Songs for a Hero: Definitive Edition

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Songs for a Hero + Shieldmaiden Bundle, along with Shieldmaiden: Remix Edition.)

Songs for a Hero is an Action-Platformer released on PC in 2016 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021 in a Definitive Edition containing all of the game’s DLC. This game has players taking the role of an unnamed hero who responds to a psychic plea of a princess looking to be freed from her capture. And being a typical hero, the hero sets out to do the hero thing and rescue the princess.

The unique hook of this game is that over the course of the entire game, the hero himself will often start singing along with the background music, responding to things going on in the environment. He’ll comment on the enemies he fights, the way this level looks different than the last, or how he’s relieved that his armor doesn’t seem to get dirty even in the most dank and dingy environments.

It’s cute, but it gets old fast. It doesn’t help that the music itself just is not very good, and the hero is a terrible singer. And while it can be amusing at first to hear him singing about stuff as you encounter it, that gimmick wears out its welcome pretty quickly, and you start to see the seams. See, the hero isn’t continuously singing, just whenever an event trigger happens, so the singing doesn’t really come across as fluid at all. The rest of the presentation is decent but unspectacular, with 2D pixel art visuals that work well enough but aren’t impressive or striking in any way.

So that leaves us with the gameplay which… is a pretty bog-standard Action-Platformer with repetitive level design, uninteresting game mechanics, and uninspired enemies. You do gradually gain abilities as you progress, but these abilities aren’t really anything exciting that truly sets this game apart in the genre.

Ultimately, while I don’t think Songs for a Hero is a bad game, I do think it is an extremely mediocre game that depends heavily on its gimmick to make it more interesting, and I just don’t believe that the gimmick is well-done enough to pull that off. I suppose you might find this game entertaining enough to be worth trying, but there are far too many better games in the genre on Nintendo Switch for me to recommend this game.

tl;dr – Songs for a Hero is an Action-Platformer where players take the role of a princess-saving hero who sings about everything going on as he’s on his adventure. The singing is not very good and will grow tiresome quickly, and the gameplay is just not interesting enough to be worthwhile on its own. This isn’t a terrible Action-Platformer, but you have so many better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C

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