Review: Hero Seekers (Nintendo Switch)
Hero Seekers is a JRPG developed by Vanguard and published by KEMCO. This title contains a linear gameplay path, a decent story with interesting character backgrounds, and turn-based strategy combat. It looks great on the outside, but does it really stand out compared to other games in the genre? Well, the answer is yes and no.
I think the strongest part of Hero Seekers is the story. Over time, many Heroes have stepped up to defeat the Demon King. All succeed, but the Demon King gets resurrected each time and erases the previous Heroes from everyone’s memory, trapping said Heroes in a loop of their worst nightmare.
The game begins with a trio of Heroes—Lunette, Ramsar, and Ruwan—defeating the Demon King, only for them to get separated. Lunette awakes in a strange town where humans are being enslaved by demons. Only she remembers her party defeating the enemy, with Ramsar and Ruwan nowhere to be found. Thus, her quest begins to bring back lost history by freeing lost Heroes from their nightmares.
Overall, I found the narrative covered themes of hope, loss, and the importance of history in a unique way that was engaging with its characters. However, the gameplay wasn’t strong enough to help back up the story. There were too many characters with stories that ended up getting thrown away. There are twenty-four Heroes to find and add to your party, but you can only have five party members at a time. Four fight in your party and one is in reserve, earning experience from the party’s battles, but ultimately not contributing and just being there for backup.
I assume the developers created many characters to help with replayability so you can mix and match party members. Once you’ve completed Hero Seekers once, there’s no real need to go back and play it again anytime soon since the story is as straight as an arrow and the combat gets stale after a while.
I also didn’t want to swap out the main characters. Lunette is the playable character, and even though you can switch her out, it felt wrong to. She meets Nyla and Zalesh along the way, and they are also important, and in every conversation and cutscene. It felt weird to swap them out, too, when they’re still being addressed by NPCs. Every other Hero was simply there as an extra. They all had their own backstory, which was great, but once you unlock them, that’s it. They have no dialogue or interaction with anyone else for the rest of the game. I used Lilione as my fourth party member and Maximillion as my fifth on reserve. Other than aiding in battles, there was no reason to have more than the three main party members.
The gameplay of Hero Seekers is rinse and repeat. You go from one town to another, talk to an NPC or two, and they’ll tell you where to go next. So, back to the overworld you go, heading to a dungeon. The dungeons are more or less all the same. There are no puzzles or obstacles in the dungeons. It’s simply a matter of finding where the stairs are to move to the next level. Essentially, each dungeon is a large maze with long corridors, some dead ends with or without chests, and eventually you stumble upon the stairs.
And when I say large, I mean it. Every area in Hero Seekers—the dungeons, the overworld map, the towns—is huge with a lot of empty space. I can’t begin to describe how much space is wasted in every area. The towns in particular are needlessly large with tons of buildings with no doors. The only buildings you can go into are the town’s castle or the shop. There is a town or two where you can go into an NPC’s home, but there’s no reason to. No matter where I was, I basically wandered around until the game stopped me to tell me I was either going in the wrong direction or I triggered a cutscene.
There are no maps in this game, so I couldn’t look at the overworld to get a sense of direction to make it to the next area. Instead, I wandered until something appeared on screen. Or, again, the game stopped me for going too far in the wrong direction.
Overall, the gameplay in between combat was going through the motions for the sake of moving the story along. There are no side quests or mini games, nothing.
The combat in Hero Seekers was fun for a little while. On the overworld and in dungeons, you’ll get into random battles with wild enemies ranging from jellyfish and goblins to dragons and the undead. Every character can use physical attacks with melee weapons or use SP for magic attacks.
On the left side of the screen, you’ll see the turn order listing your party and the enemies, based on everyone’s speed. I’m not sure if my party was overpowered or not, but in pretty much every battle my whole party was faster and would basically one-shot the enemy team before they could even attack. I did grind a little bit in the beginning to get money so I could buy upgraded weapons and armor, so I’m not sure if I accidentally boosted my team too much. Thus, the battles were monotonous for me.
There is an auto feature for battles, though. If you’re grinding or simply just don’t feel like getting into wild battles when traveling to the next area, you can use the auto feature. The party will either go “all-out” using their strong attacks, or you can set the auto feature to “healing” or “no special” meaning they’ll only use physical attacks.
The boss battles could be tricky. Again, my party was usually faster than the boss so I had a good advantage. Also, there wasn’t much variety in the bosses. Many of them were main enemies from the story, so I battled them a couple of times. Many of the enemies, including some of the bosses, seemed weak to wind attacks. Nyla and Zalesh both have wind magic attacks, so they carried a lot of battles on their shoulders.
So, the story in Hero Seekers was great, but it could have been better if the gameplay supported it and had a little more variety and less of a linear feel to it. Yes, I know RPGs are typically linear, but this game didn’t allow me to do anything unless I was moving forward with the plot and gave me nothing else to explore in the towns or dungeons.
The music, graphics, and backgrounds in this game were amazing, though. The backdrops to the battles were gorgeous, and the music gave me Final Fantasy and Castlevania vibes with enough variation in tunes for the wild battles, boss battles, cutscenes, and general wandering.
Overall, Hero Seekers is a solid JRPG. The story is strong, though the gameplay doesn’t quite match its energy and feels bland after a while. With enough characters to try, replayability is present, but the linear way of playing doesn’t leave much desire for me to start over. I got through the main story within ten to eleven hours, so I did spend a good amount of time with this game. Despite some of its flaws, it is worth checking out if you enjoy RPGs.
