After having played Heroes of Ruin for nearly 17 hours now (still on my first playthrough) I've got to say that I love this game. It's clear that a lot of love and care has been put into this game, the world of Heroes of Ruin and the environments within it are all nicely detailed.
The gameplay is fun and simple with some nice elements thrown in to keep it from getting too stale -- early on it feels like a standard mash-and-bash affair, but later on they begin to send groups of enemies that have stat lowering or defensive bonuses while attacking you as a group, and in some groups there are 'leaders' who are completely invincible and deal extra damage until you kill all the of the enemies nearby. And then there are the mini-bosses who have a large amount of health and deal a ton of damage, and they usually show up with a group of normal enemies that have special abilities like the ones I just mentioned.
Controls are simple so it shouldn't take anyone very long to learn how to quickly sell or equip new items, or map new skills to the face buttons.
Multiplayer and voice chat work wonderfully. It's easy to join a game session with a friend or random player; while scrolling through the lobby you'll see the chapter they're on and the quest that they're currently trying to complete, there's even a filter button to search for players that are on (or near) the same main quest as you, so that you're not forced to spoil events in the story if you want to play with others. While I played with others using voice chat the sound always came through clear, but I played with headphones on so I can't say much about the sound quality from the system itself.
Heroes of Ruin definitely has some rough edges, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best multiplayer action RPGs on the system.
I have to say, even though I have not been challenged by anything (except figuring out one particular boss had an insta-kill attack) in many, many hours but I'm still happily plugging through to the end of the game. The lack of difficulty is probably going to hurt replayability for me though, I must admit, unless it is signifigantly harder w/ classes other than Vindicator. I'm actually kind of thinking it might be fun to go for speed runs.
logicalfrank
Having a higher difficulty setting would have done wonders for this game.loco145
It is VERY easy to make this game harder just by doing a few simple things.
When you level up you get 1 skill point (to purchase a new skill or upgrade one you already have) and 3 stat points to boost your attributes (Health, Mana and Regeneration), so by simply not boosting your attributes or upgrading skills that you've already unlocked you'll make the game harder than it normally is -- especially once you get to the harder dungeons. If you'd still like more of a challenge try completing dungeons with the weakest items you can. But I wouldn't suggest doing that if it's your first playthrough, unless you think it's too easy.
A friend of mine who was playing as a level 21 Alchitect hadn't raised his stats at all, we both went into one of the later dungeons and he died regularly. Even though he had come into the level with good equipment and a bag full of health potions, it didn't take very long for the enemies to force him to use them all.
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