Heroland

Heroland is a semi turn-based RPG by developer FURYU Corporation and publishers XSEED Games and Marvelous USA,  wherein you play as a tour guide in an amusement park designed to make its guests feel like heroes in an RPG. I say semi turn-based because everyone has a timer between moves. As you are the tour guide, and not the adventurer, the guests will try and decide how to fight the battles on their own. But this doesn’t mean you can only sit back and watch. You carry the healing items used by the party and you can change the strategy used by the party to fight. To begin with, while you can have as many items as you want in storage, you can only take 3 sets of items with you into the dungeons. As you level up, this limit increases. The party won’t use any of the items themselves, so it is up to you to use the items when you think it is appropriate. While a character is between turns, you can advise them to use a different move if you don’t like what their current predicted move is. Don’t think this means you can just take direct control of the party though. Each time you advise a guest, there is a timer until you can advise again, meaning if you try to advise willy-nilly instead of at key moments, you could miss an opportunity to change a vital command. This timer is actually for all actions you can take: using items, advising guests, and changing the party’s strategy. Changing the party’s strategy allows you to change the actions the characters will take on their own. For example, the “guard-up” strategy will make everyone spend their next turn guarding, the “beat them up” strategy will get them all to focus on one enemy, and “conserve sp” will make them use only normal moves that don’t consume sp (whereas “go wild” does the exact opposite, characters will only use moves that consume sp). As previously mentioned, this shares a timer with when you can advise individual members or use an item, so you need to think carefully on when to interfere. As the dungeon is a theme park, the guests will have a 1-3 approval rating. You see what this rating will look like after every fight and earn money and experience based on what the ratings are at the end of the dungeon. A guest’s approval rating will rise when: they land a critical hit, you use a healing item on them, you advise them, you change the party’s strategy, or you let a member of the party claim loot dropped by the enemies. The only thing that seems to lower approval is if a guest gets KO’d, and even then you can regain the lost points if you revive the guest before the battle ends. While allowing guests to always claim loot drops might seem a wise idea, there is something to keep in mind: you have to pay for the items and equipment the guests use. To gain access to new equipment, you need to claim the corresponding item yourself. I have actually tested this; letting a guest claim a weapon you haven’t claimed before will not unlock it in the shop. Oddly enough, while you as the tour guide use new weapons to unlock them for use by the guests, the guests themselves treat the weapons as souvenirs to be taken home and never to be seen again. Overall, I thought Heroland had an interesting idea and was well designed. As such, I think a fair rating for it is 8/10.

Would recommend to JRPG fans, particularly if you like snarky meta-comedy writing like Disgaea. However, I would get it on sale. I am refunding the purchase until it's 50% off or thereabouts. Main reason? The battle and exploration are very inhibited. You travel along a board game that mainly slows you down and isn't very interesting. So there is no sense of world exploration. Instead, you feel pretty claustrophobic. And you have to grind to level on these claustrophobic little board game maps repeatedly, where the experience is extremely repetitive, giving that empty feeling you associate with grindy mobile games. The story and graphics are charming. Just not worth the hefty price tag.

Playing this game is absolutely charming. Firstly, and probably most importantly for a genre that involves reading a lot of text, the writing is engaging, clever, and hilarious, There plenty of jokes about video game tropes, as expected in a setting that's literally a theme park based on them, but it's not the only type of gag; if it were, the experience would probably have fell flat. There's also plenty of absurd predicaments, and fun interactions between the wild cast of characters, all of whom turn out to have far more personality than I expected...yes, even the dog. Actually playing the game is quite fun too. You're mainly just a guiding role during battles, but there's a balanced level of interaction; you get to participate frequently enough to make a difference, but the AI is smart enough to not need constant hand-holding and micro-management. Overall, I had a delightful experience, and would highly recommend Heroland as a tour destination for any season.

