Heroes of Broken Land - My Review from 30 Hours of Gameplay
I find myself playing this retro style game a lot lately. It is a turn-based rpg dungeon crawler with a first-person perspective. The art style of the game gives me a feeling of nostalgia while playing. However, the default character portraits are not really that great and I would highly recommend replacing them with portraits from other games or from your favorite artists. What really sets this game apart is the town building and party management system that it offers.
You have one capital city with 6 building slots. You will definitely want an Adventurer's Guild, because it will allow you to customize your characters' name and portrait. The Adventurer's Guild also sells books that will grant permanent bonus to your heroes' skills and stats (which is something I fully take advantage of). However, for the remaining five building slots, you should take a moment to plan out which buildings you need. There are about 12 building types and you cannot demolish current buildings. You can get more buildings by befriending independent forts and integrating them into your kingdom, which will grant you two extra building slot for each fort.
I decided to play on the largest map setting, because why not? However, this might have been a mistake as this also generates what must be hundreds of dungeons. These dungeons spawn monsters that will wander the world map and head towards your capital and forts until you purify them. I currently have hordes of monsters wondering the world. Some of these are much higher levels than my heroes and provide significant challenge. Having to continually push back the horde helps make the story of having to restore the world believable for me though, so I didn't mind this aspect.
At the very core of this game, it is a dungeon crawler. You have to be able to enjoy old school dungeon crawling to play this game. The fun and addicting part of this game for me is crawling through dungeons to make my heroes stronger, whether that be getting more xp to level them up or finding better items to equip them with. There really isn't anything too innovative about the dungeon crawling and combat system, but it is what you would expect of a turn-based dungeon crawler. I do have a gripe about not being able to reorder my spells though. The spells are listed in the order that your hero learns them. This causes an issue where for one of my mages I have to press S then 4 to quick cast a Frost spell, but S then 6 for another. This slows down the pacing of combat and causes frustration.
Heroes of a Broken Land has gotten me about 30 hours of enjoyment so far. I will probably have many more hours to beat the game since I pick the largest map. I think I paid around $10 or so on a steam sale, so it was definitely a good deal for me. I like the added layer of town and party management. The combat system is not deep or innovative, but it gets the job done. I would definitely recommend this game if you are a fan of classic dungeon crawlers.
