Beginner to the genre or not, Legend Of Heroes is an entertaining old-school RPG that almost anyone should check out.
LOH has an interesting if basic storyline. The game stars Avin who lost his sister Eimelle years ago. He misses her a lot and most of the game is trying to locate her. The game takes place in the land of El Philidin of the world known as Gagharv. The back-story is 2 groups fighting against each other, one is the Bardus Of Light and the other is the Octum Of Darkness. This back-story is frequently encountered during Avin's quest. Avin tries to find his sister with his friend named Mile. The two friends meet many characters along the way. One of the good things about the story are the interesting characters you meet. Various other characters include a great proud apprentice named Douglas, a lord called Conrad, and a weird village girl known as Shannon.
Every RPG needs a battle system. LOH has an extremely simple and easy-to-get-into system. When you encounter an enemy, you get into battle. Each character in your party takes turns performing actions from a menu. The battles are turn-based and the menu includes attack, magic, deadly, skill, item, wait, and escape. Once you try to attack, there is a circle indicating where you can move and what enemies are close enough to attack. This is very helpful in how you want the battle to go. Most charcaters aquire spells which they can cast. Each character has a power meter whcih gets full over time. Once the meter is full, a powerful "deadly" attack can be used. Skill attacks are normal attcks but have certain effects. Items can be used to heal party members or attack enemies. Wait allows a character to move anywhere they want on the field. Escape allows all party members to run away from the battle.
Enemies are seen on the adventure. If you collide with them, the battle starts. LOH has a very unique monster-encounter system. Each monster will have an icon over their head indicating if it is weaker than you, stronger than you, or unaware of you. If it is weaker, it will try to run away from you. If it is stronger, it will try to hit you. If it is unaware, it will not do anything. This is great if you need to get to a town quickly and generally want to avoid annoying battles on the way.
Of course, leveling up is important in LOH. Gaining experience in battles allows party members to level up. Leveling up makes the members stronger, have better status, get new skills, and aquire new upgrades in equipment. Buying equipment is natural in the flow of the game. Weapons and armor help characters do better in battle. There are 2 types of currency in LOH. One of them is Pia and the other is Rozes. Pia is gained in battle and can be exchanged into Rozes at shops. Rozes is used as the main currency.
LOH has a pet system incorporated into it. At the beginning of the game, you randomly get a dog, cat, or rabbit. Pets can have different moods and those moods help in battle. An angry pet will attack enemies while a happy pet will improve defense of party members. You can feed, scold, or praise your pet to affect it's mood. Another neat feature in LOH is the interaction system. Each NPC can be talked to and a chat icon appears over their head. A red exclamation point over the chat icon means it is an important event in the adventure. This makes the game have a faster and easier pace which is great.
Even though LOH has good gameplay, it is not without flaws. First off is it's simplicity. Die hard RPG fans may find the game way too easy. This is true as LOH is not challenging at all due to the pathetic bosses and easy objectives. This is great for beginners to the genre however. In fact, LOH is perfect for people who have not played an RPG before. Another flaw is the overall dated feel to the gameplay. LOH feels like it was created in the SNES era meaning the battle system has pretty much no spunk. The battles can also be quite repetitive leading to unaddictiveness.
LOH definately has an old-school visual look to it. Almost everything is in 2-D and has a cartoony look. The characters are nicely designed, very colorful, and animated well. The environments look pretty good with nice artwork and colors. The monsters are just as good as the characters in terms of design and color. LOH has a basic presentation and you really wish that the game was more up-to-date. The special effects are nothing special and the framerate can surprisingly get slow with a lot of characters on-screen.
LOH has an amazing soundtrack. All of the music is fully orchastrated and sounds brilliant. The tunes are very catchy and fit the game perfectly. The music in LOH is very surprising and I would not mind an album with all the game's songs on it. In terms of sound, LOH is decent. The sword sound effects and spell sound effects are all crisp and clear. Every other sound effect is nice to listen to even though there is not much variety in the amount of sound effects. One thing that could have made LOH have a better presentation is voice acting. None of the characters talk and there is a lot of text to read. This is a shame as all of the charcaters are really interesting and voices would have been awesome. In battle, you see the characters have battle dialogue written in text. Even if these were voice acted, the game would have a slightly better presentaion.
LOH is filled with amusing dialogue. The game has lots of humor early in the game but it tends to disappear towards the end which is expected. One thing lots of people will notice with LOH is the huge amount of pronounciation errors within the game. Some examples are: "Avin was "Stone" mastered" and "Hey, we were luck". While this is a flaw, it can be funny as well.
LOH has a very long quest which lasts around 40 hours. Once the game is done, there is not mush more to make you play through one last time. There are no special hidden surprises, no extra play modes, and hardly any side-quests. There is some value however because of how massive the adventure is. Beginners to RPG's will take longer to complete the game and thankfully the difficulty will allow them to do so.
Legend Of Heroes is an RPG that many people can get into. While serious RPG fans might not like it as much, casual RPG fans will love it. The production values are bland, and the battle system may be a bit on the repetitive side but overall LOH deserves a purchase. Let us hope that Falcom brings more games like this to North American shores.