Two years ago, "Fantasy Water Margin 1&2" director & screenwriter Murayama Kiryu announced that the original team would develop the series's spiritual sequel "The Legend of 100 Heroes", and I also supported the crowdfunding for the first time, although the game has not had much real screen so far, but I have always kept my expectations for it.
The production team also released a spin-off work "The Legend of the Hundred Heroes: Rise" last year, which is an ARPG side-version game with the same world view as the "Hundred Heroes", "The Legend of the Hundred Heroes" will have 7 characters in the "Rise", and the three protagonists of "Rise" will also appear in this part, and the plot of the two games also has some connections. Recently, we played demo DEMO of "100 Heroes: Rise" in advance, and after about 2 hours of experience, let's briefly talk about the features of this game.
At the beginning of The Legend of 100 Heroes: Rise, only one protagonist, CJ, is available (her name was JB in last year's demo, I don't know if it will cause some misunderstanding and change her name... ）。 The game's scenes are more exquisite, and the music is good, but to be honest, the first half hour of plot dialogue, battle, and town exploration is more "dissuaded" - the lines look like boiling water; the action of the first teaching battle is very blunt, the protagonist can only dodge two combos and sprints, and the hard straight time after attack and sprint is also very long; the town exploration part looks open but is actually very linear, basically walking to the designated location and talking to an NPC and then doing the task.
In the early stages of the game, you will be frequently asked to go to the "Great Forest" map to do tasks, such as collecting a few woods, hitting bosses in this area to get mission items, etc., the difficulty is relatively low, and the boss battle basically only needs to dodge two moves and then attack the weakness. The game map has the feel of a simple version of the Galaxy City game. As the game's story progresses, you can see some NPCs who want to open shops in the immigrant areas of the town, and after completing their missions, they will unlock the corresponding shops, and then use the materials collected in the previous battles to upgrade your weapons and armor, and when the equipment rises, the monsters of the Great Forest will basically hit you with gua sha. But there is a point to complain about, that is, each time you explore, you can only collect up to 50 material items, and the materials that exceed the upper limit cannot continue to be picked up, and you can only go back to town and come back to explore again, which feels like you are forcibly slowing down the game time.
When the game progressed for about an hour, our second protagonist Garou joined the team, "The Legend of the Hundred Heroes: Rise" began to become fun - originally I thought that the game was similar to the "Trinity", but in fact each protagonist corresponded to an attack key, pressed in battle, it will immediately switch and attack, CJ for light attack, Garu for heavy attack, through the combination of attack will release a powerful continuous technique, these fancy actions are completely absent when there is only one person.
As the character level increased, CJ's original 2 combos became 4 combos, there was a two-stage jump in the air, and Garu added charge attacks and blocks, and the entire game's action became smooth. When facing different enemies, you also have to switch the corresponding people to achieve the optimal solution, fast and air enemies with CJ is better, enemies with shields and slow frequency can quickly break through defenses and block enemy attacks with Garu, some enemies who will spray stones to attack, and Garu's big sword can hit the stones back like a baseball, this move is also used in the final second boss battle of our demo version. According to the previous demo video, the third protagonist is the village chief girl we meet in the early part of the game, she will use ranged attacks, unfortunately the plot in demo demo has not yet ended when she joins the team.
Overall, the two-hour demo of 100 Heroes: Rise has led to a steady rise in my liking for the game. Last year, when watching the production team's demo, I felt that the action was more blunt, I didn't have much expectations, and the first hour of this trial was also a bit boring, but after an hour, when the second protagonist joined the team, the game experience would be greatly improved. If the plot dialogue can be carefully polished, I will be happy to watch the plot of "Rise" after the official version is launched and continue to look forward to the "Legend of the Hundred Heroes".