Tag: one way heroics plus

1924: Journeying Ever Onwards

So One Way Heroics Plus has pretty much devoured my soul with its wily ways and new features. I’ve been playing it a whole bunch, dying a whole lot and having a great time in the process.

I made a video of two unsuccessful runs earlier; here you go:

I’m really impressed with the additions to the base formula. In particular I’m excited about the fact that there are a number of new quests involved in unlocking the additional character classes; these quests replace the standard adventure to defeat the Demon Lord (or win in a couple of other super-secret ways) and task you with additional objectives, confronting you with new challenges and powerful foes on the way.

The small additions to the game’s interface are great, too. The hotbar in particular is an excellent addition, even if you only use it to quickly access skills like Awakening (your default “stop time for three turns” ability, which is very useful for getting out of a pinch) and Lockpicking. It’s also great to be able to customise the interface somewhat; it’s still a little cluttered thanks to it running in 640×480 (or upscaled 640×480 now, at least) but simple changes like being able to put your gauges at the bottom of the screen and the minimap up the top make it a lot easier to see where you’re going.

More subtle changes only become apparent if you’ve played both games. The pace of levelling has been considerably increased, but in exchange the “Goddess Statues” at which you can “spend” levels to get numerous benefits are considerably more expensive to use, and no longer provide the same possible bonuses every time. Skill merchants offer the ability to learn new abilities in exchange for stat levels, Iron Hags will make a random item for you (including “air”, which just means you’re out of pocket), benevolent Force practitioners will teach you defensive, utility or restorative spells… the list goes on.

And the game is still absolutely packed with charm and a surprising amount of depth. Most notably — and this was true of the original, too — is the fact that, despite initial appearances, the game does have a plot. Or, more accurately, a number of different intertwining narrative threads that only become apparent if you come into contact with the recruitable NPCs, figure out a way to stop the Demon Lord trying to set fire to you long enough to have a chat or try some of the daily “special campaigns” that add small but significant tweaks to the basic formula. A particular favourite that I had the other day was a world where every normal attack had a massive knockback effect on it, so you had to take care not to fight with your back to the encroaching Darkness lest you get slammed into it by your foe landing a blow. It shook up the way I played a great deal; unfortunately I didn’t quite get far enough to take full advantage of it by whacking the final boss of the Force Knight unlock quest into the Darkness — the main means through which you deal damage to this rather unpleasant adversary — but it was an enjoyable journey nonetheless.

I’m well and truly hooked then. And if you’re yet to discover the fun for yourself, I recommend giving it a look now. It’s just $6.99 and it will keep you busy for a very long time. You can grab it from publisher Playism, or soon from Steam, too. (If you buy it now at Playism, you’ll get a Steam key when that version releases.)

1922: Please Proceed to the Right, Again: One Way Heroics Plus

I’m planning on doing another video on this, but since I’ve been playing it a bunch today I thought I’d talk a little about One Way Heroics Plus.

As the name suggests, this is an enhanced and expanded version of the Japanese roguelike One Way Heroics, which I talked about a few days ago. It’s positioned as an “expansion” but it’s actually a new standalone game based on the skeleton of the original. Mercifully, however, you can import your saved data from the original game — though the conversion process means that you can’t send it back to the original game once you’ve done this, but why on Earth would you want to?

One Way Heroics Plus follows the same fomula as its predecessor in that it involves you, the Hero, attempting to save the world from the ever-encroaching darkness, represented by the screen that scrolls every turn, regardless of whether you’re actually moving “forwards” or not. Get pushed off the left side of the screen and you lose. Die and you lose. Beat the Demon Lord, who shows up after 400km of travelling on the easiest difficulty and at regular intervals on the other levels, and you win. There are also some other means of winning, but I won’t spoil those for you now.

So what’s new? Well, a few things. Firstly, the interface has had an overhaul. The original game didn’t have a bad interface — although it was rather cluttered thanks to the game running in 640×480 — but doing things like repetitive actions was a little cumbersome. The addition of a customisable hotbar alleviates this issue by allowing you to set a series of items and abilities ready for quick access at any time. Other little tweaks have been done here and there, too; items now glow, tough enemies pulse red, there’s a clear indicator when an enemy spots you, there’s an XP bar that appears when you can XP, there’s an auto-move function (with a customisable filter for whether or not it should automatically stop when enemies are nearby) and generally, the whole thing is just a bit slicker.

There are some new character classes and Perks, too, including some “negative” perks (or disadvantages, I guess they are, really) for those who want to make things a bit more challenging. There’s also supposedly an expanded metagame involving collecting “Dimensional Coins” throughout your travels and using them to upgrade a castle, but I haven’t explored this aspect of the game at all yet. Supposedly this unlocks new characters, quests and mechanics — I’m quite interested to see what it offers, as this is, from the sound of things, the most major addition to the game.

It’s the same game at its core, though, and that’s no bad thing, as the original was really solid. What One Way Heroics Plus does, however, is take that solid foundation and build an even more interesting, challenging and replayable game out of it; I’m very much looking forward to exploring it a bit more in the coming weeks — and at some point in the next few days, I’ll post a video showing some of the new features in a bit more detail, too.

For now, though, I have to mourn my journey from earlier today, where I successfully travelled for over 850km and reached experience level 76 before making the ill-considered decision to swim across the ocean to a small island and rescue a little girl; sadly, my swimming skill was too low to allow me to outrun the creeping Darkness, and I, along with the little girl and Queen Frieda, who had been accompanying me for some distance (and gradually revealing her surprising backstory in the process), were swallowed up by oblivion, never to be seen again… at least until I hit the “New Game” button again.