Impressions: Heroes of Ruin

The world learned of Heroes of Ruin’s existance right before E3 via the Facebook page of the games developer N-Space. The 3DS title is very reminisant of dungen crawling games such as Diablo and feel right at home on Nintendo’s handheld. In the E3 build availible at the show, I was given the option of choosing either a mele and a ranged class , but that was only the beginning of the customization. The Square-Enix rep that was guiding me through my playthough infomed me that the build I was playing was developed in about 3 months, but already the character customization very robust. Your on screen character could be customized right down to the fur color of the warrior. Yes I said fur.

Once the game was all loaded up and my blue cat warrior took the battlefield, the action began. There was never a 30 second period where I wasn’t fighting an enemy or smashing a pot looking for items. Oh and boy are there items.

Heroes of Ruin prides itself on its loot collecting, and almost every defeated enemy will drop you something. If the equipment dropped is better than what you are currently wearing, a green arrow will appear next to the items name letting you know that you should equip it straight away. Don’t want to fumble through an item menu to put on that helm that was just pooped out by the defeated enemy? No problem. All that is required is a simple button press (in this case down on the dpad) and the item is equiped. What’s cool is that every item is unique; so the blood diamond sword won’t just be a red version of the ice sword you found last level. By the way, I just made up those weapon names so don’t expect them in the final version of the game.

When asked about co-op play, the Square-Enix rep let me know that Heroes of Ruin would feature drop-in drop-out multiplayer for online play and local co-op. He also let me know  that when the game ships, players will be able to play with any combination of local and online 4 player teams; meaning that if the only other person you know who has a 3DS is your little sister, you and her could link up with 2 other people via the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. Did I also forget to mention that the game will feature voice chat?

Heroes of Ruin is looking to be a must have title for any 3DS owner, and is yet another reason to be excited about Nintendo’s newest handheld. Let’s hope the wait for the title isn’t a long one. I’m not sure my excitement for the title can be contained for much longer.

Eugene lives in New Mexico and has been a life long gamer since getting his hands on an NES. Always partial to Nintendo, Eugene has made it a point to keep informed on all things Mario.