen to her and join her team, any other time its her focus that she wins and you’re just some side character for her to mess around with when you do good. For a good portion of the story I just wanted to explain to her how upset I was about everything but my stupid character keeps saying and thinking things that do not relate to me at all. Lucky felt manipulative, she left a note that I think was supposed to trigger black magic, but you can’t even investigate that note further, your character just accepts its existence and goes on. How am I supposed to trust and care about lucky when she is clearly trying to manipulate, she even had the audacity to guilt trip me about how she has nothing. Am I supposed to care after feeling like she gives no care about my feelings? Its so stupid, I feel like I cannot like anyone in this damn story because they only care about themselves. Grandma is probably the only likable character, even after lying to your face about your powers last book. I kind of liked the story premise but find it so frustrating when I feel many things are out of my control and I am so sick and tired of jury and everyone always have the upper hand due to plot armor without any room for me to breath and get an advantageous lead. It just seems like I do good one time and then I get slammed down 80% of the time. It’s like I’m some sort of side character for everyone else. The ending didn’t feel up to par with all the annoyances I went through but the very final epilogue scene was very interesting. I still can’t recommend this game at all.

I don't even know how to start this. I'm leaving this same review on each of the Trilogy pages because it's an across the board review of 5 out of 5 or 108 out of 100 or A++ or whatever you can think of. This has been one of the most emotional, roller-coastering rides of my life, and it happened in a videogame. One that's entirely text-based. You start off as a little hero still trying to figure out who you are and you end as a big one, no matter what path you take, knowing exactly who you are. You'll go through so many ups and downs and surprises and disappointments and happiness and sadness and successes and failures, you'll get into all the great beat em up action that comes with being a hero and all the baggage and consequences, too. But if you stick to who you are, just like in life, you'll pull through and make the right calls, and become a legend. The fate of the world is in your hands. The fate of your world is in your hands. Now get to it. And buy this trilogy.

I don't know. I kinda quite the game in the middle. It felt like every choice i made was just bad. It felt like pick this choice or something bad happens. Like the previous game it feels like there is one path that leads to good results but if you stray from that path your ass i gonna get kicked and everybody hates you. I tried playing the good guy but most of the heroes and other characters are just their to screw you over for no particular reason. And a save system or a checkpoint system would really help. If you make one mistake (miss clicking or misinterpreted a choice) you really screw yourself or have to restart the game and hope you remember all the choices you made. I understand that they do this because every choice you make matters but restarting the game because 1 mistake is really annoying. Couldn't they made it optional to activate saves or something. Also i just hated that you couldn't catch a break in the prequel and in this game. Everybody just hates you even if you played the absolute hero type. It's part of the story so okay but they just rub it in your face every single time you talk to someone. I also played fallen hero rebirth and i must say i really enjoyed that game more because it was a little more forgiving and because you actually felt powerful but you had to be careful for your weaknesses. This game is not bad but i really started to get annoyed because i had a feeling they forced you to go 1 specific road. It didn't feel like i really had a choice more like pick this or get screwed over. Not bad but too frustrating for me personally.

I will probably try to play this game again but as it is, it seems rushed and poorly written. I don't know if any of you have had a childhood crush, but you don't immediately want to date them upon finding them again over a decade latter. In general the Hero Rises series has a very... limited sense of choices but it felt so much worse in this game. Additionally, in order to finish the game you need to take a specific path and aren't allowed mobility to get there really. It was very frustrating to lose and be punished by losing my Fame because the developer didn't want to include a proper save function. Additionally, your main "Romantic Lead" from the first game completely changes character. It seemed before like Black Magic was a lonely person wearing a mask and trying to just get through it. Black Magic, however, despite proclaiming how they want you to accept them will be stringent with any choice you make outside of their expectation and break up with you. It's very frustrating. I don't think I will finish this game, despite having read over a dozen other CoG and HG games. I am kind of annoyed, honestly, especially because the overall plot just seems so... disjointed, from the prequel.