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Heirs of the Kings Review

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It must take a certain amount of self belief, a brass neck to release an RPG into this particular window of time. In the last couple of weeks we’ve seen Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden release from Atlus, but now KEMCO have turned up with Heirs of the Kings, another retro styled JRPG. Can the delights of the latest from that prolific team tempt us away from Atlus’ finest, or is this a mere footnote?  

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the story is the most important part of any RPG and if there’s one thing that the KEMCO games do well, it is story, even if they do rely a little too heavily on RPG cliches at times. 

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In Heirs of the Kings that narrative focuses on a heroine with no memory. Laura is that girl and while wandering in a wood she is saved by Serena, a battle mage type character, and Grant, the typical tank, all hard hitting and no magic. Soon they are joined by Bernard (nothing like a set of good, high fantasy names to set the scene, eh?) as they continue on a journey to save the world. I’m not going to say any more for fear of spoilers, but cliches aside, this is a very enjoyable narrative, even if the story does feel artificially padded to increase the run time.

In terms of how things are set-up and the presentation aspect and, well, if you have played a KEMCO game before, you know what to expect. Yes, it is all anime styled characters, top-down views of both the open world and the various dungeons that you find, and a cute, almost 16-bit style to the graphics. The characters are nicely designed, as are the backdrops. But the big let down of Heirs of the Kings is in the enemies; as a foe gets stronger you’ll discover the models run a slightly different hue. It seems that no matter where you go, you are fighting the same half a dozen enemies, just with differing colours. Other than this, it is very much a KEMCO looking game, and if you have played one before…

Similarly, the sound is pretty good too, from stirring battle music to the various swooshes and clangs of battle, it all works well. There are no voice overs here though, with the story presented via the medium of text windows. 

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So, what about the way the game plays then, is Heirs of the Kings more original here? Well, not really is the brutal answer. We are a team of four, and we wander around an open world (or warp to places we have already visited if we prefer). As we get to our destination and head into a dungeon, we get to walk some more, all while being attacked by random creatures, of course. Every now and then there is a boss, but there is nothing here that should worry you. 

In battle, we have the usual range of options – the basic Fight, the magic-based Skills, the opportunity to Defend and then to use Items, utilising an item to recover some HP or MP, for instance. There is the usual auto battle feature in place too, by pressing X, and the only thing missing is the ability to flee a battle. As I may have already mentioned, Heirs of the Kings is very much business as usual for KEMCO. 

One thing that is good is the Soul Map system. It is here where characters obtain Soul Maps as part of the story, as every battle earns them an amount of SP. This can then be spent to unlock nodes on what is essentially a fancy skill tree, with these having a huge effect on the way the game plays out. I have to admit I initially forgot about the feature, and so after suffering my first defeat, I spent all my points and then pretty much dominated everything from that point on. 

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But not all is great and much of that boils down to the use of the in-game Shop and the chance to throw some points into a weapons lottery. The weapons I received were so vastly overpowered that it was quite late on in Heirs of the Kings before I had to do anything except hit the auto battle button. These weapons were truly a game breaker, as all the fights, including bosses, became utterly trivial. So think carefully before trying to get powerful weapons, is my advice. 

Other than this issue, Heirs of the Kings is pretty indistinguishable from any of KEMCO’s recent output. It could be any one of a number of games, and it is this cookie cutter approach that sees the shine wearing off. When the genre marketplace is packed, these run-of-the-mill JRPGs begin to feel more and more like a cynical cash in.

Heirs of the Kings isn’t a bad game, but it just doesn’t bring anything remotely new to the table.  

Heirs of the Kings is on the Xbox Store

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