Heroes of Ruin

Genre: Top-Down Action-RPG

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless, Online)

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Review:

Heroes of Ruin is a Diablo-style Action-RPG released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012. Players take the role of a hero on a quest to find the source of a curse that besets a benevolent beast, with that quest quickly getting sidelined when the ship he’s sailing on gets wrecked and the survivors must fend for themselves in hostile territory.

The presentation here has some good and bad elements. On the one hand, the story seems fairly well-crafted, the 3D visuals feature imaginative and detailed environments, andthe music is appropriately dour and epic in a way that fits the game’s tone. On the other hand, right from the start you’ll have to contend with some ugly framerate issues, and the cinematics cut so many shortcuts it looks like an old-timey stage play in parts. All things considered, it works, but it’s not likely to impress anyone.

The gameplay has its issues too. Given the small size of the 3DS’ screen and the fixed top-down camera, the perspective seems too close to the action – enemies can practically sneak up on you. What’s more, those enemies will frequently spawn in areas you’ve already cleared, making the task of clearing a dungeon feel particularly tedious. Finally, the way the game splits controls between face buttons and touchscreen can take some getting used to.

None of this is to say Heroes of Ruin is a bad game – it pulls from a good formula, and beyond the issues I noted it generally does a good job with it… but those are some significant issues.

There is one more issue that I need to bring up, though this one isn’t really the fault of the game. Clearly, one of the main attractions to a game like this is multiplayer, and when it was first released, this game was celebrated for its online support with full voice chat. Unfortunately, that was a decade ago, and today the lobbies for this game are evidently abandoned. Unless you can get together a group of friends to play via local wireless, you’re going to be taking this quest solo.

For all its faults, Heroes of Ruin does manage to succeed at bringing an experience like Diablo to the Nintendo 3DS, and the core of that experience is a good one. Unfortunately, many of the elements of the execution leave something to be desired, resulting in a game that’s still enjoyable, but feels like it could have been a much better game if it received a bit more work to iron out the problems.

tl;dr – Heroes of Ruin is a Diablo-Style Top-Down Action-RPG about a hero seeking the source of a curse cast on a benevolent beast. This game gets the core elements of the Diablo formula mostly right, but has numerous other issues that detract from the experience. If you absolutely need a Diablo-style game on the Nintendo 3DS, this may be your best bet, but it’s no substitute for the real thing.

Grade: C

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