2405: Revisiting One Way Heroics

Upon realising that the Spike Chunsoft enhanced remake of One Way Heroics was, in fact, coming out in just three weeks’ time, I decided to revisit the original game, which has long been one of my favourite takes on the roguelike genre thanks to it being quite unlike pretty much any other game I’ve ever played.

For the unfamiliar, One Way Heroics places you in a randomly generated world map that continuously scrolls, like those old Super Mario World levels that everyone hated. This being a turn-based roguelike, however, One Way Heroics only scrolls when you take an action, be this moving, attacking or fiddling around with something in your inventory.

The aim of the game is ostensibly to defeat the Demon Lord and save the remaining part of the world from being consumed by the mysterious darkness that is just out of shot on the left side of the screen. More often than not, you will fail in your task, either by yourself being caught in said mysterious darkness by miscalculating how many turns it would take you to cross the mountain range you found yourself stuck in the middle of, by dying embarrassingly to a nearby feral dog who gave you a nasty nip right in your most sensitive areas, or by forgetting you had a bag full of highly flammable (and explosive) items and then going toe-to-toe with a fire-breathing imp.

It’s not an insurmountable challenge, though. In fact, defeating the Demon Lord is more a matter of persistence than anything else; she (yes, spoiler, she’s a she) appears at regular intervals throughout your journey, sticks around for a few in-game hours during which you can either attempt to do some damage or run away from her, then she disappears again for a bit. Damage you deal persists from encounter to encounter, though she does have the chance to heal a few HP and erect a few magical barriers in between your various clashes. As such, so long as you can keep yourself alive, you can eventually wear her down bit by bit rather than having to defeat her all in one go.

Except, if you look a bit deeper into the game, defeating the Demon Lord isn’t the only way to finish the game. In fact, it’s arguably the easiest way to clear the game, since the other endings mostly require all manner of convoluted requirements and lucky rolls on the ol’ random number generator. That said, the game’s “Dimensional Vault” system does at least allow you to carry useful items over from playthrough to playthrough, so you can effectively prepare for the more complex conclusions a bit at a time, much like preparing to fight the Demon Lord, only over the course of several playthroughs instead of just one.

The other ways to beat the game vary from defeating the Darkness itself (which requires a Holy weapon, a very rare find indeed) to reaching the End of the World at the 2000km mark. The subsequently released One Way Heroics Plus expansion also added a number of other ways to clear the game, including finding your way into a whole other dimension to discover who or what is really behind this whole creeping darkness thing, and then either surviving until the end of that dimension or defeating said ne’er do well once and for all.

On top of all that, there are character-specific endings, too. During each playthrough, you have a chance of encountering a number of different non-player characters who, assuming you meet the prerequisite requirements to recruit them (usually some combination of cash and charisma levels) can join your party. As they fight alongside you and you meet various conditions (different for each character), they gain affection for you, and after having had three separate conversations with them, revealing their backstory and the truth about themselves — including, in many cases, why there appears to be a version of them in each and every dimension out there, more than aware of what you’re up to — clearing the game gives you their unique ending on top of whichever particular finale you went for.

These little stories that are attached to the party members are one of the most interesting things about One Way Heroics, because they elevate it above being a simple mechanics-based roguelike and give it a touch of narrative. Not enough to be obtrusive — the emphasis is still very much on preparing your character to clear the game in whichever way you deem most appropriate — but enough to give you a real feel for who these people are and what their place in the entire mystery of One Way Heroics is.

One particularly interesting thing about them is that you can go a very long time without encountering any of them at all, and thus assume that One Way Heroics is entirely mechanics-based. Another is that their storylines are all pretty dark in tone right up until the end, which is all the more effective due to the fairly breezy tone the rest of the game has going on. I defy anyone not to shed a tear at Queen Frieda’s ending in particular, though I shan’t spoil it here.

Replaying One Way Heroics over the last few days has reminded me quite how much I like this quirky little game, and I’m extremely excited to see how the new version pans out in comparison. From the looks of things, it takes the basic mechanics of the original and gives it a fresh coat of paint along with a new setting and storyline, plus a number of guest characters from other games including Danganronpa and Shiren the Wanderer.

All being well, I’m probably going to devote next month on MoeGamer to this game, its expansion and its new version, which will be out partway through the month. It’s an underappreciated gem, for sure, and one which everyone the slightest bit interested in the more unusual side of RPGs owes it to themselves to check out.