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Classic RPG fun, with a twist

Brave Hero Yuusha is an RPG whose aesthetics harken back to the RPGs of old, but whose plot does anything but.

Graphics:
The 8-bit style of the game is reminiscent of old-time RPGs, as is clear from the screenshots. If you have a nostalgic soft spot for old-timey graphics you'll love this. Even if you don't, the level of polish in enemy design, battle backgrounds, etc. is obvious. I started playing RPGs in the Pokemon Gold era, so the nostalgia factor wasn't as strong for me here; even so I think the graphics were quite nice.

Music
Unlike many 8-bit RPGs, this game has a wide variety of music tracks, with different pieces for different dungeons, a memorable boss theme, etc. Despite the fact that the game is only 5-6 hours long, I already have several tracks from the game stuck in my head, and that can only be a good thing. I especially liked the theme that plays when the villains are conversing in their lair.

Design:
Towns and dungeons are compact and to the point. As a result, there is very little of the game that you won't find a reason to traverse. The fact that you need to collect magic pages in most dungeons forces you to explore most of it, but this never felt like a chore. Rather, it focuses dungeon-going and prevents you from missing important areas. Even while exploring the whole dungeon, it doesn't take forever, which is good since you'll run into Zubats enemy encounters fairly freqently. One minor complaint is that it frequently took me multiple tries to escape from battle in areas where I was more than strong enough to comfortably take down the boss. Mercifully, an HP and MP restoring crystal is present just prior to most boss fights as well.

Battle Mechanics:
While the game is initially an enter-mashing fest, once you have a few moves room for strategy is quickly introduced. This is especially true for the boss fights, as most of them have gimmicks. For example, one boss switches between multiple forms that specialize in different types of attack and have different defenses. Random encounters wear down your resources just enough to be threatening, but not so much that you need to spam healing items. The party mage usually got low on MP just before the boss while casting normal spells (I probably could have cast stronger ones and restored the MP with items, but I'm too cheap to buy consumables regularly). Some of the bosses later in the game seemed a bit on the easy side, but maybe that was due to my incidentally level grinding while searching for the last few moon medals (I never found the last one). Speaking of level grinding, in contrast to some old-time RPGs, this game requires no grinding whatsoever.

Plot:
This game takes the typical tale of a seventeen year old hero going off to save the princess from the demon lord and beautifully satirizes it.


Maybe we could attack him with catapults? Get it? Stone's throw? ...the jokes in the game are better than mine.

Before the story can even get going, the enigmatic Puppeteer has thrown the original plot to the winds and forced the Yuusha, demon lord, and princess to team up and try to stop him. While you do basically end up collecting MacGuffins anyway (magic pages to restore the demon lord's castle), the little details along the way add up to a lot.



But it's a lot more than that. Characters examine their roles in the story (and hence in life), and by the end of the game the tropes of damsel in distress, compulsively heroic voiceless protagonist, and pointlessly evil big bad are all intimately deconstructed. Alongside the Yuusha's tale is the story of Edward, a schoolboy in the real world. How his story is significant to the quest of Yuusha and co. isn't revealed until later on (though I managed to figure it out myself about a dungeon before the full explanation). The emotional beats to the plot will keep you hooked, even if "Puppeteer causes chaos somewhere" is still your most frequent reason for travelling the globe.

Overall
With a polished 8-bit aesthetic, memorable music, and an all but stereotypical plot, there is a lot to like here.

Posts

Pages: 1
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323
10/01/2015 10:03 AM

Yeah, I never felt like I needed to level grind or go out of my way. The encounters were frequent, but never 1 or 2 steps. I think it's about 30. Strangely the game memorizes how many steps you have taken (press F12 frequently enough and you can see how this works.) Did you notice when escaping from the monsters that summons that you see all the possible monster it can summon?

But the only boss fight I found interesting was the one with all the crystals and the 2 protectors. I found the strategy of casting status effects against the bosses while buffing and sometimes healing your own party could win you these battles.
Darkstar1
100
10/02/2015 02:14 AM
author=kory_toombs
The encounters were frequent, but never 1 or 2 steps.
It certainly could have been much worse.


author=kory_toombs
Did you notice when escaping from the monsters that summons that you see all the possible monster it can summon?
I didn't, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. This is actually due to a bug in vanilla ace. You need a custom script to fix it.


author=kory_toombs
But the only boss fight I found interesting was the one with all the crystals and the 2 protectors.
That was definitely the hardest boss for me, partially because I didn't know what to do at first. None of the bosses ever actually killed me, though. The top tier of healing spells felt unnecessary considering that I got by on base level heals until almost endgame.
Pages: 1