Agreed, considering the length of the back-and-forth we’ve been having. No hard feelings, mate.
Prodigal is undefeated enough to turn up intact in the third volume, the super-team is astonishingly corrupt, and while defeating the Victons in the first game is unrealistic, where’s the option to (figuratively or otherwise) spit in their eye?
And believe me, after seeing them run joyfully into the arms of the Victon-dominated media, there’s nothing I’d care less about than the lives of the people of Millenium City.
The third game is better because it picks up the pace and doesn’t give you much time to ponder the MC’s…‘personality’. And it gave me a break from the old hag. The only thing i truly enjoyed was erasing reality with Black Magic and starting anew.
I can’t speak for the author, but I believe that’s because you haven’t finished the journey. I bought the full trilogy as a Steam Bundle during a holiday sale and played the whole thing through. Where one part ended and another began, I dunno if I can say. Partly because shit memory but also because the moment I finished the first game, I dove right into the second.
As a whole, I found it all very satisfying. Enough so that I jumped on the Versus beta when it first came out based on the author alone. And was super disappointed in the Redemption Season. I think I lost interest in that one before the demo even ended.
Lucky’s super boring, yeah. If I had to compare his romance to Black Magic’s in the third game, specifically, there’s no contest. As annoying as I found him in the second game, the third won me over. My first playthrough I dumped Black Magic for Lucky because I felt used.
I honestly forgot Lucky was even in the story after a bit and found it jarring when he popped back in for little more than a cameo in the third game. The second time, I stuck with Black Magic out of curiosity. He’s so much more relevant to the story imo and his has one of the most memorable choices of any romance I’ve ever played.
The losses didn’t really bother me. They made me feel like I accomplished something when my character got her dues in Hero Fall. But that might be up to taste. I’m not a power gamer.
I’m only complaining about the first installment, which is the only bit I currently own (and the only bit I’m currently inclined to buy). If Part I is as enjoyable as a mouthful of ground glass, what’s supposed to motivate me to buy the rest?
I have no idea what exactly a ‘power gamer’ is. Should I be insulted?
The thing with not getting the trilogy and playing through is that you’re not basing your decisions on the whole. I think overall the complete story is very powerful, but the first of the three was a bit of a slow starter.
Jury isn’t his father. (And I personally preferred to kiss him and am sad that he wasn’t utilised better…I think that about much things in Heroes Rise…The wasted potential hurts the most about those games.)
I hope not. It’s just someone who learns a game inside and out so they can have the best build. To fulfill a power fantasy, or just be efficient, or whatever. It can be used an insult, like most things in the right context, but I’ve seen people call themselves that so I didn’t think it was inherently offensive.
Nothing. Don’t buy them. Maybe it’s just not for you. I liked it a lot and have replayed it often, which is more than I can say for a lot of the very good games I’ve bought. But I’m not you. I never felt like I was eating ground glass.
I mostly really liked them, some complaints/dislikes I share though:
it annoyed me how much my mc cared about grandma, my actual mc would be a million times more indifferent. The build up to the end choice in part one made it seem like a tough choice for the mc, not mine . I actually like how underpowered/unsuccessful we were, as the story said we are just starting out, and I prefer under powered characters.
Black magic’s romance was cringy for me, way to be needy I went for lucky until progical came around.
As for powers you get new powers by the end of part one, and can choose what powers to use there on after, so I liked how they worked.
One criticism no one mentioned though …you can’t tell Jenny where to go when she voices her distaste for your relationship for progical, and generally goes on…and on about she doesn’t like her. Didn’t try much of redemption season, as I said before I don’t like animalistic powers, don’t know why, just don’t.
I tried this series, as it was fairly popular. But I’ve rarely hated the mc as much as I did here, and Black Magic is by far my least favorite character in a CoG or Hosted game. There are games with objectively worse characters, but they’re forgettable footnotes in weak games. This is the only series thus far where I’ve “noped” out based solely on one character and the mc’s drooling tendencies.
