Has-Been Heroes

I wish they would make a part two. A sequel. Something. This game is one of a kind and everything about it is unique. Sadly we will probably never see anything like it ever again.

This was one of my most favorite games. I firmly believe the only reason it didn't take off was because folks could not perform at the level the game asked you to. The game was super challenging, and very rewarding.

A very fun one to come back to every few years. Can be difficult if you don't remember the mechanics, I'm interested to see for how many decades I'll keep coming back to this gem.

I've kept an eye on Has-Been Heroes since it's launch. Partly because it stood out as as one of the few games available on the Switch close to the consoles release, but also because it looked like an interesting and challenging idea to translate over a strategy game of this complexity to a controller/console design. It turns out, it is. Controlling the lanes feels clumsy and stiff, the heroes are weaker than wet noodles, and information is often difficult to parse with little text boxes and symbols all over the place. The difficult felt unfair and instantly punishing in a way that took awhile to understand what went wrong, and by the time I was starting to understand how to play the game, I'd lost all desire to play any more of it.

Once you get the mechanics, it's smooth sailing, and quite the fun ride!

If the devs would play their game enough, they'd know this one needs balance. You roll on everything, then get a boss that is imune to physical damage, with nothing to counter it cause of rng. Then it's just turns into a fight where you control all enemies, they can't kill you, but you can't kill the boss. I got some bosses where I just had to start a new game cause the boss couldn't kill me (unless I'd stay for an hour to fight maybe), and I couldn't kill it either... It's just one exemple, but does happens in many more situations than in should. To unlock heroes and items, have fun ! Grind fest, each run becomes way too long after you beat the game 4 or 5 times (as rather than 3 map to beat so 3 bosses, it will be 8 or 9 at the end, and expect unforgiving enemies and bosses mechanics later on) So, as the game needs a lot of skill and good rng + takes a lot of time for a run, when you lose (and when it does happen, you feel like there is really nothing else you can do, you didn't play bad), it feels really too frustrating. If you add some crashes I got (on last boss for the fun...but not only), you get out of this with a mixed feeling. Imo, this shows that they didn't test the…