Hands-on: Dawn of Heroes (DS)
by David Hinkle 
{ Nov 12th 2009 at 3:30PM }
Gallery: Dawn of Heroes (DS)
The humor is the first thing I was exposed to as I met Reynald and Jiro, two reluctant "Chosen Heroes." As mercenaries tasked with locating a certain book in a spooky, haunted mansion, the two soon find themselves embarking on a quest far too epic for their liking. Luckily, the generic plot takes a back seat to the game's hilarious dialogue, which is often incredibly irreverent and laced non sequiturs.
The game sports a stylus-driven control scheme that works quite well. At the outset, I could only tap and move my guys around the grid and do basic attacks, but as I progressed through battle after battle and enlisted the aid of some extra companions, I was using spells and bending foes to my magical will fairly easily. Almost too easily, to tell the truth; the preview build provided little challenge and it wasn't until after many battles that I had to actually start using a bit of strategy.
Each battle is enhanced through the inclusion of classes and stipulations. The former is easy enough to get -- you've got your healers, your magic users, your warriors and so forth -- but the stipulations really helped to keep the battles from getting too stale. For example, a battle against numerous foes on the back of a giant turtle, dubbed "Fair Fight," only allowed an enemy to be the target of two offensive abilities in one turn. Any subsequent attempt would only be nullified.
The Dawn of Heroes preview build showed promise and will likely be a solid choice for any fan of tactical role-playing games when it releases next month. The retail product promises over 50 missions to play, along with local and Wi-Fi multiplayer (this feature wasn't available in the preview build, sadly). The game's comical dialogue and characters really stood out as the unique defining qualities that made it worthwhile to play. Should the final release sport a greater degree of challenge and some more variety in the battles, it could be a really unique entry in the genre.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dummy00001 @ Nov 12th 2009 5:47PM
> Any subsequent attempt would only be nullified.
Does game provides warnings for that?
In FFTA2 the crappy "laws" oftentimes resulted in dragging never-ending battles where midway you simply forget about the shitty law. And there were no warning or whatever to inform the gamer that s/he is about to break the law.
David Hinkle @ Nov 12th 2009 6:26PM
Yeah, before you get to the combat, the stipulations are laid out in plain view.
Suichimo @ Nov 12th 2009 11:05PM
The laws in A2, as far as I remember, were listed on the top part of the screen during battle. There were pretty much no penalties for breaking the law either. You just didn't get a bonus item(s). The first Tactics Advanced could get annoying because of them though.
Dummy00001 @ Nov 12th 2009 6:57PM
"before you get to the combat"
But it's the same shit as ffta's law. The problem is when you try to actually follow the laws, battle can drag for very very very long time. (Actually the boredom of battles made me stop playing ffta.) Worst part is that on DS you can easily pause the game by simply closing the lid - and that was happening all the time with ffta2 since the battles were too long. And after a while, when you resume the battle, you simply forget the law and break it - throwing out of window all the wasted time and effort of actually trying to follow the law.
Laws sucked big time. "Stipulations" seem to be a new word for the same.
Ben Thomas @ Nov 16th 2009 2:28PM
They are not laws like in A2, they are general concepts which stay throughout the entire game.
There are not many of them, but they are introduced one at the time.
The “Fair Fight” rule was added to prevent the gang-up strategy common to most other tactical games. You cannot attack an enemy more than twice in a single round, and an enemy cannot attack one of your heroes more than twice.
Other rules are also introduced latter in the game to prevent combat from dragging. The “Last Man Standing” rule allows you to end a combat quickly when the odd of winning are greatly in your favour (like in a 4 vs 1 scenario).
Ben - Wicked Studios