Has-Been Heroes

Finnish studio Frozenbyte are best known for Trine, a series sporting lovely visuals and well balanced puzzle-platforming action. They're latest shares some similarities in that it comes with some fantasy themes, sees the player control three heroes, but perhaps that's where the similarities end as Has-Been Heroes is a roguelike with an interesting lane mechanic at its core.

There once used to be a merry band of heroes who saved the kingdom from all sorts of dangers. Now only two old heroes remain and they're given the rather silly task of taking two princesses to school. They're joined by a new hero, Rogue, and the band of three set out on an adventure that ends seeing them try and rescue their old friends, one after another.

This game is really all about the mechanics, and truth be told they are rather interesting and well crafted. The lane premise does a lot for the game and making sure you put the right hero on the right job is key to your success. At first you're limited to a choice of three, but each time you finish a run you'll be rewarded with another washed up hero. They belong to three classes - mage, tank, and rogue - but come with different base spells and dispositions.

The tank has one melee attack at a time, the mage two, and the rogue three (the Rogue you start with also has a convenient spell that doubles the amount of melee attacks next time you attack). You then purchase or find new spells as you traverse the map (same with items), a system of rooms, similar to something like FTL: Faster Than Light, where you pick a path. You can backtrack your steps, but doing so consumes a candle so you'll need to keep that in mind as you try and reach as many rooms as possible prior to the boss fight (as you'll need as many items and spells as you can get your hands on). It's a sweet system and it works very well for the most part even if the randomness of room placement sometimes leads to frustration (often related to not having gold when an opportunity to buy a powerful spell presents itself).

Too much randomness and not enough randomness to start with. In a way, Has-Been Heroes gets lost in its adherence to the principles of the roguelike genre, while it also tries to create a system where you unlock new content. This means you'll find it less random at first and each play-through is far from unique until you actually start having some success with the game. And even as you've figured things out, randomness can deal you a game where locked chests appear before you've gotten keys, where the spells or items aren't as useful, or where a particular encounter is made a lot harder as a result of how the creeps spawn. The problem is that you need to play it to find out just how randomness worked for or against you on a particular run, and it takes a particularly persistent gamer to finish the full seven runs needed to finish the game properly (we're not there yet, and it's going to take some time until we do).

For instance, if you're blessed with a combination of water spells and lightning attacks you're in luck, and while you can optimise which three heroes you play as (they all come with a standard spell), there's always going to be a degree of randomness to what spells you end up with during a run. There is also a strategy to equipping spells with the right character (as there are bonuses in some of their spell slots), but to a large degree you're forced to adapt your strategy to the cards you're dealt and this makes for an uneven gameplay experience.

The lane system always gives you a choice how you want to attack a problem. You can only switch lanes after a hero has performed an attack (the game conveniently pauses at the right moment), and this presents you with a tactical choice. You can either attack the lane where your enemies are the closest (and potentially the most dangerous) to hurt them or push them back, or you could attack a lane where the enemies are far away and then switch to a lane where the enemies are closer. In doing so the character who is travelling back to the start of the lane will incur damage on all the enemies in the lane that he passes on his way back. He can also stun, and if an enemy is stunned he deals the most damage. You should also know that a stunned enemy that reaches you won't be able to attack you and is bumped back to the beginning of the lane as he reaches you. Overall, there's just a ton of stuff to consider and it becomes rather intuitive after a few hours of playing the game.

We haven't mentioned the bosses yet and they are probably the most distinct feature of the game. You'll unlock new worlds and new bosses will be added as you finish runs. Some of them can be truly infuriating, but they are all good fun and there's great satisfaction to be had when you first beat them. This is an area where you'll feel there are difficulty spikes as well. The first time you're faced with three bosses at once (each with its own lane), you'll likely want to throw the controller at someone. However, a couple of tries later and you'll have learned enough and be able to combine spells and items to overcome them.

One issue that makes this a bit more painful is that the game doesn't do a great job of explaining things. Some key mechanics are left out of the very basic tutorial and information is cluttered on the screen in a way seems to purposefully try to hide or obscure information from the player. A sneaky way of adding extra challenge. In a way it is fun to explore the mechanics without prior knowledge, but given the punishing nature of the game (basically one hit from a strong enemy on one of your characters without stamina can end your run early on), it would have been nice if there had been more guidance and transparency. In a way it feels like when you're playing a board game at someone's house and rules are only revealed as the host needs them.

With the latest patch info on items you can purchase has been added (on PS4 that is, on PC you could already mouse over), which mended one area that just felt overly unfair and punishing. Particularly as much of the strategy in the game comes through stacking a particular character with spells and items that work well together. You may want to be fair and spread items and spells across your team, or you may want to really power up one of them and work to set that hero up for kills.

Ultimately Has-Been Heroes feels like a missed opportunity, mainly because it almost takes pride in punishing the player, particularly early on. There are some great ideas here and the mechanics are nice, but the overall structure and design, and difficulty spikes, prevent it from being a definite recommendation. If you're looking for a roguelike game that will challenge your tactical skills, and you're not afraid to get your ass kicked more than a few times, this could be one to take a closer look at, especially if you've got a Switch and you're looking to expand your library of games.