Developed by Rabbit and Bear Studios, a game company formed by the former “Suikoden” team, and published by 505 Games, the latest RPG work “The Hundred Heroes” will be released this week. We were invited by 505 Games to experience this game first. Game, what is the outcome of this work that made a sensation in the gaming circle by reaching the target on the first day of fundraising?
Before talking about this game, I would like to commemorate Yoshitaka Murayama, the main designer of this game and the father of the “Suikoden” series. He and other key members of the team brought “100 Heroes” to the Taipei Game Show earlier this year. Legend” came to Taiwan and accepted interviews from 4Gamers and other Taiwanese media. But less than a month later, it was reported that he passed away in mid-February, and “The Legend of One Hundred Heroes” became his last work, which is sad.
So, let us next talk about this legacy of Yoshitaka Murayama from a purely game perspective.
A true spiritual sequel to “Water Margin”
If you want to sum up in a nutshell what “One Hundred Heroes” is about, it is really a “Water Margin” designed with modern technology and changing the protagonist and world view. The game characters adopt a nostalgic dot matrix style, but all other objects and scenes are presented in full 3D modules. The main line is fully voiced. It is a pity that the character theater in the lower right corner of the screen has no dubbing.
The plot of “One Hundred Heroes” can be regarded as a traditional royal tale. According to the official statement, this game has three protagonists, namely Nova from the Alliance side, Sion from the Empire side, and Marissa from the Guardian side. Indeed, sometimes during the game, Sion or Marissa will be the protagonist of the team. However, in fact, it does not account for a high proportion in terms of the entire main line. It mainly revolves around Nova to advance the entire story.
This game incorporates the biggest feature of “Fantasy Water Margin”, which is that you build everything, not just combat members. Players will have a base after the early story advances to a certain extent, and more than 90% of the NPCs in the base will It all depends on the players to recruit them one by one during the story process.
There are moderately difficult puzzles to solve while exploring the maze. In addition, the game is also equipped with several mini-games. Although it cannot be said that each mini-game is definitely to the player’s appetite, it does provide players with adjustments in the process, such as the cooking showdown in “Water Margin 2”. It is also available in this work.
The clearance time this time is about 50 hours, but in the later stages of playing, it is obvious that there are many hidden characters or elements to be found in the game. Therefore, to clear all elements, it may take about 80 hours, as the producer said in the previous interview. About hours.
Hundreds of heroes are waiting for you to find
There are many characters in this game, some of which are full of personality. The game itself is even more colorful than its name. There are actually more than 100 heroes that can be recruited. As mentioned above, not every one of these 100 heroes can go on the battlefield. Some will As a functional NPC in the town, such as a merchant responsible for selling props or appraising, or a chef responsible for cooking, etc.
Many heroes will appear in the places you have visited in the past after a certain point in time, so returning to the places you have traveled to in the past at any time will often give you some surprises. Although this game will restrict the area you are in at certain times, most of the time all towns can be visited. Therefore, compared with “Water Margin”, there is no chance to recruit a certain hero after a certain point in time. The situation is much better.
Although not every hero will be used, finding and recruiting heroes can be said to be an important flavor of this work. Excluding the final boss challenge level, whether you can find all these heroes will be the most in-depth of this game. , and the part that needs the most strategy.
Let’s talk about the development part. Although characters who are not in the team will not gain experience points, this game has a design that will increase the experience points after leveling up. As long as you bring an accessory that increases experience points, it will be very easy as long as you fight a few battles. He will soon catch up with the original high-level characters.
In addition to level, character growth factors include forging and upgrading weapons, equipment, and runes.
Forging weapons is the most expensive part in the middle and later stages of the game. The weapon is a direct upgrade, so you don’t need to make any choices. However, blacksmiths will only appear in a few major towns, so after some plots start, you will be temporarily unable to upgrade the weapon. , if you are someone who likes to switch heroes at any time, you should pay attention to this.
The rune system is related to the spell “Magic Lens” in this game. Each character has several rune holes. As the level is opened, some holes will be forced to put the unique skills of the character, and some can be put into passive , and some can be active, and active skills can be selected from six attribute magics. Therefore, in a sense, whoever has runes with blood-replenishing skills can serve as the healer in the team.
By the way, players will soon feel the lack of bag space. Therefore, it is recommended that when going to Hassan, you should first look for partners who can increase bag space and have teleportation functions, so that the journey will be more enjoyable. Smoother.
fighting
In terms of combat, it is the same as “Suikoden”, using a turn-based battle with 6 teams and 3 people in the front and rear rows. There is also a support position. This character will not play, but can provide some buffs or add some abilities that are beneficial to the entire team (increased collection, more experience, etc.).
