Game Reviews

Time of Heroes

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iOS
| Time of Heroes
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Time of Heroes
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iOS
| Time of Heroes

Innovation is all very well, but experimentation and tinkering don't always produce the desired results.

Time of Heroes, from Smuttlewurk Interactive, walks the line between valiant attempt and revolutionary update. Some of its revisions of the turn-based strategy genre are spot on, while others leave you feeling like they needed a little more work.

The game puts you in charge of Minos, a rough and tumble northerner whose homeland has been lost under an ice sheet. He sets out to find his people a new place to raise cattle, drink mead, and have unpronounceable names.

Lots of time for heroes

You fight your battles of conquest on tightly bordered maps, controlling up to three heroes, each of whom has a set number of units at his beck and call. You decide which type of units to use before each battle, with ranged, melee, and hulking brutes making up the bulk of your force.

You move and attack using a grid system, positioning your men to take on the hordes of pig beasts, trolls, and other elemental horrors. The grid also serves as a terrain indicator, letting you know what bonuses the ground beneath your feet holds.

An RPG-style levelling system lets you mould your heroes and units as you see fit, building them into warriors that suit your style of play. You can buy extra weapons from your heroes using real life money, too, although it's far from essential, and loot drops are reasonably common.

Overwhelming numbers

Later in the game you'll unlock dragons and dwarves to fight alongside you, but at the start you're hurling packs of sweaty barbarians into the fray with alarming regularity. While units are represented on the map as single figures, they can be anywhere up to ten in number.

Fights themselves take place away from the strategic map, and play out as cut-scenes, with units going after each other until one loses all of its men, or breaks and runs away. Time of Heroes is very much a game of numbers, and you need to keep a close watch on them.

You need to carefully match up each scrap, working out which of your units is in the best shape, which will gain the best bonuses from the terrain and position it's in, and which has the best numerical advantage in terms of strength and defence to do the most damage.

Deep time

There's a depth to Time of Heroes that slowly reveals itself as you play through, making each battle uniquely entertaining.

It's not without its problems, and chief among them is an inability to select multiple units, leaving you scrolling back to the same spot, time after time, to try and move your army forwards.

Time of Heroes adds some nice new touches to the turn-based strategy template, and while it's a little rough around the edges a few tweaks here and there could see it become an essential addition.

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Time of Heroes

An engaging and enthralling turn-based strategy title, Time of Heroes hits more than it misses, and with a few updates could be a classic
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.