Heroes Rise: The Prodigy

The game asked me if I have what it takes to become a legendary hero. Having played and abandoned my playthrough, I can tell you that no, I don't. If being a legendary hero means having to wrangle one-dimensional characters and mostly meaningless choices, then I'm clearly not cut out for the job. Lemme treat you to a few "highlights"; give you an idea by what I mean. I'm Bait, aspiring Capeclown. I can fly and shoot beams 'n stuff. Some gangers keep beating the crap out of each other around my block, so me and my sidekick decide to break them up. Do I... [i]use wind and blow them away?[/i] [i]slamdunk the ground and knock them over?[/i] [i]spirit bomb the hell outta the ground and send 'em flying?[/i] Trick question. Doesn't matter. I get poisoned. Oh well. Moving on. I've cornered a thief who stole the super dangerous McGuffin. He's bolting, but I manage to fry his emergency teleporter. Now he's got an energy-reflecting sword. Do I... [i]matrix kung fu his teeth in?[/i] [i]blast his energy-reflecting sword with more energy?[/i] Trick question. Doesn't matter. I knock him out. Oh well. Moving on. I'm fighting a professional hitman in a run-down warehouse after I found some mad suspicious evidence. He's using strings 'n stuff. Do I... [i]spin2win energyblast his wiry butt?[/i] [i]eletrocute the strings and zap the everloving daylight outta him?[/i] [i]third option to highlight how pointless the choice itself is?[/i] Trick question. He messed me up. My $sidekick saved the day. You get where I'm going with this. This is neither power fantasy nor choice-based storytelling. The story's being told at you. You can, occasionally, pick which part you wanna see, but don't think for a second that you're being given any control over what's happening. The character Black Magic - the legally distinct Teen Tital goth girl - is a great example. You're being told, repeatedly, how you keep fantasizing about having her lips on your junk. Whew. Not a fan? Maybe you chose the option to not get involved, thinking it means something? Too bad, you're still being told that BRO SHES SUPER HOT BRO YOU WANNA BANG HER BRO UUUGHHH. All you did was opt out of the following sex scene. She's still gonna try and gaslight you into bed. I didn't expect an exhausively branching narrative. I didn't expect some Watchman-esque deconstruction of a superhero genre. All I was hoping for was cool stuff happening as a result of the choices I made. This ain't it, chief.

Don't be suckered in by the promise of an "epic interactive novel where your choices control the story" - this game is painfully linear from start to finish. The railroading is transparently obvious even on a first playthrough, with the vast majority of choices at best changing a minor bit of flavor text and at worst being immediately ignored by the next passage. Even the few significant choices you can make come with their fair share of railroading - especially when it comes to the story's sole love interest, who the narration repeatedly tells you you're infatuated with and who you'll be forced into a fade-to-black sex scene with unless you actively choose the most negative dialogue choice in every interaction you have with them. All of this might be somewhat forgivable if the story and characters were good enough, but unfortunately that's not the case. The characters are cliched and one-note, the writing is laughably corny, one of the central conflicts later on involves the player character getting mad at their grandma over something that no sane person would be upset about, and the climax of the story features an ass-pull of epic proportions. Worst of all, the aforementioned love interest, who the audience is clearly intended to sympathize with, comes across more as a narcissistic sociopath who [spoiler]fakes a villain attack as a glorified booty call, and is then revealed to have a secret dungeon full of disabled children and old people whose life force they drain to fuel their powers - with the justification that since they're old and disabled and whatnot, this in the only way their lives will have any meaning.[/spoiler] Take it from me: if you're looking for an interactive story where your choices matter, you'd be much better served digging up an old Choose Your Own Adventure children's book than suffering through this trainwreck.

So i got this game in hope that a choose your own adventure with superheros would be fun HOWEVER. All choice is out of the window seemingly sending the main character down an automated path with very little difference to the text based on choice picked. Romance is plain with no substance, choose who you want and get one fade to back scene and thats it, They dont save you or help you at all in the whole story which would have helped. The combat and powers are limited for a choose your own adventure, plus the power level and legacy levels makes no sense it rises and drops so wildly that makes no sense and dosent change how the story reacts to your "choices". The choices you get to stop the villain in the game; mean nothing. You save lives like a hero would but hundreds still die and your to blame, making your hero name and legacy gets ruined. You kill the villain and become a villain yourself but save thousands of live - pointless choice or backwards. Lastly, i have bought several of these choose your adventure games and i have no F-ing clue why ALL of them have to have heart destroying story where the main character goes through terrible situations one after another no matter their choices to be good or save lifes and always gets emotionally ruined. TBH its NOT good writing, if its just that. We need it to be like a roller coaster up and down but all of these games stay with the downs. Im disappointed in games like these, i love choosing your own adventure games but id rather play dnd or a dating sim then get my heart destroyed over a game that lies about giving choice and romance. Heros are supposed to win but in this game you dont so overall: I dont recommend this game. Sorry to the writer and devs but this isnt what i ws hoping for a superhero adventure game.