There are also 3 “companion” positions. These three positions are used to place necessary characters for each stage of the plot, because sometimes the characters required for the plot are not necessarily the characters that the player has practiced. In this case, these can be placed By placing the character in the position of a companion, you don’t have to force yourself to fight with an untrained character.
During battle, certain characters have the combined skill “Heroic Combo”. However, unlike some traditional turn-based RPGs, “One Hundred Heroes” uses the method of first directly issuing combat instructions to 6 people, and then performing the performance according to the speed of our enemies.
This kind of turn-based system has a different tactical aspect than you and me. For example, you can first let the fast-moving character perform a range attack, and then let the person attacking alone do the follow-up attack to maximize the damage in a single round, or It is to let some fast-moving mages play the role of strengthening and single-target healing, and slow-moving mages to play the role of group healing, etc.
Such a system also has some characteristics (or problems) of its own, that is, although the order of actions can be seen, once someone dies, even if the first action in the next round is to pull him up, the person who was resurrected will not be able to do so in that round. It is unable to move, and since it cannot be targeted when it falls to the ground, the healer has no way to arrange treatment in advance to pull up the blood line except using group replenishment.
Therefore, in the early stages of the game when there are no powerful resurrection potions/spells, a cycle of “being resurrected and immediately defeated again in the same round” may occur.
Overall, since the characters in the early stage are relatively poor in all aspects, the battles in this game can be said to become more interesting in the later stages. Sometimes it is a bit difficult in the early stage (because it is very painful to be hit regardless of the front or rear row). . However, the level of this game has a great influence. As long as the monsters in the area are slightly higher than a certain level, the damage taken by the attack will be greatly reduced.
In addition, when each character reaches some hidden conditions, it will enter the so-called “awakening” state. Thunder and lightning of various colors will be wrapped around the character. At this time, the attack damage will be greatly increased. Currently, it can only be confirmed that the conditions for each character to activate awakening are Different, some can be activated by one’s own skills, and some are activated automatically when teammates fall. These will be the focus of discussion among players in the future.
This game provides an automatic battle system, and you can also set some conditions for the pharmacist to use skills during automatic battles. However, the automatic system cannot use hero combos, and the editor itself will select teams that can use hero combos in the later stages. As the main team, the automatic combat system will probably only be used in areas where level crushing only requires basic attacks.
By the way, although this game has automatic combat, it does not have an acceleration function.
The maze in the main line has some puzzle-solving parts, and there are some mechanisms that can be used in boss battles, usually on the left and right sides of the team. They may be used to dodge the king’s ultimate move, or to interrupt the king’s move, etc. Therefore, in terms of positioning, the characters in the middle row usually have to take some attacks.
This time we also retain the solo duel and war systems. The graphics of these two systems are of course greatly improved compared to the past, but these two systems also tend to serve the plot. For example, duel is a constant counterattack until the accumulation of You can use explosive skills, and even this has the shadow of “Suikoden”.
A base for growth
If there is any difference between “One Hundred Heroes” and the past “Water Margin”, it is that this time the base has a growth system similar to a talent tree, and players have to follow this system to activate various functions.
Activating a function usually requires a certain amount of resources, and some grids also require key heroes, such as recruiting a blacksmith to forge weapons in the town, or recruiting traders to add a new one in the base area to try to buy low and sell high. trading point.
In addition, Isha, each town will sell some goods with floating prices, and the prices will also change with time, so the game strongly encourages you to be a traveling merchant.
Just like how many heroes are recruited, the growth of the base is not necessary for the main line, but the convenience has a great impact, and to be honest, this is what you play in “The Legend of 100 Heroes”, but in fact, many stuck grids are due to deductions. They are looking for a certain hero that has not yet been found, so how many heroes are brought under their command actually represents the extent to which the base area can be developed.
In addition, if you want to play some mini-games in this game, it is absolutely necessary to recruit key NPCs, and these mini-games will affect the addition of other heroes.
Link to 100 Heroes: Rise
The main story of this game is not directly connected to the prequel “Heroes 100: Rise”, so even those who have not played “Heroes 100: Rise” can directly play “Heroes 100: Rise”.
Basically, the characters with vertical illustrations in “The 100 Heroes: Rise” will all appear in “The 100 Heroes”. For example, the magical girl Meryl has already appeared in the trailer. Some of them will be responsible for the internal work of the base. Some can become combat characters.
