Dawn of Heroes Hands-On

There's a point when Dawn of Heroes--the upcoming swords and sorcery real-time strategy game for the Nintendo DS--gets weird. It might be the moment in the prologue when a long-lost king, looking to stop an evil beast from destroying the kingdom of Brimthule, decides to turn his enemy (and himself) into stone. It might be in the game's opening level where the duo of a ponytailed kung-fu warrior and a monk bicker about the pros and cons of being mercenaries. It might be when a tightfisted queen recites a lofty speech that is loaded with "air quotes." Or it might be when, after defeating a couple of animated skeletons, the aforementioned mercenary duo encounter a floating, sentient belt that informs them they are prophesied to be the chosen ones. Finding out just what that prophecy means--and how much it pays--kicks off the start of the storyline in Dawn of Heroes, which we spent some time with this week ahead of its release in early February.

When you set aside the tongue-in-cheek fantasy parody, Dawn of Heroes is actually a straightforward RTS role-playing game. The story, after all, merely serves as a tenuous link to get you from one fight to the next. Once the fight begins, the game's measured pace comes to the surface, resulting in what seems to be a real challenge, though it's not without its quirks. You control practically everything using the stylus and touch pad, with the battle taking place on both screens.

The upper screen shows your actions in 3D while the lower screen is organized as a 2D grid. While the upper screen is meant to show your actions after you've chosen them, it's the lower screen that matters. You control the actions of all your party members on the lower screen by tapping the appropriate character icon and then choosing to either move or perform an action. You can move as much as you want (within that character's movement range, of course). Available actions include attacking a nearby enemy (or using a ranged attack, where applicable), healing friendly units, or performing curses/buffs on nearby characters. All of these actions are merely a tap or two away, and once all of your characters have performed actions, you end the turn and the enemy takes over.

After some preliminary battles, we added a few characters to our initial starting pair--including an elflike mage and a voodoo-practicing cat (once again: video games are weird)--which left us with four characters to control onscreen. The mage hurled fireballs great distances while the voodoo cat cursed enemies. A little scouting on the battlefield is smart before a battle begins--some enemies are more vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks than others. Because you rarely, if ever, outnumber the enemy, making the most of your attacks is a key to victory.

The storyline in Dawn of Heroes comprises more than 50 missions, including branching paths and side quests. Each mission will also have both primary and secondary goals. A typical secondary goal might be finishing the fight in a certain number of turns. In addition, at the end of each mission, you might earn new gear for your characters and experience points that will level them up, giving them access to new abilities. The game will have 25 playable classes and hundreds of items to collect.

Despite its humor (at one point, you're fighting raptors on the back of a giant sea turtle) and straightforward battle system, Dawn of Heroes is not without its quirks. From the looks of things, you don't have much control over character progression--abilities are automatically assigned and about the only thing you can do is decide which characters get to use the equipment you've earned. Furthermore, the grid boxes on the lower screen are extremely small; as a result, the box you're aiming for is easy to miss.

The fast-paced dialogue contrasts the slow, methodical gameplay in Dawn of Heroes, but for some fans, that mix might be appealing. We'll find out how these disparate elements come together when the game is released on the Nintendo DS in February 2010.