Heroine Anthem Zero Episode 1

Genre: Action-Platformer / Action-RPG

Players: 1

.

Review:

Heroine Anthem Zero: Episode 1 is an Action-Platformer with strong Action-RPG elements released on PC in 2016, ported to PlayStation 4 in 2018, and then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019. The plot follows a young man in a medieval fantasy world who has a position as a forest guardian, essentially a ranger of sorts, who comes to find when on patrol with his comrades that something is enraging other forest guardians, creating worrisome unrest.

The presentation for this game is absolutely gorgeous, featuring beautiful hand-drawn artwork. The animation here is stiff, and the artwork reveals its somewhat low resolution when zoomed in, but otherwise it’s marvelous to behold, with plenty of wonderful detail.

Likewise, the soundtrack here is fantastic, with an epic orchestral score and full (non-English) voiced lyrics. For some good examples of the great music here, check out The Lost Shepherd, Covenant With Luna, and Comes a Calm.

Right from the start you get a strong sense of this being an old world with a lot of lore, and the small corner of it you’re being introduced to has some really endearing characters with some delightful interpersonal relationships. The game does a good job getting you to want to learn more about the world and its characters.

The gameplay here is fairly simple, but good, with straightforward action accompanied by some basic RPG systems with a bit of exploration as well. It’s nothing especially novel or unique, but it’s decent enough… save for this game’s major flaw.

Up until now, I have been mostly glowingly positive about this game, but this game suffers a flaw so great that it brings down the rest of this otherwise great experience – this game is constantly, always, always wasting your time. Seemingly every time you move two feet, a character will interrupt your progress to talk at length. You’ll be interrupted with a speech about saving for the umpteenth time well after it has been drilled into you. Simple techniques like a double-jump or wall jump will prompt a lengthy explanation. And sometimes characters will stop just to chitchat, and you’ll be forced to listen… or at least forced to press + to skip the “cutscene”.

This brings me to the other half of this problem – loading screens. Every conversation takes a few seconds to fade to black and then fade back in… even if it’s all being done in the normal game engine, even if no characters are moving and nothing interesting is happening. Move a few inches on screen, a character wants to talk at you, loading screen, exit the conversation, loading screen. Move to the next screen in the same area, loading screen. Go to save your game, loading screen. Even going in and out of your menu takes a ridiculously long time.

After playing this game for hours, I felt like I had barely done anything, save for looking at loading screens and reading long conversations about nothing important as characters shoot the breeze. And yes, I do very much appreciate a rich story experience, but when the game is constantly interrupting the gameplay to deliver story, and when much of that story isn’t particularly important, and when every one of these interruptions comes with multiple pauses as things load, the entire experience drags to the point where it becomes nearly unbearable.

I hate how tedious and frustrating the pacing in this game is, because Heroine Anthem Zero’s good qualities are extremely good. This is a world and set of characters I want to see more of, but every time the game shows me more inane chit-chat buffered by pauses to load, I feel like I’ve been granted a monkey’s paw wish. I feel like you could have dropped 2/3 of this game’s dialogue and lose nothing of significance. In the end, I still think this game deserves a recommendation, but only with a huge caveat attached – do not bother with this game unless you have a huge reserve of patience, because this game will test that patience throughout the entire experience. However, if you’re willing to bear with this game’s monumentally bad pacing and loading screens, the music and visuals may make it worth your time.

tl;dr – Heroine Anthem Zero is an Action-Platformer with RPG elements that has players in the role of a forest ranger-type character in a medieval fantasy world who happens across a mysterious unrest and must investigate its cause. The hand-drawn visuals and orchestral and voiced music is absolutely gorgeous, and the world and characters are intriguing, but players wanting to see more of these will have their patience constantly tested as the game’s pacing is atrociously bad, thanks in part to incessant loading screen after loading screen. If you can bear with it, there’s some wonderful content here to enjoy, but don’t attempt to do so unless you are extremely patient.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are u/punkgeek, Andy Miller, u/wonderponder, Johannes, Eli Goodman Ilya Zverev, and Stov. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}