Our boat crashed
against the beachy shores of Draida, salty air filled our nostrils, joined with
the unmistakable smell of goblin. It’s hard to mistake that unique blend of fecal
matter, blood and sweat that is so characteristic of the green monsters. Before
we could catch our bearings the barbarian charged off into the distance, the
knight looked back and me, shrugged and then ran after them. I soon lost them
both in the haze of battle, the map said we needed to pass through the forest,
but I saw no evidence of 2 heavily armed warriors trampling the foliage. I did
however find werewolves, and the less said about them the better. Eventually I
found myself at the gates of the dark castle of Fortaan, I used my great magic
to burn down the gates and stormed inside only to find a scene of carnage. The
knight was lying on the floor, bleeding heavily, but surrounded by dead goblins
in chainmail. I threw him a potion before following the blood trail deeper into
the castle. In the throne room I saw him, the goblin king! Or at least part of
him, rolling along the floor towards me after being decapitated by the
barbarians axe.
Heroica is an
expandable 2-4 player dungeon delving adventure game in which you take control
of one of a handful of heroes and fight your way through to defeat a boss
monster at the end of a dungeon. It’s probably worth noting that this is a Lego game, everything in the game, from
your health points to the monsters, to the dice itself is made of Lego!
The game play is simplistic, you roll a dice and move up to
the number shown, then if you encounter a monster you roll the dice again to
see if you win. The dice combines numbers for movement and pictures of skulls/swords
to represent los/victory in combat. There is also the shield face on the dice,
which represents both a 4, victory, and the chance to use a special ability.
Each character starts with 1 special ability which may be activated in either
movement or combat rolls depending on the ability and they vary from ranged
attacks to whirlwind melee attacks. You can get more abilities during the game
if you pick up more weapons from the story or magical items from certain
version of the game.
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| The suggested map for all 4 of the wave 1 games, there was only 1 wave 2 game released. You can, of course, arrange the game however you'd like. |
Heroica consists
of 5 standalone games each of which contains different rooms, heroes, monsters
and a different magical artefact. These games can be combined to create huge
games where you’ll be fighting through beaches, forests, dungeons and castles
on the way to victory. You win the game by killing the final boss monster,
which only has the standard amount of health, so it’s no harder than any other
monster except for the amount of damage it does to you. This is probably my
biggest gripe, the game ends up being a race to the final room, the first
person to get there tends to be the winner, especially if they have saved up a
combat potion which lets you auto-win a fight.
The game is a family game, that’s for sure, but if you look
into it there are some survive-like
mechanics to slow down your fellow players. In particular the magical barriers
you get in the forest expansion can be moved around to block passage and as
there are 2 you can even block a player in 1 room! All obstacles can be broken
through by rolling a shield, which is 1 in 6, but you’d be surprised how long
that can take someone. A couple of the magical items also give similar
abilities, one allows you to resurrect monsters you killed on the game board,
another allows you to give a monster an extra health point to make them more
difficult to fight.
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| 4 of the heroes, knight, barbarian, druid and mage. The 4 red pips are your health while the rest of your character board has room for treasure, weapons and slain monsters. At the rear is the weapons shop which provides new abilities at a cost. |
The modular nature of Heroica
grants a lot of replayability, particularly when you have all expansions.
However buying all the expansions will set you back a fair bit, if you don’t
have kids and you aren’t a fan of Lego then you probably won’t want to put down
the money to buy all five, especially since they are out of production now. Heroica is an enjoyable game for what it
is, but you need to be prepared for the kind of game that dice almost entirely
dictate, you won’t be making many real choices in the game. However you will be
playing with Lego, and what’s not to
like about that!?
6/10
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