A wonderful game that suffers from some small problems that appears to stem from a low localizing budget.
• Combat is well done and very little grinding is necessary.
• Characters are interesting and have deep personalities.
• The story is well done and is quite long.
• Great graphics and music.
• Interesting world creation.
• Lots of playable characters.
• History tab in main menu helps you remember what's going on in the story and what you should be doing next.
Cons:
• To many side quests that disrupts the main quests flow and seem like just filler.
• No game play clock.
• Items have strange names and no in combat descriptions, which makes knowing what the item does during combat difficult unless you memorize the descriptions.
• Poorly translated character dialog.
• No character combat A.I.
• Pet system is a total waste of time and is an annoying distraction.
• Caves are so dark that navigating them was very hard.
The story is not anything new but is well done and with interesting characters it provides an enjoyable experience. Avin and Eimelle are orphans and are being raised by a religions organization called the Bardus religion. When a rival religious organization called the Octum Apostles attack and tries to kidnap Eimelle. The two children are separated during the chaos and are hidden by the Bardus religion. Eight years latter Avin is 17 years old when his guardian and teacher dies of old age. Avin is given a task from the old man on his death bed and Avin also is old enough to look for his sister. Avin and Mile a childhood friend embark on the quests before them and get involved in a much larger conflict.
Game play is standard for a turn based RPG. You control Avin and his group as they explore cities, forests, caves, ruins and other locations. While at these locations Avin is talking to NPC's and progressing the story, or Avin is battling monsters and bad guys to progress the story.
The combat is very basic turn based, but one thing that I really liked was that the monsters are physically on the screen. This means no random encounters, plus once you become more powerful than the monsters they will try to avoid you. This is good because there is some back tracking in the game and not having to battle the monsters all over again is very nice.
Final thoughts:
The Legend of Heroes has wonderful graphics and music, combined with the story and characters and you have a great game. There are some game play elements that needed some improvement and updating but overall a highly recommended game. One thing I did notice was that about a third of the way into the game the character dialog quality takes a dive, not so bad that you can't understand the story but noticeable. I guess the localization of the game was behind schedule and some corners were cut.
Game Play: 6
Graphics & Music: 9
Story & Characters: 8
Value: 7
Score: 7.5/10