Roguelike’s difficulty will wear you down
WHEN I hear ‘roguelike’, I tend to think of games like Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, games that can speed up time like no other, magically transforming five minutes into five hours.
Frozenbyte’s latest offering, Has Been Heroes, feels like the complete opposite. Every time I died (and I did, a lot), I was filled with dread and anxiety upon the thought of re-entering Has Been Heroes’ brutally difficult and needlessly complicated hybrid of turn-based-strategy and lane brawler. Has Been Heroes truly represents the worst that the roguelike genre has to offer.
The player characters each start with unique melee attacks, spells, and stats. There are three classes of characters, of which one of each will always be in the party. The tank-like character will land one attack per turn that does massive damage, a mage-like character can land two attacks of lesser damage, and a rogue-like character can land three strong attacks.
The number of attacks matter because both enemies and characters have stamina points that must be drained by attacks before they can take damage, but enemies’ stamina resets after taking damage, unlike player characters. This means strategically hitting enemies in an order that leaves them open to damage from the character of your choice, which entails swapping characters between lanes while others attack, and casting spells at the right time. While the game can be played in real time, a quick press of a button pauses the action to let you strategize and prepare your next action.
In theory, this setup would make for an interesting and fast- paced game, but here’s the kicker: it’s too hard. I appreciate a good challenge, in fact, I gravitate towards it, but the level of difficulty present in an otherwise light-hearted game here is pushing towards hair-pulling levels.
Often times you won’t get the most out of the Has Been Heroes roguelike experience simply because there are too many enemies with huge stamina pools, preventing you from reaching vendors and chests.
Not only are the enemies too difficult, there is so little variation in them that monotony will settle in very quickly. Every enemy for the first few hours were just skeletons of some form or another. Sure, they can heal and some even have tougher armour but the endless march of skeletons will get tiresome.
Has Been Heroes certainly has some good ideas, but for all but the most hardcore of roguelike fans, the difficulty and monotony will wear you down long before completion.