Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption

Genre: Isometric Turn-Based RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Hero-U, released in 2018 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021, is an Isometric Turn-Based RPG designed as a spiritual successor to the Quest for Glory series. What this means is that players should expect a game with much less a focus on combat and more on “point and click”-style Graphic Adventure elements, as well as some relationship-building between characters and maintaining a school schedule.

The game’s story casts players as Shawn O’Conner, an aspiring thief who, during a job to earn a spot in the thieves’ guild, finds himself blackmailed into joining the local hero school, where he’s tossed into the school’s class for rogues disbarred bards. There, players will decide who to befriend, what skills to work on improving, and whether to try to excel as a student or search for a way to escape this scholastic prison.

The setup is a fun alternate take on what seems a lot like a Harry Potter-esque story, albeit with a school not just for wizards but for other fantasy-themed classes as well. The school itself has a decent variety of places to explore, and you have friendship meters for not only fellow classmates but for school faculty as well. Plus, the game has a clock that ticks down with every action taken, making players manage their time after classes – will you focus on building skills? Doing homework? Exploring the school? Building up rapport with others? Taking on work to earn some money? Or exploring the dungeons and fighting enemies? No matter which one you pick, the headmaster will issue you demerits if you’re found out of your dorm after 10PM.

It’s a clever concept, but it’s undermined by multiple issues. The first is that while you can investigate and interact with a multitude of objects, most of those objects do nothing, wasting the player’s time. Simply getting around the castle will force you to go through multiple loading screens as you go up and down staircases, wasting the player’s time. Building up skills across multiple days will force you to go through the same routine repeatedly, wasting the player’s time… you get the idea. Needless to say, all of this adds up to a game with severe pacing issues.

Furthermore, while the game’s plot makes it out like your class is essentially a group of misfits in the school, you’re not really given any sense that there are other students in the school – you never see them, and in fact the school’s rooms and hallways are largely empty. If this is a story akin to Harry Potter, this is like playing a game where you only ever see Griffindoor students.

There are other issues as well. This game uses 3D visuals for its settings and characters, along with 2D hand-drawn artwork for character portraits, loading screens, and the like, and these mostly look pretty good, if a bit lifeless. The problem is that the camera angle can get in the way of what you’re trying to see or where you’re trying to go, especially in the dungeons where it can swing into a more dramatic angle that obscures much of the dungeon.

Also, while the game has good writing and a decent fantasy-themed soundtrack, the lack of any voice for the characters and the relatively subdued nature of the soundtrack can make this game seem oddly quiet.

Finally, while Hero-U definitely tries to make good use of the Nintendo Switch’s unique features, there are some noticeable problems too. This game’s controls are based on traditional PC “point and click” gameplay design, meaning that rather than controlling Shawn directly, you’re constantly moving a cursor around with your analog stick, which can get annoying. In handheld mode this is mitigated by the game’s use of the touchscreen, but this excellent use of the touchscreen is made moot by teenie-tiny text that makes the game an absolute pain to play using the small screen.

Ultimately, Hero-U feels like it has far too many frustrations to deal with, and it’s a shame because there’s a decent premise underneath all of those issues. Players with a lot of patience may still find this to be an enjoyable and fairly unique adventure, but overall I can’t help but think that this game’s many flaws make it more trouble than it’s worth.

tl;dr – Hero-U is an Isometric Turn-Based RPG and spiritual successor to the Quest for Glory series, with much less a focus on combat and more on “point and click”-style Graphic Adventure elements, relationship-building, and maintaining a schedule. There’s a lot of potential here, but this potential is spoiled by numerous problems – extremely poor pacing, frustrating camera, poor controls, and tiny text in handheld mode all make this a game that’s often too frustrating to enjoy its better qualities.

Grade: C

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