I’m grossed out by the idea of being attracted to someone because they look like someone else (it’s just… weird to me. I’m sure others are fine and do what you like but… it rubs me wrong. Way wrong). I’m annoyed by the idea that I’ll fawn over any idiot who looks hot, especially when he’s such a slimebag sleazeball who uses me left and right and ditches me when I don’t go along with what he wants. So everything about that made me cringe or gag.
Didn’t like Prodigal, forgot Lucky was a thing until this thread, but I remember the disappointment. I actually didn’t like most of the cast-- they were either horrible people or just boring–and I expected the ones I did like to ask me to do something unspeakable and awful, so I didn’t bother getting attached to them.
I wanted so badly to like the game. The setup was interesting, the gameplay and plot was fun if a little railroady (which… given the situation, it’s forgiveable), the concepts are all pretty cool, the dynamic could be fun, and I didn’t mind the power situation. And I see love for the characters I want to die in a fire-- people seem to get genuinely interested in Black Magic and for pretty interesting reasons. So… clearly something works. I just need to like someone in the main cast, and when I lose all respect for the MC in the intro and can’t stand the love interest the game’s begging me to worship… Nope.
I agree. That way of looking at a potential partner is actually unhealthy. It’s stalker behavior, but more indirect. And yeah, I wasn’t a fan of Black Magic either. The ultimatum, the usage of powers, even the return (depending on how the story went). She was just far more arrogant than she needed to be, especially given her dependence on the MC not revealing the incredibly illegal source of her power.
I did feel, overall, that the spin-off was a tad railroaded, but I enjoyed it.
I know, I know–but it barely seems to phase him, and by the end of Part I, he’s back to sending me unwanted shirtless photos. I don’t want to beat him, because that’d screw up the plot, but SOMETHING to wipe the smug smile off his face? Some kind of actual victory?
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a distinction without a difference. To paraphrase Tumbleweed Jack from @AllenGies’ Tin Star, they share blood, so they can share a beatdown. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the exact nature of Jury’s wasted potential.
It’s not just Jury, but all the ROs character/backstory/development that’s a disappointment (or basically the lack of any of it. The only backstory that got resolved was Prodigal’s and we still don’t even know her damn real name, I forgot basically everything about Lucky - no really couldn’t their family may play a bigger part? That’s the only thing I remember Lucky told about themself and we never again heard of them -, BM is a walking disaster and their change in Redemption Season makes just really no sense…Jenny is the only one with development but her romance is in a terrible obvious way just an afterthought, well at least it’s not as shoehorned as the Jury romance, for which I’m still bitter).And that’s just ROs. Let’s not talk about the other characters which names I partly forgot because they were so bland (including some of the “bad guys”). Also a number of other things considering the story, thematic, worldbuilding (this point bites back during Redemption Season btw.), etc.
As a writer myself I’m sitting here shouting at my phone upon trying to read (read, not play, as this is NOT a CYOA AT ALL at the massive amount of railroading etc) this… atrocity. Sorry folks who like it, but this is just bad. The worldbuilding is an utter mess, the much praised representation and stuff is someone with no clue about things working off a checklist and being ignorant about it (be it the usage of ‘gay’ as an umbrella term when he clearly meant queer/lesbian) the bi-erasure due to your last relationship determining the gender of the RO the game tries to force on you etc, the blatant misunderstanding of how poverty and powerstructures work, the ableism, the misogyny), the characters are throughout unsympathetic.
I have read many bad books in my time and have written utter nonsense myself in the past I’m not proud of. But this? This is just bad. This is absurdly bad and should, honestly, be taken off the stores and get a rewrite by someone who knows about worldbuilding and writing.
Hi @MeltingPenguins, I think it would be nice if you moderated your tone a bit in posts like this. This is an old thread but I’m guessing you’ve read it recently I can see you feel strongly about it, but attacking the author directly is not nice with basically “this is bad and you should feel bad- get someone else to re-write it”. Constructive crit given in a less confrontational manner about the story is more likely to influence an author’s writing. This author is capable of writing well. I think if you asked COG his books would be one of their better sellers, this is not the only one he’s written. However I’m not saying this particular story is without problems, the author’s heart was in the right place, but from the response to it there are aspects people had issue with and they can be discussed, but I think if possible we should try to keep the environment a bit more constructive with less personal attacks on the writer himself.
