Heroes of Ruin (2012)

I'm pretty sure I first heard of this game while looking for stuff to put on my CFW 3DS and heard that it was a Diablo clone, though I must admit I completely forgot about this detail until I actually booted it up since all you see on the 3DS home screen is the logo which made me think it was one of those weird shooters that had also caught my eye. Fortunately I ended up going for it while traveling abroad for a few days after quickly trying out The Denpa Men, Captain Toad and Mutant Mudds, none of which I was particularly in the mood for at the time.

As a game, it's what you might expect of a Diablo clone that's not played with a traditional keyboard+mouse setup— that is to say, fairly lackluster. You can pick from among four classes and the buttons setup means that you can only have up to 3 special abilities active at any given time, so you're mostly just mashing the attack button whenever enemies get on screen (at least with the Alchitect, the class I chose). Some of the central aspects for Diablo-likes, like the loot collection, skill optimization and multiplayer are somewhat present, even if the former two feel rather shallow (one thing to note was that I hit the surprisingly low money cap when I was about half done with the game, and using the shops never felt like a necessity) and I never got to experience the latter. The world is fairly unique, even if the story, characters and creatures you'll find in it are full of clichés and not particularly noteworthy, and the quests are all stuff you've seen before.

It's not a bad effort for what it is, but there's not really much about it that warrants recommending over nearly any other Diablo-like out there (my advice is to try Grim Dawn, which is fantastic), but at a pretty low entry threshold and completion time, it might be worth a look, particularly as something that's quite well suited to playing on the go.