‘Hero Emblems II’ Review – There’s No Catch to this Match
Hero Emblems ($2.99) was first sold on the App Store about seven and a half years ago. Its sequel was officially announced and a trailer was shown a little less than six years ago. A few weeks later, at the 2016 Tokyo Game Show, I played Hero Emblems II for the first time. It cost $6.99. At that time, the people at Heat Pot Games told me that the game wasn't coming out until at least late 2017.
They didn't lie to me, though. It wasn't coming out for a while, and I honestly put it in the same bucket as Sword of Fargoal, Princess and Knight, and Questlord, all of which had sequels that went out to buy cigarettes and never came back. So I was pretty surprised when Heat Pot Games told me when the game would come out and even put up a preorder page on the App Store. I won't even try to guess why it took so long. Making games is hard, especially when you only have a small team. But I'm glad that it has finally reached the end.
When I look back at the video I took at TGS 2016, I find it strange to see how many of the core parts of the final game were already there. The same party members are here, and their sprites look pretty much the same. The board and the pieces you use to make matches almost look the same. Even some of the unique parts of the sequel are there, like the fact that each character has their own health and defense meters instead of sharing them with the rest of the party. This tells me that they learned the basics quickly and spent a lot of time making a big adventure where players could use those skills.
And it looks like that is the case in Hero Emblems II as well. We meet a new group of heroes, but they do a lot of the same things as the ones who came before them. We have a fighter who focuses on offense, a shield-bearer who focuses on defense, a healer, and a mage who throws fireballs. As you play through the story, you'll add a few more characters to your team. One of the most important parts of this game is knowing when and who to switch in and out. In the first game, the heroes were royal guards. This time, the heroes are a group of simple adventurers who get into a lot more trouble than they probably would have liked. It starts out with them just helping an elf who can't remember anything, but they soon get caught up in a plot where the fate of the whole world is at stake.
I guess that's how RPG stories work. Hero Emblems II is at least as much of an RPG as it is a match-3 game, if not more. You have a group of heroes that level up, get new equipment, learn new skills, etc. You can wander around a node-based world map at your own pace, fighting random battles, looking for secrets, and going wherever your current quest or sub-quest takes you. In towns, you can buy things, sell things, and get quests. You have a lot of things you can use in a fight if things get tough. As was said, you need to find more party members, and the story will take you all over the place.
Think of it as an RPG where you make your moves by playing a match-3 game when it's time to fight. Each hero has a piece that goes with them. When you make a match with that type of piece, the hero will do something. When you make bigger matches, you get special pieces that, when matched, make the character do a special move. You can get new moves and choose how to use them. If you get five of the same piece, you'll get a fancy emblem that, when matched, will make that character do their super move. Everything happens in turns, so your enemies will get a chance to attack you after you do. Even if you don't try, you can make more than one match in a turn, but it's important to think about which character is the best choice each turn. Even though there are random parts, it is a very strategic way to fight.
Those of you who played the first Hero Emblems will probably recognize all of this, and they should. Hero Emblems II took a long time to make, but it is a pretty safe sequel that is very similar to the first game in many ways. Yes, the graphics are all new and look much better. There are more characters to deal with, and each of them is built in a way that is much more complicated. It has a whole new story, a lot of new enemies, more quests and side quests to complete, and more secrets to find. It's definitely bigger, and it makes good use of the first one. It doesn't completely change the original game, though, and its no-nonsense premium design feels like it came from a different era of mobile games.
Depending on your tastes, this added complexity does have a few drawbacks. To make a good strategy, you need to use both the new and old game mechanics. If you don't, the game will keep sending you back to the wood shed to beat you up. Even grinding isn't going to get you far. Even though the first game was hard, this one gets much harder very quickly, and you'll need to use all of your skills to move forward. If you want to scratch that itch, you can find puzzle games that are faster.
Hero Emblems II could use some work on its user interface (UI) because it needs to be able to handle the new features. Sometimes it's not clear how to do what you want to do, so you'll have to try things out to figure things out. The story is interesting, but the localization is very rough and sloppy, which takes away from the otherwise excellent presentation. It's never so bad that you can't figure out what's going on, but it's full of grammar mistakes, strange word choices, inconsistent capitalization, and old-fashioned language. Not the end of the world, but after so much time, I would have liked to see a little more polish on the script.
Overall, though, Hero Emblems II is hard to find much to complain about. The first game was unusual for its time, but this one is even more so. It stays true to what worked in the first game, adding more depth with new rules and variables without straying too far from what worked. It's also very big and has a story like a full role-playing game. Hero Emblems II is a great premium game that you can play whenever you want without having to worry about gacha pulls, subscriptions, or buying bags of gems. It's a good idea.
