The Cruel King and the Great Hero Reviews
The character designs can only be viewed at very specific angles and are not emotive. It is a major drawback to the style chosen. Even with the better aspects of the art supporting the game; The Cruel King and the Great Hero is ultimately a very hallow and bare bones RPG with severe pacing issues.
Despite all its charm, The Cruel King and the Great Hero is hard to recommend.
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a gorgeous looking JRPG, but its slow pace and amount of random battles make it a painful experience.
The utterly unremarkable gameplay makes this fable tough to recommend, even if it perfectly captures a sense of childlike innocence through the storybook visuals and tone.
In short, if its place in the world of video games is questionable, there is no doubt that there is material in this creation of Sayaka Oda to give rise to an excellent illustrated book.
Review in French | Read full review
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a delightfully innocent game that looks to bring in newcomers to the JRPG genre with its simplistic controls. However, I feel veterans of the genre will simply find this game way too easy with its linear and basic approach. There just isn’t enough depth within its core gameplay and becomes repetitive real quick.
This is a tough one to recommend because, while there are plenty of worthwhile aspects, there are just as many shortcomings. If you’re a diehard JRPG fan and like a more mellow experience, then you might enjoy The Cruel King and the Great Hero‘s charm. However, if you don’t like games with excess amounts of filler and an overally lack of strategic challenge, then you’ll more than likely find this game on the boring side.
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a game with interesting ideas, a unique visual style and a lot of potential, but it ends up failing in key points that take it away from its best and force the player to deal with its most negative points, spoiling quite an experience that could have been so much more.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
While The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a beautiful game and aesthetically unique compared to other RPGs, it's the core gameplay and super slow pacing that stops this from being something I'd recommend over more standard RPGs that do almost everything else better. I'm sorry, Yuu, you're probably one of the most adorable protagonists I've ever played as, but that just isn't enough!
The Cruel King and the Great Hero shines with its captivating art direction, but lacks deepness in gameplay mechanics and would have enjoyed a far better pace.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Cruel King and the Great Hero brings us an RPG with a charming and gorgeous art style, coupled with a plot that's very appealing and a gameplay that's designed to be accessible for players less versed in this kind of games. At the same time, more experienced players might feel put off by the game's accessibility and rather slow pace, but The Cruel King and the Great Hero puts up a good effort that would only benefit from a more in-depth combat system and faster pacing.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a very delicate game, a particular experience, which does not want to upset any such style and faces a fairytale tale with calmness and serenity.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Simply put, The Cruel King and The Great Hero is a charming tale and world that is worth visiting.
Is The Cruel King and the Great Hero perfect? No, but it is adorable, heartwarming, and you’ll want a box of tissues on hand to cry into at a few places. It’s a lighthearted JRPG and I for one am very happy to have been able to sit down to it and look forward to the next fairy tale-like adventure from Nippon Ichi Software as they between this and the Liar Princess and the Blind Prince have a really good thing going.
The Cruel King and The Great Hero could have been the right evolution of its predecessor, but for every step forward there's one back. It remains, however, a nice fairy tail to play with the youngest.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Cruel King and the Great Hero combines an excellent storyline and an exceptional art-style with a significantly simplified gameplay, which wouldn't be an issue if not for the tons of very repetitive fights that end up constantly interrupting the narrative flow. Perhaps more exploration and less combat would have served the game better, but unfortunately that's not the case.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is more a fairy tale than a game about young Yuu and her way of becoming a hero. The bookish fairy tale atmosphere gets enhanced through sweet graphics, handdrawn art and a great fitting soundtrack. Even though the turn based RPG gameplay is nothing new and to some degree even somewhat boring the game shines in the story department. The emotional side of things after the story picks up steam motivates to play through even grindy and tedious walking sections with too many random battles. If you like a good story that goes to the heart this sugary
Review in German | Read full review
It’s great that this far into the Switch’s lifespan there are enough RPGs that even genre fans don’t necessarily have to be upset that every title coming in the space isn’t something they’d dig...
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a lovely RPG, carefully hand drawn, that presents us with a story of supplanting and growth. The players are presented with an exciting experience, even though quite elementar towards it's mechanics. The final sensation is that we are facing a fairy tale that is presented to us in a magical way. Despite the tedious random battles, the experience tends to reveal itself as captivating throughout its duration. Essentially, we consider a title that deserves to be passed by everyone at least once.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a fine example of Nippon Ichi Software's creative ability. It's a small-scope, low-budget RPG, but its consistent design makes it an engaging fairytale. The title is especially recommended for fans of simpler RPGs and children's narratives that present beautiful moral discussions.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review