You’re like as not going to get into a game that the other player never finishes. Furthermore, the multiplayer is a crapshoot with no provision for timing the turns. But there are currently only two sides, and the differences between them don’t have much opportunity to emerge, given the extended beats of alternating five-turn hit-and-runs, usually by ninjas for the good faction and wraiths for the evil faction. Like Uniwar, Hero Academy wants to base its gameplay on asymmetrical sides. Who will lose the long slog of attrition first? Every turn, a player fills his “hand” with units, power-ups, and abilities from his pre-set “deck”. This is just a matter of time, given there’s no resource model in the game beyond each player eventually running out of stuff. Which there’s not much point in doing until you’ve cleared the field of the other guy’s units. You have to use the attacks you would normally use on the other guy’s units. Then submit your turn.Īnother odd design decision is the actual victory, which you earn by taking time out to smack the other player’s crystal. Keeping trying until you get the best result you can get. Now see how much damage you can do with another unit. Now see how much damage these attacks do if you use a damage power-up. Try whatever moves you like as many times as you like. There are no die rolls and no hidden units. To Hero Academy’s credit, each turn is like a puzzle that you can freely tinker with until you’ve settled on the solution you want to submit. Hero Academy has the pieces in place for that sort of variety, but it’s entirely subverted by the gameplay. Consider the tactical variety in Uniwar, the current gold standard for turn-based strategy games on the iPhone.
Games like hero academy series#
It leaves you with a series of relatively lengthy hit-and-run attacks. Because these five-action uninterrupted beats are so long, they rob the game of a lot of the strategy it would have had if the game unfurled more gradually.
![games like hero academy games like hero academy](https://galleryroulette.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/hero.jpg)
The stomp is another odd design decision to presumably tempers the power of ranged units, but instead drives Hero Academy down a tactical groove. Nothing like a brutal coup de grace mechanic to lend your cute cartoon world a hint of the grim!
![games like hero academy games like hero academy](http://nick-intl.mtvnimages.com/uri/mgid:file:gsp:kids-assets:/nick/promos-thumbs/games/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles/pizza-like-a-turtle-do/tmnt-pizza-like-a-turtle-do-16x9.jpg)
You might even meticulously snipe at an enemy unit so that it falls, only to get resurrected unless you walk up to stomp the fallen enemy to death. You might manage your healer to top off any units wounded by an area-of-effect attack. You might carefully stake out the tiles that make a unit more effective. You might use your power-ups to add 20% resistance here and 10% extra health there.
![games like hero academy games like hero academy](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9DFALKLbjZw/UDtye_OkhnI/AAAAAAAAHKs/rtINHB_oVUo/s1600/Hero+Academy.jpg)
You might gradually move your units in a group, relying on combined arms and overlapping fields of fire. You might not grok this when you first jump into the game, which can only be played against another player who probably already knows what he’s doing. Naturally, you’d probably run in with your queen, clean up as best you can, and then run back. Imagine chess where you get to move five times. Too much can happen on any given turn, and the other player is removed from the game for too long. Whereas most turn-based games just let you move each unit once, this is certainly an, uh, interesting way to keep thing snappy.īut I’m not convinced it’s an effective way to design a game. Just run amok for whatever five things in a row you want to do. Summon dudes, move dudes, attack dudes, use power-ups on dudes, heal dudes, or whatever.
![games like hero academy games like hero academy](https://www.vgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/unnamed1.jpg)
In Hero Academy, which plays on a simple playing field with mostly simple units, each player gets to do five things in a row. Then there’s Hero Academy, where two players take turns hitting each other really hard. Where he gonna go? What’s he gonna do? What am I gonna do? What is going to happen? When is it going to happen? It’s a dance. With a good AI or a human opponent, it’s a series of urgent questions. A good turn-based tactical game has the feel of two armies squaring off, watching each other as units move into position, arrange themselves, entrench, feint, engage.