After being caught fleeing, our protagonist, Sean O’Conner, is faced with a choice. He can be turned into a force or enrolled as a student at the mysterious Hero-U Academy located at Hogwarts. Of course, he chooses the latter and attends the Hero-U school, which trains warriors, mages, paladins, bards and thieves. He will face many challenges such as monsters, thieves, betrayals and duties. With dedication and cunning, Shawn might even win the coveted title of bum of the year.
It is difficult to overcome the stigma of being a cheater.
Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is an action-adventure game that seems to have been made in the early 90s. Sean interacts with objects and explores them or adds them to his inventory for later use. There will also be a lot of interaction with other students and faculty, and you will have several options for dialogue. This affects your relationships with other people and even certain events in the game. If you’ve ever played adventure games, you know what to expect.
This game contains many delightful references to other Sierra and Cole titles.
But this is no simple point-and-click adventure. Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption also has a temporal aspect. Sean will spend his days in the classroom, and after a while he will be able to do whatever he wants. He can exercise to get better stats, study his course notes to increase his intelligence, interact with other students or just explore the castle park. However, he will have to manage his time wisely, as every action and movement at school takes up his free time.
I love the mechanics of time in Hero-U so far: Rogue to Redemption, it’s not explained very well in the game. They chat with some students and go to the training room to be automatically taken to the dining room at noon. Looking at objects in a room may only take a few minutes, but walking down two hallways can take over an hour. It wouldn’t be a problem if you didn’t have to complete your missions within a certain amount of time.
Sneak is slow and gives Sean the impression that he is trying to smuggle something over the back wall.
Moreover, you never have a clear idea of when you need to do your work. You get a goal in the To Do section of your journal, and it stays there as long as you do it or skip the accessibility window. If you don’t end it before his time is up, he’s gone forever. It can also have a major impact on other assignments you may have received. There are quests you’ll never experience if you don’t finish them before they disappear.
This brings me to another problem with the timed quest system: They cannot all be completed once you have them. In fact, some important missions can only be completed on a particular day. Again, there is no evidence of that. I cannot tell you how much time I have spent searching for a solution to a problem, afraid that if I don’t solve it soon, it will be lost to me forever, only to be brought back to the answer at some point in history.
One of my tasks was to help poor Leo. He’s the best boy.
The story itself is another matter. The premise is excellent and in some ways reminiscent of Harry Potter, but the pacing is terrible. The first few days are interesting, but the next few weeks are so slow you’ll probably get bored. I know, I know, I know, I know. Thankfully, the game resumes after the first few weeks and becomes much more interesting, but I imagine many players are put off by the first few games. It’s also much longer than it should be. The game is over fifty days long, but it could have easily been half as long and hit all the major plot points. There are many days when nothing important happens.
It probably wouldn’t have taken that long if the fight had been defeated. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Although the battles are mostly turn-based, Sean can avoid most confrontations by sneaking between enemies. However, the stealth speed is so low that you’ll probably settle for yet another boring, pointless turn-based fight. The fighting is even more boring when you play it on the Switch, as you have to use the Joy-Cons to move the cursor. Sometimes this can cause you to select the wrong target, action or item. Honestly, I don’t understand why all these click adventures don’t take advantage of the Switch’s touchscreen capabilities.
Prepare for a lengthy battle against a host of sinister Rats, or Drats.
Visual, Hero-U: Tramp to Redemption is a mixed story. Every time Sean moves through the castle, everything is shown in 3D. It’s not a state-of-the-art design at all, but the characters look sleek and easily recognizable. Some environments are great, especially later in the game when you can explore more than just the school corridors. On the other hand, when the characters speak or there is an edited script, everything is done with hand-drawn illustrations. Surprisingly, these times were often worse than basic 3D graphics. Each character only has a few different facial expressions to convey emotion, and many of them look strange or scary. Sean’s confident smile in particular, makes him come across as a lecherous degenerate, and I have a hard time wooing him.
I wouldn’t want to live with someone who smiles at me like that.
I couldn’t even reach it with the voice because there is no voice in Hero-U: Tramp to Redemption. This is not surprising though, as it is a game modelled on the role-playing games of the 90s. But there’s no strong sound design here. A good soundtrack is essential for this type of game, as the tone of each scene is expressed through different songs. The music completely misses the mark here. I’ve played this game for many hours, and I couldn’t tell you how any of the songs went.
Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is a game that fans of Quest for Glory will probably love, but other players will not. In many ways, he plays exactly like these games and he refers to them often. The writing style is humorous and full of puns, but the story takes too long to get interesting. The combat is unimaginative and monotonous, as is the music. The timing mechanism is a great idea and adds a strategic layer to the game, but it’s poorly explained and a lot of time is lost figuring things out. If you’re a fan of action/adventure RPGs from the 80s and 90s, especially Quest for Glory, you should check out the date this game was released. For everyone else: If you’re looking for a point-and-click adventure game, check out Röki.
During the game, the graphics are presented as simple but clean 3D models. The drawing style changes to a hand-drawn 2D style when you talk to someone or in the shortened version, often making the characters look weird or scary. | It’s a role-playing game that works pretty well, although using the Joy Conditioner button can make it frustrating to click on objects and participate in fights. The time mechanics are clever, but not well explained. |
There are no voices, few sound effects, and an absolutely unforgettable musical score. | Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is an homage to the classic point-and-click games of the 80s and 90s, and offers fun ideas that aren’t always executed very well. The mechanics of time are confusing, and it takes a long time for the game to get interesting. |
Last block: 6.5 |
Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption is available now for PC and Switch.
Appears when the power is turned on.
A copy of Hero-U: The publisher delivered the Tramp to Redemption.
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