Heroes of Steel: Tactics RPG Review

The Trese Brothers have created several smartphone games with RPG elements - it’s what they do. Three of them are sci-fi, one is about pirates and then there is Heroes of Steel, a tactics RPG based in a world of swords and sorcery. When I learnt they had a game on Kickstarter - this one - I didn’t hesitate to back it, as I am a big fan of their games. It wasn’t the games that endeared me towards them, though they could have been enough reason given how replayable they are, but how when I emailed them with a question, they responded very swiftly. It was about some spelling error on the Play Store and I figured it would be ignored as it was kind of nitpicky about the file size - but I didn’t have a memory card in my phone and size mattered. It was also the first day I had the game installed, so I was surprised by the fact I got an email and later an update - as well as practically daily updates fixing this and that, little bugs or graphic updates. Three years later and it still gets updated at least once a month - just the other day it got a new ship.

Now, why the long preamble about a different game? The Trese Brothers have brought the same dedication to perfection to Heroes of Steel that they brought to all of their other games. After a successful Kickstarter and a few months of free and paid versions on Android and iOS, the game went through Greenlight and onto Steam. Every week they give it an update, so any problems I may highlight in this review could be gone by the time you read it. I have seen games in Early Access that don’t update as often as titles from Trese Brothers.

The Steam version, like Heroes of Steel RPG Elite on mobile, gives you access to the prologue and the first two episodes (two more to come), three additional characters and hours of gameplay. There are almost 50 dungeons, over 50 enemy types and hundreds of weapons and items to customise your four adventurers. 

Firstly the story, which has a rich history set out on the Trese Brothers' website. Your heroes are the first to rise since the breaking of the world 70 years ago, though as you continue through the game you find they are hardly the purest of heroes. Each has their own faults and foibles which are explored as the game goes on. It's pretty generic, but that's more a fault of the genre than the writing.

You choose a band of four adventurers out of seven selectable: The Outlander is the main character such as that can be, then choose from the Wizard or Sorcerer, the Cleric or Paladin and the Thief or Rogue. You must have one of each type and the changes are pretty much just graphical. Their stats are the same, just a few of their abilities are different. Your group are all prisoners of Baron Arhaive and you meet them as they are joined by a fourth - the Cleric or Paladin. When the guards leave, you make your break for freedom, but the game makes that far from simple. Guards come at you all the way into the tunnels you use to escape and monstrous rats - Ratkin - hamper your progress until you finally reach a town, ending the prologue and starting Episode 1.

There are side quests available once you finish the prologue, though there are no quest markers. You need to pick a direction and click off towards that general area. If your quest lies to the west, head that way. The party will have a chat depending on what lies in that direction if there is something such as a tougher enemy type (and you have to mind out for the tougher enemies). During their turn, there is no way to know how much health your group has even when they are being attacked - and if a single member is killed you have to restart from the last campsite or get the option of returning to the last turn, giving you a chance to maybe heal that person before they lose too much health. The saves are automatic but seem to happen right before a fight, so make sure you finish a battle before you quit to the main menu.

On to the gameplay itself, it is obvious this is a port of the mobile game. What that entails is all of the actions and icons being kept far from each other across the screen. This doesn't hamper battles, as they are a turn-based affair, with your group of four using up all of their individual Ability Points (AP) before handing over to the enemy forces. Moving one square uses one AP and all abilities and attacks use different amounts of AP as well as Spirit. Luckily you can move and attack diagonally, so you don't have to waste AP going around someone. Using a potion uses one AP too, so I found it best to use those between battles, where you don't have AP to use. Long-range attacks can reach a certain amount of squares and all attacks do varying amount of damage, depending on weapon stats, character stats and enemy stats. As you fight you gain experience points and level up, but upon levelling up you cannot use the points until you reach a campsite and rest. However, not all campsites allow you to level up the three fields: Attributes, Skills and Talents. These contribute to your stats, abilities and weapon skills, meaning that along with the equipment and weapons your characters are very customisable.

The graphics are hand-drawn and although nothing like Child of Light, they are very well designed, though the simple top-down point of view shows its mobile roots. The music is decent, when it kicks in during a battle, however it is much more suited to the mobile version than a PC game. It loops quite noticeably at ten seconds and the rest of the time you have a loud background noise playing constantly and it does get quite annoying.

The controls are almost completely mouse-based with a few of the on-screen buttons mapped to the keyboard. I found myself no longer using the keyboard after half an hour of play, as it didn't add anything to the experience.

I had fun while playing it, though had to mute the game and listen to something else. I frequently play mobile games while listening to podcasts and had to do the same here. Other than that, I had no problems with bugs or glitches and the storyline keeps things interesting. I like the fact the party interacts and it’s not just mindless trudgery through fight after fight interspersed with towns. However, the shop mechanics could stand to be improved - it’s annoying to click on the item, click buy, click back on the item, click buy again.

Once they have it feeling less like a mobile game, I would feel better about paying a non-mobile price for it. As a game in itself there are few issues which, as I mentioned, are being ironed out all of the time by Andrew and Cory Trese. The game is certainly worth buying if you like strategy RPGs. It has difficulty modes, so even if you (me) are terrible at them you can succeed in this. Even if your rogue gets eaten by rats because she ran off alone… A decent looking game slightly marred by a generic storyline and straight mobile port, but certainly works as proof of what the Trese Brothers are capable of with some money behind them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUabKjL9iTQ