Heroes of Ruin (Nintendo 3DS)

THE GOOD:

This game has great ideas. It brings back the old style dungeon crawler games like Gauntlet.It has fun characters to play as which you can customise with colours, hair and facial features, which is fun. The combat is fun and the characters all have their own unique abilities.

THE BAD:

I was very excited about this game as I played the demo from the e'shop and loved it. At first I really enjoyed the game and I was addicted to it for the first few hours. However as the game went on, I found it to be very repetitive.
You talk to people, they give you quests and then you go to a level, complete those quests, and then do that again and again and again. The loading times for the game are the worst I've ever seen. It takes 30 to 40 seconds to load every scene, and then if you die it has to load again instead of just loading the level once like most games. It also has to load for almost everything you want to do. The menus are very complicated and irritating to use.It feels more like work than a game. The items are not fun and you can't carry too many at a time meaning that you have to sell them , only problem is, that you can only earn 999,999 cash so therefore you can't get any more money and you're not even half way through the game yet.The characters in the game can't run and walk really slowly,so if you have to walk a long distance, "which is always the case" it takes forever to get to where you want to go.Because of the slow loading time, and the slow paced characters, I found myself almost falling asleep at one point in the game. Another thing I found disappointing is that there are four different characters that are very good fun, but you can't pick a different character unless you start the whole game again on a new file. If you had the option of picking each of the characters during the game, it would have added a bit more variety to the game.

THE UGLY:

I don't really care about graphics as long as the game is good, but this game has very poor graphics compared to all my other 3DS games. The level designs are boring (apart from the first level)and the menu screens are very dull.

Overall. Despite all my complaints, this is not a horrible game and I'm not sorry I bought it,it's just got so many flaws that really annoy me as it could have been one of my favourites only for that. If you love RPGS/Dungeon crawlers, and if you don't mind slow characters, slow loading times, and flimsy menus screens Then Heroes of Ruin is worth buying.

I got this game on the Friday it was released and over the weekend I'd 100%-ed it with one of the classes. That's when the big flaw with the game kicks in. There is no replay value whatsoever. Yes, you can replay the game by creating another save file with one of the other characters but if you've invested time creating a specific character, building their skills and stats you can't do anything with them after you've finished the game except go online and basically be muscle for hire to help out the lower-levelled players.

In short, here's a list of things that are wrong with the game: low level cap (30), no boss respawns (without creating a new character or going online to find someone who hasn't completed the game yet), no quest replay (without creating a new character or going online to find someone who hasn't completed the game yet), no real class-specific storyline, no new game+/story repeat (without creating a new character), no increased difficulty or XP for anything after you've completed the game so one hit kills and 1 XP from most enemies all round and if you do all the side quests as they become available you level up too much and the storyline then becomes way too easy.

The worst of it is, this IS a good game and one that is needed on the 3DS with the online play and the voice chat. It's just a shame that the developers have completely missed the point on what makes this genre so special.

Story: Intriguing, with twists and depth. Drives the game forwards.

Gameplay: Flawless, the most enjoyable gameplay I've experienced in a very LONG time!

Graphics: Pretty, nice places to explore and varied too. The cutscenes are in a hand drawn style and I really like them, they work very well for this sort of adventuring game.

Music: Nice music, nothing stands out, but it certainly sets the scene and can send a chill down your spine.

Multiplayer: I've never been a big fan of multiplayer. This game has made a convert out of me! The single player is SO FUN, then you go on multiplayer and the experience grows in depth tenfold, it works very impressively considering this is a handheld!!!

Conclusion: If you have a 3ds this is the best game you will get on it at the moment (apart from maybe Ocarina of Time of course) BUY THIS GAME. IT IS WORTH IT.