About a week ago I was trolling around looking for some sort of strategy game. During this I found two tittles; Army of Darkness, and Rise of Heroes. As I started to play, RoH started to look promising. After the strange story intro, you get plunged straight into the game. You and a band of merry men there to help you (and you will need help as you can’t personally damage the enemy castle) are on one side of a valley with a castle that you must protect whilst also pushing the enemy back to their castle on the other side of the valley.
You can spawn in a plethora of friendly units that can be upgraded after each level. Which brings us to our first flaw, the transition between levels is non-existent - you just click continue and are dropped into the next (probably randomized) backdrop without any reasoning. Between levels there is a section where you can buy and upgrade your hero and your units. There are six different kinds of units ranging from your standard issue spearman to the over-priced mage. For the hero, there are multiple upgrades including spells and weapons. That brings us to our second major flaw - there are several upgrades that supposedly have better versions. For example the bow and arrow you can get for your hero. Later on you can also get a fireball spell. You would think that the fireball spell that costs more gold to get and more mana to cast would be better, right? Wrong. Even when you play you still find yourself wading through the horrible control design - the action buttons themselves are fine, but the actual space that will register your finger is much, much smaller. And finally the castle health is way too much, resulting in long, dreary fights.
Unfortunately I can’t just sit here and rant at it all day long so here we go - Good points. The different backdrops are pretty, the different friendly units you can summon are varied so you don’t feel like your summoning just a different version of the same unit, and all the models are aesthetically pleasing. This game is free, between the bad controls, absence of any story at all and the act that there are very similar free games on the market - do yourself a favour and don’t get it.