This of course also includes CJ, Isha, and Gru, the protagonist trio of “The 100 Heroes: Rise”. In some conversations, they will more or less talk about some past events (especially triggers) in the form of memories. CJ joins the event).
If you haven’t played “Heroes: Rise”, you won’t have much resonance with these characters. But it still doesn’t affect the progress of the main plot, so those who have played the prequel will understand some of the jokes, which is a bonus but not necessary.
UI and system that have failed to keep up with the times
Here we have to talk about the biggest and serious shortcoming of “The Legend of 100 Heroes”, which is that the design of the UI and some systems are too old and have not kept up with the design of today’s era.
Although this game adopts the mechanism of encountering enemies with hidden mines, or you have to go to a certain point to save, this is not a problem compared to what will be mentioned below.
For example, when players meet recruitable heroes, some heroes will first give them some tasks, and they will be willing to join the team after completing them. However, this task will not be turned into a task, and there will be no words on the map after the conversation. There is no prompt or any interface for players to query, and the NPC will only repeat a slightly critical line.
“One Hundred Heroes” is a game with many heroes, so during the adventure, you will often encounter 3 to 4 heroes one after another. These heroes may not all be able to join immediately. However, the game lacks an interface to integrate these important information. It goes back to the past when you had to prepare a notebook next to you while playing games.
Although in the middle of the game, you can recruit an NPC to divine the location of the heroes that have not yet joined you, but you have to figure out what conditions they give you. If there is no clear prompt, you can only find the needle in the haystack.
Of course, you can also say that this is a resurgence of old games, but the subsequent interface problems are even harder to ignore.
In the game, although team members can be changed at hotels everywhere, heroes who are not in the current team must return to the main city to adjust their equipment, runes, and view their abilities.
Although it can be explained that members who are not in the team are resting in the base area, and there is nothing wrong with returning to the base area to adjust. This setting seems reasonable at first glance, but in actual gameplay it is very cumbersome.
For example, maybe you met a seemingly interesting hero in a certain town and wanted to see what he could do? Sorry, I can’t, so just go to the hotel and change him? Then it was discovered that the equipment of the replaced team member could not be removed, and he had to run back to the base to adjust it, which greatly interrupted the rhythm of the game.
To avoid this situation, you must follow the order of “First remove the equipment of the existing team members → Replace with the new hero → Then put the equipment on him”, otherwise you will have to return to the base to deal with it.
As for runes, it’s even more troublesome. The runes of team members must be adjusted in the rune store. And it doesn’t mean that every town has a rune store. However, heroes who are not current team members cannot be adjusted in the rune store. Or We have to go back to the main city.
Maybe some people will say, it’s not troublesome if it’s teleported? But when using the teleport function, you have to switch to a page after opening the menu. Then the list of towns is arranged in the order in which the main line of the game appears, and the main city is ranked third on page 2, so each teleport requires more time. Pressing several unnecessary buttons.
This kind of ancient UI design with a single direction can be seen everywhere, not to mention some slightly smarter systems that have long been introduced in today’s RPGs. For example, when choosing to use resurrection skills, it will prioritize dead teammates, or mini-games. You can choose to restart or skip it at any time. This kind of modern design is completely absent in this game. Sometimes if you want to restart a small game, it is faster to close the game directly with Alt+F4.
It must be said that when you first play “Legend of 100 Heroes”, you do feel like you have a thorn in your back at many times, but with the accumulation of playing time, players will eventually start to get used to this UI, and the diversity of characters begins to appear. Your gaming experience will begin to change.
Summarize
Finally, let’s talk about my thoughts after playing. The development team of “One Hundred Heroes” are all veterans of “Water Margin”. In the game, you can really feel that this RPG game has a full foundation in story, music, and content structure. It sounds good, but I don’t know if the development team wants to stick to tradition, and the design of the interface and some systems is not very friendly to today’s new players.
Perhaps on the bright side, this can promote strategy exchanges among many players.
If you are a player who likes “Suikoden” or a traditional RPG, then “One Hundred Heroes” does have its own unique charm, just like the subtitle at the beginning of the game “Dedicated to players who love JRPGs.”
But if you are a player allergic to slow-paced RPGs, it is not recommended. As for those who are still considering “The Legend of 100 Heroes”, “The Legend of 100 Heroes” will be on Xbox Game Pass on the first day. You might as well use Game Pass to play it and express your own feelings about this game.
“Heroes” is expected to be released on April 23 on PS5, PS, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Tags: experience clearing Wei Lei Legend Heroes charm Phantom Water players headache #4Gamers
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