Game Reviews

Heroes in Time

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iOS
| Heroes in Time
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Heroes in Time
|
iOS
| Heroes in Time

It's hard not to let out a little shudder when another K-RPG wings its way on to the App Store.

Sure, they fill a hole for anyone seeking a retro RPG fix, but it's tough to be too enthused by an iOS sub-genre increasingly defined by its clumsy storytelling, grind-heavy gameplay, and aggressive in-app purchase requirements.

Thankfully, Heroes in Time - the latest game in Chillingo's SEED series - does a decent job of side-stepping these depressingly familiar genre tropes.

That's not to say you should expect revelatory innovations - just a more agreeable gaming experience beneath the chip-tunes and pixellated gloss.

Tale as old as time

For a start, Heroes in Time has a fair crack at spinning an interesting yarn. Proceedings kick off with a gallant knight, royal twins separated at birth by a murderous old hag, and the eventual discovery of a snarling wolf-child taken to the palace to serve - somewhat fortuitously - his long lost brother.

It's hardly prize-winning stuff, but it's a couple of steps up from the usual 'glum child makes friends, cheers up in time to save universe' nonsense. There's a decent amount of characterisation to flesh out the story's key protagonists, and the translation is solid enough to not be a perpetual distraction.

All this serves as a springboard for an action-RPG staunchly focused on simplistic real-time combat. Between exchanges of story chatter you head out into the wild and hammer your combat button to mash away at the game's constantly re-spawning fauna.

It's a system that's lacking in depth - with only the highs of loot drops punctuating the rather brainless action. Don't expect the added complexity of any Zelda-style dungeoneering here.

A Fighting Chance

Relentless it might be, but the combat is still solidly enjoyable - with special skills and a wide range of equipment upgrades delivering breadth where depth is missing.

Battles benefit greatly from a nifty lock-on system, too, ensuring that you can focus on the visceral thrills of destruction rather than fiddly orientation.

Elsewhere, everything's pretty much as you'd expect - with a lengthy globe-trotting main campaign, plenty of loot to pilfer, a reasonable number of fetch-style side quests, and appealing - if rather unadventurous - retro-inspired presentation.

Elsewhere, Heroes in Time wins points for its relaxed attitude to in-app purchases. Rather than force consumable spending through excessive grinding requirements, the game (which is otherwise free) attempts to entice a few coins out of your pocket with some handy optional upgrades.

For instance, 69p nets you access to fast-travel warp gates, and there's a special Coliseum mode that awards experience points and additional goodies for wave-based monster obliteration.

Because Heroes in Time has been shorn of the K-RPG's more annoying characteristics, it's easy to enjoy the well-proportioned adventure.

It's just a shame that it doesn't escape the genre's one-note gameplay. It's a fine example of familiar stat-levelling and button-battering, for sure, but Heroes in Time is probably still too stuck in its RPG-lite niche to entice anyone but ardent genre fans.

Heroes in Time

A solidly produced K-RPG that delivers an entertaining, if ultimately over-familiar, action-heavy adventure
Score
Matt Wales
Matt Wales
Following a lifetime of adventure on the high seas, swabbing the editorial decks of the good ship IGN and singing freelance shanties across far-flung corners of the gaming press, Matt hung up his pirate hat and turned his surf-seared gaze toward the murky mysteries of the handheld gaming world. He lives to sound the siren on the best mobile games out there, and he can't wait to get kraken.