Maybe my tone was harsh, and I shall keep that in mind in the future. But I shall not stray from my opinion.
I’ve never been keen on calling any work of fiction great based on the sheer number of fans it has. Throne of Glass, twilight and similar are anything but good, yet have many fans who will easily tell everyone how flawless they are.
HR has potential, I give it that, but it feels like a first draft that has not been revisited. The worldbuilding is all over the place, doesn’t add up and contradicts itself.
I don’t know whether or not the other does have his heart in the right place, but what I see throughout his works strikes me as, at best, trying to do the right thing by the wrong means, and at worst as pretending to care to get praise. Yes, some anvils need to be dropped, but Sergi doesn’t seem to care if he drops them on anyone already down in the process.
Others have already pointed out the railroading and the contempt the author seems to have for the reader. More precisely for a reader who does not agree with his vision. To call it that.
This in general is something that should not be done.
His works might easily been better off as plain novels instead of interactive ones (again, as many have pointed out, there’s little to now ‘interactivity’)
The tone of HR and his other works is/seems, again, condescending and mocking towards people who disagree with him. It struck me time and time again as elitist and generally… privileged.
And for all I have found he has never really listened to criticism before. If he ever did change something, it always ended in the same mocking tone. Which does not really speak for genuinely good intentions.
Allow me to push this back up, because after thinking about it for a while, I found one of the main factors of my frustration with the game (in addition to what’s said above):
The Twist That Never Was (major spoilers)
One of the most mind-boggling elements in the games might easily be how the stats and everything (legend points etc) are a thing exists in-universe.
You have a statscreen in-universe, there are legend point boards online etc.
How?
Another thing often criticized, especially in the first game, but it still happens, just in a different form, is that one was bared from certain choices based on seemingly unrelated stats, or that completely unrelated stats decided whether the very same action failed or succeeded (stopping the deathwave in HR1, Jenny surviving in HR3, Miss Boss surviving in THP)
But here’s the thing:
There is a way that all of this could amount to a really clever plottwist. But that twist never came. Instead everything is played straight.
The twist I’m talking about:
The MeChips seriously f*cking over people’s free will.
Now, we know the chips took over many brain functions. Memory etc. We also know one can upload one’s ‘brain’ to become chip-personality.
But what if the chips, being nothing but a machine at the end of the day, are NOT capable of operating like a human brain.
What if they, operating in 0s and 1s, form ‘personalities’ based on, let’s call it a checklist.
As in, they completely bar a person from even thinking about an option if that option is not in line with ‘what should be’, even though the situation would call for that very option.
What if the reason people like Miss Artillery went ‘crazy’ was not because they couldn’t cope with their power, but because they never wanted to be a hero or a villain, but the chips went ‘nope, you have this and that powerset, you are a villain’ causing a logic-bomb between the chip and what of the human brain is still active.
What if, for example, Victon went ‘evil’ because the chip’s database was all ‘judge in love with a villain… must be evil’ ?
That the chips are tied to some weird and creepy database would also explain why you got legend points for the finger color, why Jenny couldn’t tell you outright even though she knew, why you get legend points for picking PG as the biggest thread or why they are reduced for kissing Jury.
In the second to last case, for example: The chips would check the stats of the people without their knowledge, picking the biggest thread out.
So, yeah. I was waiting for this plottwist to happen, but it never did.
Blockquote She does not run it. A steroid abusing black guy does…
I’m a bit confused here. You said that she was in charge of it and that combined with Lolli’s fetish for fighting gave off some unfortunate implications. And was Smyther ever confirmed to be black? I could have missed it somewhere but I always assumed he was Caucasian or grey skinned.
. I actually like how underpowered/unsuccessful we were, as the story said we are just starting out, and I prefer under powered characters.
…you can’t tell Jenny where to go when she voices her distaste for your relationship for progical, and generally goes on…and on about she doesn’t like her. Didn’t try much of redemption season, as I said before I don’t like animalistic powers, don’t know why, just don’t.
I don’t want to beat him, because that’d screw up the plot, but SOMETHING to wipe the smug smile off his face? Some kind of actual victory?
