Hero of Allacrost Demo

In order to get into the proper atmosphere, a role-playing game needs to feature a mixture of interesting elements, such as a good story, intriguing quests, and action-packed combat sequences every once in a while. However, it’s enough for the game to excel in only one of these in order to attract a crowd, because a solid story can be the perfect way to hide other imperfections.

Hero of Allacrost is a classic top-down RPG with rugged graphics and an emphasis on story, rather than flashy visuals and intricate gameplay mechanics. Thus, although the exploration sequences and the combat are pretty dull and uninteresting, you can really let yourself get lost in the story, as long as you can relate to the characters and get acquainted with the universe in question.

Speaking of which, the action obviously takes place in a kingdom called Allacrost, with you playing the role of a knight by the name of Claudius. The action starts a bit slow in the beginning, but things soon get more exciting and you are fighting dragons before you know it. There many intriguing characters to meet and join up with along the way as well, so there’s plenty of fun to be had and many secrets to discover.

One of the more disappointing things about the game is the fact that the combat is ‘active-time based’, which means that each character has a certain amount of time to perform the desired actions. Hence, you can either attack, defend, or make use of the items you pick up along the way, but everything feels very rushed and casual, which hurts the overall experience.

The level design is very lazy in most cases, with barren environments that are actually just one texture repeated for miles. The enemies are spread only in places that hold some kind of interest, because no matter how the actual map of the zone is, the rest is devoid of anything else. Hence, you might have a difficult time getting into the atmosphere of the game.

In the end, regardless of how nice the story might be, Hero of Allacrost fails to keep you interested for more than a few minutes, because there’s barely anything to look at. However, the project is still in development, so there’s room for improvement.