Glory of Heracles

When I was a NES playing youth, it used to really aggravate me how many Japanese franchises never made it to the States. Now as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned the hard way that in most cases the game companies had a good reason not to bring a good number of these titles over. For every Fire Emblem we missed there are 20 pieces of junk I'm glad we did.

Glory of Heracles is one such JRPG series. The DS game is the first released in the US, but the fifth in a long dormant series that used to run in 1980’s and 90’s on the NES and SNES.

It is in a phrase a profoundly mediocre game in every aspect of the experience.

Basic Gameplay

Glory of Heracles plays very very old style in mostly bad ways. While the d-pad functionality is very welcome in a RPG that has a fair amount of touch interaction, this game has a lot of out date sensibilities.

It is extremely linear, to the point that you can never revisit previous zones. Which makes the inclusion of a navigable overworld a really odd design choice (with a World map on the top screen no less). There is no reason at all to ever go anywhere other than your next story driven destination, other than pit-stopping at a temple to gain new abilities occasionally. And in many cases those temples are in town.

This pretty much puts GoH in a three peat cycle over and over, Town-travel-dungeon-town-travel- dungeon ad infinitum.

Furthermore There are zero sidequests in this game, which in some ways is refreshing but also leaves the pace at one gear throughout the game in a game that badly needs a change of pace. The game makes its’ version of breaking up the pace by including a string of fights while riding on ships in between some of the zones, but given the lackluster combat system and the sheer number of fights you will get into over the course of the game that isn’t exactly welcome.

Combat

In Glory of Heracles you pretty much have an old school JRPG turn based combat system, Your characters stand one side, the opposing monsters and enemies stand on the other. They jump across to attack once on their turn and then jump back until you issue a new set of commands. Oh and of course these fights are the ever loved random encounter variety.

Where it goes weird is how it handles what you see on the DS screens with the menus, this is straight up visual HUD pollution.

The bottom touch screen is nearly half covered with menus. The Top has individual character stats and Ether numbers (which I’ll touch on a minute), The Left handside displays what action/condition each of your characters has, the bottom is two rows of touch button commands. The remainder of the touch screen is consumed by a Grid which shows the depth (i.e. front or back row) of you and the enemy on your relative sides. The ether number inclusion is particularly odd given that they are also shown simultaneously on the top screen!

Once you initiate the turn the action moves to the Top screen where the animations take place. On the touch screen it gets weird again, this time it becomes a scrolling list of actions (e.g.” Heracles uses Dispatch for 80 dmg”) while occasionally turning into a touch screen mini game when a Skill or Magic is used. You really don’t need these descriptions as the vast majority of what happens is obvious on the top screen. You also cannot view this action list when it comes time to set the next turn, which makes it a lot less useful. There are a rather large number of the mini games in terms of variety to add dmg to your skills, but you’ll likely see the same small set over and over as many of character abilities aren’t very good. If you manage to execute them you can add 100% or so to your base dmg on your skill, if you fail there is essentially no penalty.

The combat itself is horribly unbalanced, the game is insanely easy. There is undoubtedly an excess of bonus attacks and status ailments that essentially duplicate themselves. The player can equip several passive skills which essentially makes combat a cakewalk. Which makes the fact you can’t bypass the random encounters all the more annoying.

In what may be the greatest indictment of the battle system, the game has an overly effective auto fight mode. As long as you remember to buy new equipment and equip you can roll through the entire game this way, including boss fights. Which makes the random encounters all the more frustrating that you can't bypass them.

One interesting mechanic is the ether system , which refills to some degree after each turn depending on where you are (forest etc). The ether is communally shared between the player’s party and the opponent’s. Once the relevant ether element is exhausted casting any magic will result in backfire dmg to the caster. The party can also refill some of the ether and their own MP by overkilling opponents. The overkill mechanic also comes to play with undead enemies which must be overkilled or all killed in one turn to finish them off.

All in all the combat just isn’t fun, which is unfortunate since 80% of the game is probably spent doing just that.

Inventory and Levelling

Given the game’s linearity as one might guess, equipment mgt is minimal you can pretty much equip whatever you find new without thinking about it. You can customize your weapons through blacksmithing (crafting using dropped items) and alchemy (which adds abilities to the item).

