Hero's Sword

Every now and then, you come across an RPG Maker game that looks mediocre. At times you often avoid it's glance, yet sometimes you feel compelled to look at the gamepage just to grill the hell out of the maker for his/her terrible mapping/etc. That's at least my perspective, anyway. Once you finally get to play the product, however, you usually get precisely what you expect, and well... The creators are usually new, so most of these mistakes are excusable (again, in my opinion). There comes an instance, however, where you play a sub-par looking game, and it is actually about "x" times worse than you've imagined it to be, to the point where you simply can't forgive the creator for making such flaws. This is, unfortunately, the case with Hero's Sword.

About the game, it was stated that this was part of a 4-day game making project of some sort, so needless to say, I didn't have high expectations. This is fair, considering the limited time to make it. I at least though that this would be an enjoyable, short ride that I can play every now and then. Now that I've finally played this game, however, there is no way in hell that I would.


If you see this image precisely as it is, your best bet is to hit the F12 button on your keyboard and pray to God you don't encounter this again.

To start of, Hero's Sword is as bland as a year-old sack of potato chips. The storyline is simplistic, almost Dragon Quest-ish. You and some knight guy (who have some of the weirdest names I've ever heard in a game) are trying to save the princess from an evil overlord. On the other hand, a generic story like that is somewhat made up by having interesting characters that drive the plot, but this game doesn't even have that. The characters feel as dull and uninspired as almost everything else in this game. There is almost no reason to care about the story of this game, let alone feel immersed in it. What you will care about, however, is how to keep your sanity from the game's unforgiving game play.

Hero's Sword's game play is a horrid beast that reeks of mutant rat shit mixed in with dog piss... That's at least as best as I can describe it, I am sorry if that sounded profane. Hero's Sword's game play is probably the worst aspect about the game.

To describe how bad it is, take this instance: You are given two characters to start your adventure with, a whiny boy with a good INT stat and no magic learning pool to use it with (a flaw I like to call "Flareon Syndrome") and a slow-as-hell warrior with a good attack stat, but no offensive skills. As soon as you step outside the first town, you get treated to an army of cute little slimes that are not only faster than you, but can easily take your hits and recover full health at random. Oh, and you also get to face a bird who will dodge your attacks about 70% of the time, and it does a good 100+ damage to you in every hit. Finally, you gain a new, fast party member who just so happens to be a bunny chick, but her attack stat is weak, and she has low HP, and this addition doesn't even solve your problems, as enemies do nothing but DODGE your every move.

Seriously, I can understand the author was trying to make this game difficult, but difficulty, in any well-made game, is something that is overcome through use of making good choices at the right time. This game has no rememdy to overcome this "difficulty". Being able to kill these dodgy monsters is basically a matter of rolling the dice. Pure luck. Such a system is not challenging, it is obnoxious.

As if the battles in this game couldn't get any more anal, the skills you aquire throughout the game essentially suck. You get basic "support" skills that inflict status problems and buffers. Ideally, this isn't bad, but when these skills miss an enemy MOST OF THE TIME and your defense/offense buffs don't remedy the piss-poor hit-ratio of your party members, these skills are nearly useless. I was mashing the "attack" button throughout the majority of the game, as doing anything else simply wouldn't help.

A common player who experienced the suffering caused by this game would quit at a particular point, but since I have nerves of steel, I somehow got close to the end. This is where the game finally started to pick up a little bit. I had more skills to dish out and give me favorable odds in battles, and I was highly anticipating what would happen next. I met face-to-face with the Dark Lord himself, I kick his ass by paralyzing him and pounding away... Just to find that I am taken to a completely dark screen where I can't see anything. At this point, I gave up playing. I have already endured hell with this game and now it has reached a point where it's unplayable. Fortunately, I took a look in the game's editor, and found out I didn't miss much with the uninspired ending of this insufferable game.

Oh, speaking of that, I curiously checked the enemy section of the database, and what I found was the epitome of facepalm:


... Yeah. These are the bad boys you will be facing in the game. Want to know something cool about the Spider and the Follower? They appear in troops of about 6-8...

In conclusion, if Hero's Sword did not have so many terrible design choices, it would at least be a tolerable game, save for it's mediocre mapping and unengaging story. I have honestly tried to find an aspect that would at least allow me to forgive this game for it's mistakes, but I didn't. There simply aren't any.

So here is a quick rundown:

Story: 2/5
- You are a Squire travelling with a knight attempting to save the princess from an evil demon. Seen this before? The storyline is nothing to really care about. Even worse, however, is that the characters aren't really worth caring for either. Everyone feels slightly dead, and only the main character, the squire guy whose name escapes me, seems to have a clear personality. Keep in mind that this is not even close to the biggest problem with the game.

Gameplay: 1/5
- From the start of the game, you are way too under-powered by comparison to the rest of the enemies on the game. Battles can take almost half an hour simply due to the fact that you cannot hit an enemy due to high evasion stats. You can't even remedy such a problem with your equipment or spells, making the game's overall difficulty fake and dependent on chance. The encounter rate in this game is also too high, and most, if not often, you can't really escape the encounters because the enemies outspeed you too greatly. The game is also riddled with bugs that may even prevent you from completing the game. Without a doubt, the gameplay is what truly murdered this game.

Graphics: 2/5
- Generic default RTP graphics used in horrible ways. The maps often have too much empty space and look uninspired and plain. This is especially true with the world map, and it even causes navigational problems as most areas look exactly the same. Even if this was a 4-day project, the maps still could have been better than this.

Sound: 3/5
- Nothing much to say about it. It's RTP city, and there was no tune that felt really out-of-place. I guess I can't really appreciate it since I've heard it so many times.

Overall: 1.5
- Hero's Sword is in desperate need of reworking. The author might want to gain a better understanding of difficulty in games, so that he does not repeat the same mistakes he made with this. Even though he had a limited time to make this, it doesn't make up for the bad choices he made with this game, and I hope he can learn from this and apply it to his future projects. On a side note, don't give this game a chance, unless you are a pure masochist.