Witch & Hero

I’m all for the retro revival video games have been experiencing in the past few years and I’m certainly an advocate for simplistic gameplay mechanics wherever possible. That being said, Witch & Hero hopes to encapsulate both of those ideals together, but being overly simplistic and with a cheap 8-bit aesthetic, it fails on all fronts.

There is a story provided to give a reason for the gameplay, even if it is a simple one. A Medusa has attacked the land and you (the Hero) along with your sidekick (the Witch) go off to vanquish it. The two heroes fail and the evil Medusa casts a spell on the Witch, turning her into stone. As the Hero, your quest is the save the Witch and lift the curse so you can both join forces and fend off the Medusa once and for all. It’s a fairly generic story, but it gets the job done. Even in this short bit of story, there are plenty of typos and weird grammatical errors. These grammatical errors aren’t prevalent enough to really hinder the game, but rather show evidence of a poor translation and laziness on the developer’s part. This laziness is obvious in almost everything about Witch & Hero, from the generic story, the tedious gameplay and the cheap graphics there is hardly any thought given here.

The perspective of the game is top-down, with only one screen containing each level. The Witch stays in the middle, and it is your job to protect her, adding a sort of tower defense element. Though you have a sword and shield, it’s completely useless to you as there is no real combat. In fact, you can only use the circle pad to move, there are no button for anything else other than changing the Witch’s magic. In order to fend off enemies, you simply have to bump in to them. Of course, every time you bump an enemy, your life depletes leading to you constantly dying. You are given the chance to revive yourself by swirling the circle pad around and around until you finally get bad on your feet. This bumping and dying process makes up the core gameplay, and it gets incredibly repetitive even after the first level.

This leads to the single most frustrating thing about Witch & Hero. There is no skill involved with combat, so dying on a regular basis and grinding to get upgrades is a must. A little bit of grind is reasonable in a RPG, especially if it’s enjoyable; but that’s the problem, it’s not enjoyable at all. Grinding is only made worse by the game’s lack of balance. You will enter a new level and the difficulty will be bumped up twice as much as the previous level on a regular basis. Meaning you’ll always be going back and grinding for upgrades. After 20 levels in total, the end result is a new difficulty, trail mode and also an infinite mode. While these do add extra replay value, these modes are hardly worth the chore of completing all 20 levels.

One twist to break from the monotonous gameplay of being the Hero, is using the Witch’s magic. Defeated enemies will drop a blood life force to be picked up. Collecting enough juice allows the Witch to come alive, only for a brief moment, and use either a wind or fire attack. The wind attack produces a wide range field of damage, while the fire attack burst strong punches in a concentrated area. Both magic powers make up the entirety of strategy in the game. You can level up these abilities much like the hero’s ability but are fairly pointless until higher levels.

The thing I hate the most about Witch & Hero is that, at its core, there is potential for a really good game. The idea of having a hack-n-slash combined with tower defense and light RPG elements mixed in sounds like an excellent time. Sadly, this game does not live up to those concepts and instead just ends up being a poorly made game. Not that you can’t have fun with it, but the developer’s laziness makes for bland, subpar experience.

Positives:

• Well suited for portable gaming.
• Mindless gameplay.

Negatives:

• Poor gameplay mechanics.
• Tedious repetition.
• Overly generic 8-bit art style.

3/10