I love casual indie games so I really wanted to like Heroland. But after a few hours or so I just couldn't stand it anymore. [list] [*] The premise of the game is that you are an amusement park tour guide who takes customers on adventures to make them feel like heroes. While this is cute, the game still just plays like an ordinary fantasy idle-RPG. The only difference is that the game constantly bombards you with heavy-handed "jokes" about how everything is actually fake. [*] As a guide, you 'collect' customers with their own unique personalities that you can level up and become friends with. The main reason that I came to despise the game is because there is *so* much dialogue. The characters are cringey and over-the-top and they constantly have annoying *unskippable* skits which ruins the flow of play. [*] Your adventurers fight the enemies by themselves while you standby to provide support, e.g. use healing items, change tactic. For the most part your team do just fine by themselves and will even keep themselves healed up. I pretty much just kept the game on max-speed and stopped to throw out a healing potion or two to stop someone dying. Playing slowly is not engaging enough but you can't just let the game autoplay or people will die. [*] The art style is adorable and there are tonnes of collectables and furniture that you can collect to decorate your room. [/list] I would have happily kept Heroland playing in the background to collect all the cute plushies and furniture, but the constant unskippable dialogue drove me mad. There's also not enough to do during combat to be fun but it still needs you to press a button every now and then to stop people dying so you still have to pay attention. Worst of both worlds.

If you ever wanted the NPC experience while other people LARPed around you... This game is exactly what it feels like. You get to play the roll of a tour guide for a variety of "heroes" as they fight the battle, and you get to offer suggestions and give them pick-me-ups when they nearly get killed because they don't want to heal. At 4 hours in, this game has been an absolute blast. The graphics are nostalgic and charming, the music is catchy and upbeat, and the characters are well-written and lighthearted. So far I've encountered no bugs, typos, or glitches, and the gameplay feels pretty balanced. The game doesn't take itself seriously, and it works really well for a quirky and easygoing adventure where the fact that it's all make-believe is part of the charm. I'm surprised this game didn't take off honestly. Maybe there wasn't enough hype built up beforehand? Maybe it's the price? It's a lot of money to take a total gamble on, but I can attest I feel like I'm getting my money's worth thus far. I'll likely update this review again after I'm through, but I really enjoy it so far!

Have you ever played a mobile free-to-play game? Well this is basically one of those but with a price tag to download it (at least without micro-transactions (as far as I've seen)). The battles are all basically automatic and you only get any say in what happens once every ~12 seconds. What you can do is use an item, give a specific character a single command, or change the tactics of the party as a whole. Change tactics and you have a very real chance of realizing that the healer is no longer healing, or they all chose to attack the wrong enemy after they kill the one that was almost dead, maybe you should've told someone else what to do instead, and so on. But now you have to wait another 12 seconds before you can fix that mistake and now you're in a way worse spot. The writing tries WAY too hard to be funny, in my opinion. Every little bit of dialogue was tiring to me, but I do understand this is a matter of taste. And the battles are, as far as I played, the only parts of actual gameplay. The bits between where you can "explore" the island you're on are just selecting stuff in a menu and getting notifications that something is at a place, going to that place, and finding out that nothing was there why did you go there just move on with the story. I stopped when I saw that the game [i]expected[i] that I go back and grind previous auto-battle segments. They weren't interesting to me when they had bits of story to break up the meh battles, I'm not going to spend hours (probably just 10-15 minutes but it would feel like hours) [i]just[i] battling so I can get to new things. Even if you like those auto-battling mobile games you will be disappointed I feel, as the fights have hit that perfect sweet spot where you will basically guaranteed lose if you stay entirely idle, or get to do nothing for 12 seconds as you wait to get to do your next 2 button presses.

This game does not respect your time. There's a 3-5s loading screen every 5-45s Today everyone has a PC with more than enough memory to load the entire game (1gb installed) into memory multiple times over. You cant keep the tiny sprites and bg images in memory? TIME WASTING SOBs A typical dungeon run might go something like: Start dungeon <LoadScreen> pick first node <LoadScreen> watch autobattle <LoadScreen> watch 'humorous' cut scene <LoadScreen> pick next node <LoadScreen> watch autobattle <LoadScreen> watch 'cute' cut scene <LoadScreen> pick boss node <LoadScreen> watch 'funny 4th wall joke about vidya game bosses' <LoadScreen> boss battle <LoadScreen> 'you did awesome' cut scene <LoadScreen> select loot node <LoadScreen> collect rewards(watch xp bars go up a bit) <LoadScreen> select dungeon exit <LoadScreen> story cut scene that goes on way too long <LoadScreen>

