Heroes of Ruin (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Review for Heroes of Ruin on Nintendo 3DS - on Nintendo Wii U, 3DS games review

Heroes of Ruin is a dungeon crawler developed by n-Space and published by Square Enix. The title had gained quite a following during development and the game had even been delayed a couple of times. Followers of the game were hoping for something big, but was Heroes of Ruin really as good as people were expecting it to be?

Heroes of Ruin was released in June of 2012 - not a great time to release a dungeon crawler, due to Diablo III being shipped out a few weeks before - but, lo and behold, n-Space and Square Enix put it out there and many 3DS owners were just itching to get their hands on it.

The game takes place in the fictional city known as Nexus, in which players must find a cure for Ataraxis, ruler of the city and like many RPGs out there, it's possible to choose from a variety of different characters, all of which possess their own unique skills and actions. Each character has their own skill tree and players can choose whether they want to play through the game's story alone or with friends.

Sounds great so far, right? Well, sure it has online co-op, four different characters and a bunch of different skills, but it lacks something that most RPGs possess - that is the ability to face bosses after killing them for the first time. This just throws the replay nature of the game out of the window, as a new character has to be created in order to fight a certain boss again, and even then players must go through the various dungeons in order to reach that boss.

Screenshot for Heroes of Ruin on Nintendo 3DS - on Nintendo Wii U, 3DS games review

There are a few things that Heroes of Ruin does right, such as the randomly generated dungeon layouts and random loot drops, but other than that, the title just seems like a generic RPG that lacks character. When the game was in the development stages, n-Space touted the daily challenges, but almost a year after the game's release, these challenges have been nothing more than killing a certain amount of a specific enemy or clearing a certain dungeon. Not to mention that players may need to complete these challenges more than once, because sometimes the game forgets that the challenges have been completed!

Heroes of Ruin is definitely an ambitious title and n-Space cannot be faulted for that, it's just a shame that this ambition goes to waste due to bad design choices and annoying glitches, such as daily challenges not registering as completed.

Gameplay

Heroes of Ruin is a generic dungeon crawler with repetitive gameplay and not much reason to use characters' different skills due to the incredibly easy difficulty. Online co-operative play is a great addition, but the gameplay remains the same when played with more people.

Graphics

Not a bad looking game, but not great looking either. The 3DS is capable of much, much more.

Sound

There are some epic tunes in Heroes of Ruin that add atmosphere to the environments. The voice acting is pretty weak, though, with many lines repeated too often and short snippets sounding awkward.

Value

After completing the short campaign, the only things left to do are the daily challenges and completing the campaign with the other characters. Completing daily challenges will become a bit of a chore, especially because they are broken...

Cubed3 Rating

6/10

Average

About this score

Heroes of Ruin is an average game, with much better alternatives out there. The daily challenges are nothing compared to the daily and weekly puzzles found in the Professor Layton games and they do not work as planned. For 3DS owners looking for a game with a lengthy campaign with some form of online play included, there are games that are worthier of the money.

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02.03.2013
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Heroes of Ruin (Nintendo 3DS)

Developer

n-Space

Publisher

Square Enix

Genre

Real Time RPG

Players

C3 Score

6/10

Reader Score

5/10 (3 Votes)

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Comments on this Review

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Adam Riley 03.03.2013 12:34#1

It's certainly an interesting one. When I played the demo, I really loved the game, hence the glowing hands-on report - there was so much potential! However, I don't even think Square Enix had that much faith in it, since the Japanese release was muted, to say the least, and promotional work was handed over to Nintendo in Europe, which has been the curse of death for many S-E games over the years (comments from past S-E folk I knew said they never understood why the deals kept being made).

Playing through the final game was quite engaging for the first couple of hours, but then nothing really changed and the repetition of dungeons, button mashing, and the really annoying 'Hi' and 'Hello's that sound so awkward when meeting people in towns, along with generally muddy visuals that don't live up to the screenshots, all made for a lacklustre final experience.

So much potential, and clearly a technical marvel to get the online multiplayer going on 3DS, but it really needs a sequel to get hopefully allow the development team to fix the wrongs.

Adam Riley < Operations Director :: Senior Editor :: Cubed3 Limited >
Word of Adam | Voice123 Profile | AdamC3 on Twitter

Mush 03.03.2013 13:23#2

Yeah, after playing the demo I was so sure that the full game was going to be great. Then when I got around to playing it, I found it dull and repetitive. It was somewhat enjoyable, but I couldn't go back to playing through it again.

I was actually so motivated to complete all the daily challenges, but after one set of challenges kept resetting on me (including the weekly challenge, which took a lot longer!) I just gave up on the game completely.

I doubt there will ever be a sequel, but if there is, I hope n-Space do all they can to right the wrongs of the first game.

Hyrule Kitten 04.03.2013 01:40#3

I'm the same, I loved the demo, but the actual game kinda bored me. I only got so far before I lost interest and went back to playing Pokemon.

Kittensssssss

Trepe 04.03.2013 05:34#4

I was pretty disappointed with the game. It's generic dungeon crawling with no character to it what so ever. I've played several hours of it waiting for something to happen, but just to be confronted with the same dungeons over and over.