And this touches on yet another really odd aspect of the game, the sheer number of types of shops . There is at least ten, the blacksmith, the alchemist, the polisher, the item shop, the armorer, the weapon shop, the tavern, the café, the inn, the sorcerer. As you can guess this feels really redundant and feels like they were tacked on this way to give the illusion of depth in a very shallow game. Some of these shops there is basically no reason to ever use(café/tavern in particular) in part due to low difficulty of the game, in part due to duplicate nature of their goods.

Furthermore some unfathomable reason limit there is a 200 unique item cap, an annoyance in an RPG that features light crafting but in practice that will only ever be an issue if you never sell old weapons. One would think with so many shops that are selling you garbage, that the game would not punish you for using their shops.

The leveling system is dull. They get experience they level up, no customability whatsoever. To make matters worse to get new abilities and magic you have to go pray at various statues at temples or in town, with again no customability. Which just feels like it was thrown in to get give you more busy work.

As for party management, there is none, you will have a max of 5 members (which is a rare number anymore in RPGs) some who come and go as story dictates but never anybody you have to swap in and out.

Story

Oddly enough the story may be the best part of this game, which given its’ simplicity is not much praise. Essentially the premise is you are an amnesiac silent player character (stop me if you have heard this before) who is on a quest with his new friends to save the world.

Fortunately GoH has a decent wrinkle on this badly overused trope. Not only do you have amnesia but, 3 other members of your 5 person party also have amnesia, and two of you think you are the Heracles. The entire party is immortal for reasons unknown to them (but someone can still die for gameplay reasons I assume) and thus quests initially to find their place in the world.

This is a better premise than it sounds and the translators did a pretty decent job making a simplistic script fun to read. The characters rarely sound off or unplausible for the world they are in.

The game manages to keep some of the identity suspense all the way to the very end while still parceling out morsels to keep you interested and, given my lack of familiarity with this franchise, provide a couple of the twists I found to be genuinely surprising.

Where the story is pretty thin is in the supporting cast, there 4-5 recurring characters but they are pretty dull or gimmicky. The main characters are quite a bit better although they read at times as more fanfiction tropes than actual fleshed out characters. The player character as you might expect, essentially has no character although the game rather cleverly addresses this.

Graphics & Sound

The music in this game is just serviceable, you’ll hear the same tracks over and over but somehow they manage to neither be catchy or annoying. Perhaps the most distinct tune comes at the end it unfortunately holds the distinction as being the worst, but that was by design. Likewise the sound effects are bland as well.

The battle animations and backgrounds are actually pretty good, but given that they are covered by so much jank menus you probably won’t get to appreciate them. The enemy NPC design is alright , but does suffer as many rpgs do from excessive palette swaps. The character design on the party has a decent style, but perhaps is over detailed for what the DS can pull off especially from an slightly off center over head view that game rolls with. The NPC design is largely forgettable.

The world map might be the prettiest part of the game, There is a decent amount of detail and terrain variation. the map roughly approximates the actual Mediterranean region. But as was previously mentioned you will have little reason to explore or appreciate it.

Where the graphics don’t stand up however is the aesthetic, for a game supposedly set in Ancient Greece (an Ancient Greece anyway, more like Ancient Anime Greece) it sure doesn’t look like it consistently. Most of the NPC garb fits the place, but the buildings look much much newer. Furthermore the well known cast of ancient Greek monsters is horribly underused and when used abused. The ones that are present are usually bosses and only similarity they share to creature of is their name (not appearance,concept or abilities). This wastes perhaps the biggest differentiating factor GoH had going for it and largely destroys the immersion factor in the universe. You would think a game riffing on a culture that claims Medusa, Chimera, the Cyclops etc as its’ own would play to those strengths.

Replay Value/Length

You can blow through this short game in 30 hours or faster if you auto battle all the way. There is a new game + mode, but there is little there to hold your interest. No real content adds, more combat stats etc. Given the thinness of the story anyway, you are not likely to care to play another thirty hours for more tidbits.

Verdict

Glory of Heracles is a bad game.

The story twists is enough to keep the most passionate RPG fans invested, but horrifically easy and bland combat and exploration make this game boring. The lack of memorable music or polished aesthetic make Ancient Greece not a place you’ll want to explore.

GoH has a lot of really odd design choices, much of this game feels like it’s there just for the sake of being there for back of the box marketing reasons. The World map, about half of the items and shops you’ll never have reason to utilize.

About the one positive I can say about this game is that it essentially glitch free.

At best Glory of Heracles might appeal to some young kids just starting out in JRPGs due to its’ low difficulty and bargain price, but they and all gamers out there have plenty of better choices available.