Has Been Heroes Reviews
Has Been Heroes has a unique game play mechanic, but fell short on explaining it properly for new players to the game. I really would have enjoyed the game much more had the system been explained properly. It would have saved me a couple of hours just fumbling around the game’s UI and online resources, and actually just had me enjoy the game from the start. With bland environments, but a rather pleasant aesthetic, Has Been Heroes is an above average game that will keep your attention for a few hours. Even though it has plenty of heroes for you to unlock, I’m not sure I could keep playing for longer than ten hours as I think the repetitive nature would be to much to handle. I would say wait for a sale on this one, as $19.99 might be a little too steep for my liking.
Has Been Heroes offer an interesting gameplay. It combines turn-based and rock-paper-scissors combat to give us unexciting, too difficult and unforgiving gameplay. It always leaves us unprepared for next encounter and gives us almost nothing in return for our blood.
Review in Polish | Read full review
There are some good ideas in Has Been Heroes, such as the way it uses multi-lane battlefields to make us use strategies that involve switching between the strengths of three different heroes to achieve victory. It's a recipe for fun that manages to last for a while. Eventually, though, the heavy emphasis on the luck of level generation, the frustrations of enemy repetition, the poor tutorial, and the tendency to overrun you with tough enemies spoil the whole. Hard games are great, but there are limits.
Has-Been Heroes is as tough as nails and built for people that like to lose over and over again. The combat offers an interesting twist on a familiar mechanic, but never really evolves beyond that initial learning process. Some of the whimsy present in the Trine series has been carried over here, but not enough to balance out the punishing difficulty.
Has-Been Heroes is an initially appealing title that quickly becomes bogged down by a lack of good instructions, too much luck-based randomness, and permadeath that never quits.
The world of Has-Been Heroes is too frustrating due to the same type of enemies, random difficulty level and lack of motivation to run it more than once a week. The only exception is the version for the Nintendo Switch, which can be good for short sessions in buses, subways and trains, replacing no less monotonous games for tablets and mobile phones.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Despite all of these complaints, Has-Been Heroes isn’t a terrible time.
Overall, Has Been Heroes is...ok. If the RNG was fixed up a bit and the difficulty curve was altered so you're gradually introduced to the game, it would be a pretty good rogue-like. As it is now, it's simply too frustrated and luck-based to be up there with other great rogue-likes like Rogue Legacy or Darkest Dungeon.
Has Been Heroes had the potential to be a very good game, but some gameplay issues and weak narrative, don't let this game to break the walls of mediocrity. Combats are hard and based on luck more than anything else. Has Been Heroes is a fun game to play in its genre, but you must deal with its problems too.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Has-Been Heroes could be better if it had more depth, far more addictive if it wasn't as repetitive, and, most of all, an unquestionably worthy purchase if the gameplay didn't rely on randomness as much as it currently does so. Long story short: very one-more-try-ish, but also in definite need of some tweaking.
Has-Been Heroes is a funny and charming title that blends the age-old tale of heroes embarking on an adventure with the humour of them escorting the princesses to school.
While Has-Been Heroes can draw someone in really quickly, it will wind up losing them just as fast. It's fast and fun, and the mix of roguelike and pseudo-tower defence elements actually work quite well together. The core concept here is entertaining enough, but the lack of variety winds up souring the experience sooner than it should.
The core concept of Has-Been Heroes is excellent. I love the theory behind the combat, and I love the exploration. In practice, though, Has-Been Heroes is confusing and fiddly in ways that make it frustrating to play, rather than challenging.
Without narrative hooks, valuable prizes and more diverse in-game situations, Has been heroes overstays its welcome after just a couple of hours, also let down by horrible difficulty spikes and an unfairly procedurally generated maps. Try it again, Frozenbyte.
Review in Italian | Read full review
This roguelike’s cool combat system is held back by a terrible structure.
Has-Been Heroes has a genuinely inviting and involving combat system that requires real strategic thought to master. However the rest of the game just doesn’t pull together to form a cohesive whole, with brutal difficulty, frustrating permadeath and an under-utilised premise all serving to taint the end product. It does at least benefit from the Nintendo Switch’s portability, and this is where it’s at its best, but at home you’ll likely be turning it off far quicker than Frozenbyte were hoping for.
Has-Been Heroes is an interesting attempt at a new kind of puzzle/strategy/brawler hybrid, but it’s never as much fun to play as it looks like it should be. It’s a game that has good ideas and strong visual design in its favour, but it never manages to balance the high difficulty level with rewards that make the hardship worth your while.
Has-Been Heroes is a game that is full of great ideas but gets dragged down by poor execution. The way it combines RPG and roguelike elements with basic tower defense gameplay has so much potential that it unfortunately can't live up to in the face of imbalanced difficulty curves and unwieldy controls. It feels much more like a proof of concept that, with time and updates, could some day lead to a great adventure.
Has-Been Heroes isn't a bad game, but I wasn't excited to start over after my first loss. After coming to understand the mechanics and strategy better, I am enjoying it to some degree, but I don't feel any less frustrated every time I lose. The only thing driving me to play more is my inner completionist, but if you're looking for a game with a compelling story and more to it than just unlocking more in-game items and spells, then this might not be the title for you.
Has-Been Heroes includes good ideas but is let down by an insanely high difficulty level and a lack of reward. You'll enjoy it in bite sized chunks via handheld mode to begin with, but you'll quickly grow tired of feeling like you're making no progress.