Although I have some fun playing this game ,I have to say I don't recommend it ,especially if it's not on sale. [h2]Pros [/h2] decent storytelling you can choose your romanceable character Black magic 's gender and a sidekick from three different candidates [h2]Cons [/h2] [h3] No choices that greatly impacted the narrative. [/h3] At the first playthrough ,I was not satisfied about the outcome so I restart it immediately.But I find out no matter which choice I pick ,I always screw up the first mission. In the end of game ,I find out that this is mean to be screwed up, which is pretty annoying because it's a "choose your own adventure" game . My choices actually changed NOTHING except the legendary number, which is just a number in the status menu.Even with a high ledendary number, all the characters just treat me the same way ,resulting in a lack of variety in the narrative. Besides, the story is not new and original , which makes sense because this game was released at 2012. Recent years we got so many new movies ,manga and animation about superheroes that Hero Rise just don't stand out among the others .If there were a movie based on this game ,I will definitely feel sleepy while watching it . [h3] Terrible narrative about romance relationship. [/h3] There is no deep conection between protagnist and Black Magic .Their ralationship is lack of depth and almost only based on sexual attraction. .At first I thought maybe protagnist's parents have saved Black magic's life ,explaning why they treat protagnist so differently, but this is not the case.This part of story feels like a fan's fantasy:"I met my celebrity crush and I'm excited.I don't know why but somewhow they thought I was a unique person unlike others and fell in love with me immediately ,hooray! "By the way, there is far too little discription about Black Magic's physical appearence, they just used your celebrity crush's face, I mean , are there any lazier authors out there ? What surprise me more is that *[spoiler] Agent Jenny Yu is a romanceable character, but you can't confess your feeling until finish the final battle,so what's the point. [/spoiler] It just doesn't make sense. [h3] Plot twist is not that good.[/h3] [spoiler] Sidekick is actually the villian [/spoiler],which I find to be overused and illogical. In my opinion ,[spoiler] if the journalist was the villian [/spoiler],that would make sense. The relationship development between protagnist and [spoiler]sidekick,in my case was Sparrow [/spoiler] is my favorite part , but author just ruin it and I can literally hear he laugh at me :"HAHA! you fell into that trap !" [h2]Overall [/h2] It's a decent story and also a terrible COG game.Besides,there are two sequel games for this game . According to the nagetive reviews from those games , problems that mentioned above haven't been fixed at all ,so don't bother to get to know Hero Rise series if you can't stand that your choices actually don't matter.

I'm gonna finish playing it through, eventually, just to try to get to the other games in the series since I already bought them. But.. Meh. It acts like a game but its actually very opinionated - most options don't actually do anything except costing you various amounts of power before leading to the same railroaded outcomes. The few that do take delight in telling you how your play was 'wrong' and you'll get punished for it, rather then playing off into stories that encourage your character's development. The character customization is basically picking the colors of your suit and power (which never really comes up again). The romance option is basically force-fed fan-service - 'hey, I just met you, and I'm a super-rich gorgeous powerful hero, so this is totally crazy, but I want you to ravish me and I wanna give you stuff and you're the person I've been waiting for my whole life!'. And the character's personality is just.. weird.. You have almost no real control over it - something happens that you're thinking 'yea, that seems fine' and all the character's options are '(1) I will NEVER forgive you (2) You had no right! (3) I'm not a child anymore! (4) saying something I'll regret!' Just... dudette.. chill... What is your malfunction and where is all this coming from... Just.. *sigh* There's better games out there is what I'm saying. Try 'Fallen Hero' if you like this genre. Its a villain story but can come through as a hero story, and it is miles above this one. On second thought I'm just gonna close this game, this isn't worth the frustration

As noted in other reviews, your choices don't matter. One of the first set of choices presented offers 3 choices. One choice is a dead end that forces your to choose one of the other two. Those two choices take you to the same result. This is true throughout the game. The writing is good so if you want to read a story that you have no control over, then this purchase is for you.

By chapter 4 it doesn't even pretend to have an illusion of choice anymore and you're just on the rails trying to figure out which option the author intended for you to use so you don't fail.

I can only give this game a lukewarm recommendation. PROS: 1. A fun villain who isn't afraid to actually be pretty darn evil while at the same time not being entirely one dimensional. 2. A fairly decent number of events that occur throughout the course of the story CONS: 1. Simplistic representation of the legal system, e.g., self-defense apparently isn't a real legal doctrine in the super-hero world 2. Simplistic moral choices that the game wants you to think are complex 3. Poor back stories for characters and the environment, e.g., how powers arose. 4. Rushed romances, e.g., kissing your love interest the second time you see them despite never having actually interacted with them in a romantic way (or even a meaningful way) 5. Choices that you can't actually choose because the story will just re-direct you back to another choice 6. Making a choice and having the game force you to assign a particular reason to it as opposed to being able to explain why you made a choice 7. The presentation of crime families through charts that you won't care about because you have very little interaction with most of the listed characters 8. Making decisions about choices that have no clear right or wrong and therefore appear random. Overall, I had fun with this game but it could have been a lot better. It just comes off as a bit shallow.

Coming from the versus books by the same author this entire series felt so forced. You have no player agency, and it seems like the author never wants you to be happy with your choices when you do get to make them, forcing you pick between 3 options, 2 of them being the wrong options and making you feel like you failed, and the other one being the authors choice.

其实这部游戏本身质量还行，毕竟是上古老作品，有些故事情节放现在来看真的老套了但在当时来说还可以。但鉴于这是一个系列作品，续作似乎越来越差，还是点不推荐了。这个作者最大的问题就是“我不要你觉得，我要我觉得”，他脑子里其实有一条官方故事线了，玩家的选项对故事没太大影响，可攻略对象也比较无趣。