[quote] [h1]前言[/h1] 《Heroland》中文译为英雄岛，是由[url=https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&category1=998%2C994&developer=FURYU%20Corporation]FURYU Corporation[/url]制作的一款像素卡通风格的冒险RPG游戏。在游戏中，玩家需要建立自己的探险小分队，跟随趣味多多的剧情，探险“凶险”的未知世界，发掘故事背后的真相。游戏画面精致，特别是像素的怪物十分的可爱。可惜的是本作不支持中文，好在都是些基础英文单词，推荐有一定英语基础且喜欢可爱风格的日式RPG玩家。 [h1]游戏体验[/h1] [b][u]1️⃣看似简单实则需要一定策略要素的探索玩法：[/u][/b] 　　游戏在探索中可以分为三个阶段：准备阶段、实战阶段以及结算阶段。准备阶段，你可以在这个阶段更换你的英雄阵容（玩家每局探险最多只能带领4名英雄与你一起战斗），更换英雄的装备以及更换携带物品（包含一些血瓶等等），英雄上阵分配，装备道具的携带这都是本作策略玩法的体现。 　　实战阶段，本作与其他RPG游戏不同，玩家是作为指挥官的存在并不会真正参与战斗。当协助能量槽满的时候，玩家可以对你的英雄进行一次指引，你可以让你的英雄攻击指定目标，使用携带物品，查看敌人的详细信息，或者是改变你的英雄战斗策略。 [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932690772]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932690772[/url] 战斗策略共有6种：绿色旗帜（自由战斗），黑色旗帜（集中精力对付一个敌人），白色旗帜（从战斗中撤退），红色旗帜（狂放技能），蓝色旗帜（保留技能，所谓养精蓄锐），黄色旗帜（防御）。如果玩家没有对英雄释放任何协助指令，英雄会自动攻击，你可以通过连线查看敌人/英雄下一回合需要进行的操作，蓝色线条表示的是英雄瞄准的怪物，红色线条表示的是怪物瞄准的英雄，绿色线条表示的是释放回复技能的目标指向。英雄在战斗中除了普通的技能以外，游戏还有一中技能叫做聊天技能，类似于合力技能，值得注意的是该技能不会消耗SP。 　　结算阶段，一般探索完之后会获取一个奖励道具，你可以选择赠送给某个英雄从而增进与他的好感度，这算是额外增加好感度的途径吧。结算时英雄会获得相应的经验、好感度以及他们对自己在这场探索中的满意度。而玩家也会获得经验和金币。 [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932690813]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932690813[/url] [b][u]2️⃣独特且多元化的英雄派对：[/u][/b] 　　英雄岛，英雄岛，英雄肯定少不了。在游戏中玩家可以招募到各式各样的英雄来协助你战斗，大概种类分为5种：坦克类，通常是锤子当做武器，生命值和防御力都是非常的出众，相对的攻击能力就有所下降。勇士类，通常是剑当做武器，物理攻击比较突出，魔法伤害低。法师类，法杖作为武器，高魔法伤害，但是和普通法师一样是个脆皮。辅助类，高魔法但是是治疗魔法，防御力也是非常的低。平衡类，各项属性适中。英雄除了外观不一样，各项面板也有所不同，玩家可以根据自己喜好对英雄进行亲近和培养。 [b][u]3️⃣小小像素风配合趣味剧情绘制大世界：[/u][/b] 　　游戏画风全部采用的是卡通像素风，制作组像是施了魔法一般让物体曲折摆动，让本该是平面死物变得活了似的，栩栩如生，但唯独可惜的是游戏没有配音，完全的叽叽喳喳的鸟语对话，让游戏掉了一分乐趣和享受。游戏的剧情虽然很平凡，但是配合卡通画风，让玩家游玩起来倍感舒适和悠闲。 [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932690917]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1932690917[/url] [h1]总结及推荐人群[/h1] [b]优点：[/b] ❤️ 栩栩如生的卡通像素画风 ❤️ 趣味多多的游戏剧情 ❤️ 丰富的英雄以及物品系统 ❤️ 带有一定策略元素的地牢回合制冒险玩法 ❤️ 好感度系统 [b]缺点：[/b] 💔 不支持中文 💔 要是有人物配音可能会更好 [b]推荐人群：[/b] [b]有一定英语基础且喜欢可爱风格的日式RPG玩家。[/b] [quote] 游玩百态，将游玩心得用汉语化作玩家的指明灯，(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧ [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35402408/]点击这里关注汉化语录~[/url] 如果喜欢这个评测，请点个赞让更多人看见 [/quote] [/quote]

