Overview: Fight against the hordes and evils of Count Necrosis with a team of five heroes. The game is a blend between two genres: tower defense and action RPG.
20191226:
Today I played this game because I recently acquired it in the Jingle Jam 2019 bundle.
Setup: Keyboard and mouse.
Steam Game Time: 5.2 hours (total game time) / approximately 0.5 hours idle
20191227 Part 1:
The game is fun enough that I want to play more today.
Steam Game Time: 9.7 hours (total game time) / 4.5 hours (session game time) / approximately 0.5 hours idle
20191227 Part 2:
So I took a break from the game and now I'm back for a little more.
Gameplay Log:
300 Gems: 1 Legendary, 2 Epics, 1 Uncommon
Steam Game Time: 11.5 hours (total game time) / 1.8 hours (session game time)
Thoughts: (single-player)
Pros:
+ Slowly unlocks game mechanics making the overall game easy to learn.
+ Not a bad story.
+ Enjoyable music
Neutral:
~ Would be nice if multiple challenges can be tackled.
~ If you're not good then you can grind experience. I suppose that is classic element of RPGs. This can arguably take the challenge out of a level in contrast to a pure tower defense game where the element of winning is based purely on strategy. With that being said, perhaps the game reaches a plateau where a level can not be beat based on maxed out skills and runes alone.
Minor Con:
- I encountered a sound bug where I used one of the power-ups and then the game ended. But the sound continued.
Cons:
- UI feels buggy when it comes to power-ups.
- No in-game explanation of symbols; lack of hover/pop-up text
- Often feels one-dimensional: prioritize hero color to enemy color
- Management of the characters can occasionally feel cumbersome; for example, I'll accidentally move one character when I meant to move another.
- Obtaining the "Angry Mob" attack is done via grinding = anti-fun.
[20191227]
Summary:
So I feel as if I've managed to reach perhaps somewhere between the early and middle stage of the game.* Having reached this point, I have begun to lose interest in it. Partially this is my fault, because the main progression in the game is forward and I've been going back and playing some of the levels on higher difficulties.
More to the point, the game's blend of genres seeks to achieve something new which is enjoyable, but I feel it takes away from the fun of the tower defense genre. As such, I would say my experience with Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten was superior. Note that Defender's Quest also implemented an XP system, but characters had to be placed and removed. Whereas in Hero Defense, there are at most five characters which freely move about the map.
At the end of the day, I would not recommend buying the game because it has enough problems to outweigh the potential fun it might provide. With that being said, if you already acquired the game, then I think it is fun enough to try out and see if it's worth the bugs.
*There is a Steam Achievement for killing 50,000 creeps and after about nine hours of play I've killed 4,895 creeps.
20240113:
Today I tried to resume the game. My first feeling was that I was not a fan of the UI. My second feeling was that the game felt boring. Granted I was not able to fully refamiliarize myself with the game, but I think even the fundamentals of a game should feel engaging and this game lacked such an appeal. In particular, the naive strategy seemed to be stick most of the heroes right up front and move them when an enemy slips through.
Interestingly, when running through my mind of similar games, I thought of Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten, a game which turns out I already mentioned in this blog post - in the "Summary" section above. What I remember clearly about Defender's Quest is that there was a lot of strategy involved.
Rating: 2.0 out of 5
Steam Game Time: 11.8 hours (cumulative game time) / 20 minutes (session game time)
Hero Defense (PC) (2016)
Relevant Links:
Hero Defense (PC) (MetaCritic.com)
Hero Defense (steamdb.info)
Hero Defense (Steam Store Page)
 |
| The first two heroes. |
20191226:
Today I played this game because I recently acquired it in the Jingle Jam 2019 bundle.
Setup: Keyboard and mouse.
Steam Game Time: 5.2 hours (total game time) / approximately 0.5 hours idle
20191227 Part 1:
The game is fun enough that I want to play more today.
Steam Game Time: 9.7 hours (total game time) / 4.5 hours (session game time) / approximately 0.5 hours idle
 |
| One of the bosses, Alana Nightshade. |
20191227 Part 2:
So I took a break from the game and now I'm back for a little more.
Gameplay Log:
300 Gems: 1 Legendary, 2 Epics, 1 Uncommon
Steam Game Time: 11.5 hours (total game time) / 1.8 hours (session game time)
Thoughts: (single-player)
Pros:
+ Slowly unlocks game mechanics making the overall game easy to learn.
+ Not a bad story.
+ Enjoyable music
 |
| The runes I had collected at one point. |
Neutral:
~ Would be nice if multiple challenges can be tackled.
~ If you're not good then you can grind experience. I suppose that is classic element of RPGs. This can arguably take the challenge out of a level in contrast to a pure tower defense game where the element of winning is based purely on strategy. With that being said, perhaps the game reaches a plateau where a level can not be beat based on maxed out skills and runes alone.
Minor Con:
- I encountered a sound bug where I used one of the power-ups and then the game ended. But the sound continued.
Cons:
- UI feels buggy when it comes to power-ups.
- No in-game explanation of symbols; lack of hover/pop-up text
- Often feels one-dimensional: prioritize hero color to enemy color
- Management of the characters can occasionally feel cumbersome; for example, I'll accidentally move one character when I meant to move another.
- Obtaining the "Angry Mob" attack is done via grinding = anti-fun.
 |
| Our five heroes face off against Alana Nightshade and a wave of vampires. |
[20191227]
Summary:
So I feel as if I've managed to reach perhaps somewhere between the early and middle stage of the game.* Having reached this point, I have begun to lose interest in it. Partially this is my fault, because the main progression in the game is forward and I've been going back and playing some of the levels on higher difficulties.
More to the point, the game's blend of genres seeks to achieve something new which is enjoyable, but I feel it takes away from the fun of the tower defense genre. As such, I would say my experience with Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten was superior. Note that Defender's Quest also implemented an XP system, but characters had to be placed and removed. Whereas in Hero Defense, there are at most five characters which freely move about the map.
 |
| The town has been saved but needs to be rebuilt. |
At the end of the day, I would not recommend buying the game because it has enough problems to outweigh the potential fun it might provide. With that being said, if you already acquired the game, then I think it is fun enough to try out and see if it's worth the bugs.
*There is a Steam Achievement for killing 50,000 creeps and after about nine hours of play I've killed 4,895 creeps.
20240113:
Today I tried to resume the game. My first feeling was that I was not a fan of the UI. My second feeling was that the game felt boring. Granted I was not able to fully refamiliarize myself with the game, but I think even the fundamentals of a game should feel engaging and this game lacked such an appeal. In particular, the naive strategy seemed to be stick most of the heroes right up front and move them when an enemy slips through.
Interestingly, when running through my mind of similar games, I thought of Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten, a game which turns out I already mentioned in this blog post - in the "Summary" section above. What I remember clearly about Defender's Quest is that there was a lot of strategy involved.
Rating: 2.0 out of 5
Steam Game Time: 11.8 hours (cumulative game time) / 20 minutes (session game time)
Hero Defense (PC) (2016)
Relevant Links:
Hero Defense (PC) (MetaCritic.com)
Hero Defense (steamdb.info)
Hero Defense (Steam Store Page)
Date/Time
Thursday, December 26, 2019
@
20:00
Labels
__rating_2
,
__rating.0
,
action
,
defense
,
online pvp
,
real-time
,
rpg
,
single-player
,
strategy
,
tower defense
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