I’ll admit it: I’m not a individual who generally enjoys this type of game. Sure, the sporadic roguelike has wriggled its distance to my heart-Crypt of the Necrodancer and the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series are notable favorites-but the genre as a whole wouldn’t make its way onto my list of preferences. Unfortunately, Has-Been Heroes takes everything I dislike about roguelikes and wraps it up into one less-than-mediocre package.
The premise, at least, is a cute one. A once-legendary gang of heroes rose up again and again in order to save their kingdom from peril. When every last evil was defeated and also the land was finally peaceful, the heroes retired. Now, the king has called those heroes (and one plucky fan who tagged along) out of retirement for just one final mission: escort the two young princesses to school.
From the gameplay, you’d never know that these heroes are past their prime or the kingdom is supposedly peaceful. At the start, you have three characters: the Knight, that has the most stamina and deals a single stunning blow; the Monk, who hits twice with two weak attacks; and the Rogue, who leaps directly into deal three attacks of moderate damage. Barring their way are legions upon legions of skeletons. Funnily, since age doesn’t affect combat ability, things play out exactly as if these heroes were within their prime and fighting off foes from the troubled kingdom. Waste of the good premise, but oh well.
Fights engage in across three lanes, using the heroes running towards the right and skeletons advancing for the left-a bit like Plants vs. Zombies. If the enemies catch you, they’ll attack and you’ll die, so you’ll have to defeat the skeletons prior to them getting to you. Each enemy includes a different quantity of stamina that must be whittled down by individual hits before damage can be dealt, so the core from the gameplay includes swapping your characters back and forth between the three lanes, utilizing their individual multi-hit skills to stun enemies and land combos. Each melee attack needs time to work to recharge, and characters can only be swapped with one another mid-attack, so timing is crucial. Thankfully, combat can be paused anytime.
Also added to this mixture are spells, which are obtained through Spell Gamblers or Spell Merchants that appear randomly throughout each map. These have longer cooldowns, but a lot more devastating effects, slowing enemies or killing an entire bunched-together group in one go. They can be combined in certain interesting ways; make use of a water spell to soak your enemies before a lightning spell, for instance, and you’ll deal a lot more electricity damage. The issue with this is the fact that there’s not a way to actually get a water-based and electricity-based spell inside your inventory simultaneously except by pure, dumb luck.
Has-Been Heroes is a real roguelike, and that means that death is quick, brutal, and permanent. Let a single skeleton through the ranks, and you’re set all the way back to square zero, without your progress carrying over. The only real reward for the time, if it could be called that, is the opportunity to maybe find better spells on subsequent journeys (if you also found enough gold beforehand to purchase them twice, because the first time you purchase them, you won’t understand what the spells do), and a few different heroes just try to make it that far (unlocking a new hero will also set you back to zero).
While there’s an enormous strategy element towards the game-you’ll die instantly towards the skeletons’ bony fingers without some kind of plan-it’s outweighed undoubtedly by the dumb luck factor. The game regularly throws massive waves of skeletons to you that merely can’t be beaten back by the starting spells and melee attacks, so if you haven’t happened to get anything good at that time, well, time to begin again. You’ll see the first couple of levels over and over and again, and it’s like bashing your head against a wall in the hopes that one of those days, the wall will spit out a hammer to help finish the job.
Your best bet to get enough items and spells to make it towards the end would be to comb through each randomly-generated level for items and vendors, but frustratingly, Has-Been Heroes actually discourages exploration. At the beginning of each new run, you’ll get one or two candles. Every time you backtrack or loop around for an area you’ve already seen, you’ll have to burn a candle, and when you don’t, you’ll explore the darkness and instantly die. Ignoring the truth that this makes no sense-you’re fine as long as you’re entering unexplored, dangerous areas, but go missing and die in friendly territory you know?-this infuriating mechanic means that you’ll often pass treasure chests and merchants, find the key or necessary gold further on in the level, and become not able to go back to claim the loot. It’s entirely possible to “paint yourself right into a corner” of explored territory and die. Sure, you are able to pick a straight path that goes towards the boss without too much trouble, but you’ll lose out on a great deal, and it’s still completely down to luck whether you’ll find the vendors and items that you need in order to defeat that boss.
Further compounding general frustration using the game would be the controls. In combat, they kind of seem sensible: each hero is mapped onto just one directional button according to whether they’re within the top, middle, or bottom lanes, with “attack” around the fourth unused button. These odd controls persist throughout the game, though, as well as in weird ways. You can’t just select an item with the directional keys; you have to swap a personality in to the right position to assert it. You can’t move about the map naturally with the left joystick; instead, it’s a mix of the right joystick and, even weirder, the right shoulder button to verify. Though I got used to it after on the dozen hours of play, it’s still extremely unintuitive and simple to flub up.
In fact, those control issues lead me to one of my biggest gripes: Has-Been Heroes feels like a mobile phone game.
The review copy I received was for the Nintendo Switch, and honestly, I spent almost all of my play time with the device in portable mode. It’s something that’s so clearly meant to be played for 5 minutes in a time-pick it up, play a little, die. Place it down. Begin again again later. The controls are incredibly awkward, but seem organized for any touch-screen-dragging characters backwards and forwards or tapping on spells.
The assets, too, just feel like an inexpensive app. The skill and backdrops aren't anything special, there’s barely any story, and also the music is repetitive. Enemies are wave after wave of skeletons, with maybe a plant monster thrown into the mix, but hardly any variation in design otherwise. The item UI, meanwhile, is really tiny that it’s completely unreadable. The very first time I unlocked a new hero, I needed to view a comically long unlocking sequence as nearly a hundred new items unlocked individually, each one of these flashing on the screen as the same sound effect played again and again.
So, as I said, I entered this review biased. Perhaps someone who enjoys brutally difficult roguelikes just for the punishment might have more enjoyable with Has-Been Heroes, and much more power to them. For me personally, though, the gameplay loop was too much stick and not enough carrot, compounded having a heavy dose of frustrating randomness and a constantly stressful gameplay loop. Rather than being sucked in for “yet another round,” I’m instead concluding my review relieved which i never have to press “New Game” again, and all too happy to send my has-been heroes back to retirement.