I was quite intrigued by a game that boasts the director from Fantasy Life, the director of Mother 3 in the role of writer, the artist of Mother 3 & Legend of Mana, and the musician of SMT4. Unfortunately, Heroland is nothing like any of that. Heroland is 9 chapters of you in the role of a tour guide at an RPG-flavored theme park guiding guests through dungeons, usually three per chapter. Guests take on the role of Tank, Warrior, Mage or Healer, and you always have a party of four and you always want one of each if possible. Some guests are Freelancers and can fill any slot without complaint. But as the guide, you do not fight. You get a turn every so often, and you can either give a general direction to the whole party, a specific order to one character, or use an item. Otherwise the characters and monsters take their turn in this active time battle system without any of your input. And when I say you guide the party, I mean you click the button to go to the next battle in a straight line, though maybe sometimes you get to choose which enemy group out of 2 or 3 you'll fight. You never move your character around in any environment. It's so streamlined, the battles play themselves and anything you control is just menus. Heroland fails to strike a balance. On the one hand it wants to be fun and lighthearted and easy on the input for casual playing, but the Steam version will always fully pause when it's not the active window and there's just enough input required in battles to save the guests from their bad decisions that you can't take your eye off it. And it's frustrating how long battles take for how little there is for you to do, and the pomp and circumstance of starting a fight, winning a fight, going to the next one, and completing a tour takes about 10 minutes and you will have done closer to 10 seconds worth of input. It's slow and bloated. But even more bloated is the story. The characters will never. Shut. The. Eff. Up. The actual plot of the game with a royal succession crisis, the theme park being founded on real life legends and possibly being run by the Dark Lord himself, that's interesting enough. But there's 20+ party members with their own sidequests that you wanna do because you need to grind levels evenly because you never know who'll be required for the next main story quest. All of the sidequests aren't even diegetic nor do they have to make sense. But whether it's sidequest or main, whether it's dialog or mission title, the "wonderful writing full of intelligent humour and wit" that Ollie Reynolds of NintendoLife calls it is just an endless barrage of REFERENCES. Timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly Doctor Who reference. One Punch Man reference. Dragon Ball reference. Breaking the fourth wall to address the state of the manga artist industry and fair working conditions for the game's developers. Somebody calls the tour guide's fairy Buzz Buzz and she literally says "Nice reference" because Earthbound. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Avalon Code, The X-Files, nothing is safe from being referenced in the sidequest mission titles. I don't even remember the memetic origin of the phrase "That's just how it is on this ♥♥♥♥♥ of an earth" but it was hot enough in 2019 to make it in the game verbatim. They allude to tentacle mpreg because fandoms make weird stuff. Have I belabored the point enough? It took me 55 hours to beat the game and they were speaking in references the whole time and well into the post-game. I cannot recommend this as an RPG. It is serviceable as a mindless grind if you need something to do with your hands while listening to music and podcasts, but even then your time is better spent elsewhere.

Very interesting game. Mechanics are easy - you control a character, tour guide, who every 10-12 seconds can give an order to characters that are fighting. In battle your 4 characters spend some time thinking about which of the three available skills to use (character skill, unlimited weapon skill, limited weapon skill), after they decide they charge it and execute. Battle goes in real time, but you can pause it at any moment although you can't really do anything unless your character is ready to give a command, in which case he can use an item, order single character to use a certain skill or guard or change strategy for whole team. You travel through dungeons (tours) which consist of several zones - which are usually event or battle and single treasure at the end of the dungeon. Each chapter new type of dungeon is unlocked and several tours become available either by progressing in story or by increasing relationship with other characters. All completed story and side-story tours after completion remain as free-to-play tours which you can run any time you want. Humor in the game is rather funny, characters and whole game look innocent but dialogue sometimes are very mature (even though they are very rarely serious). Completing the game should take 30-40 hours, while 100% it should be difficult and by my estimate will require 60+ hours as one achievement requires collecting all Furnitures which will require repeating same tours several times until all treasures available to it drop (each dungeon completion drops only one treasure at the end).