Heracles no Eikou II: Titan no Metsubou (1989)

Preliminary: Ugh in my first training session I can already tell this is going to be too Dragon Quest-influenced for me, with frequent status ailments etc., and yet here I am. The music is pretty good, the Look is quite standard NES JRPG for 89, but I can never resist these RPGs grrrr. I might at least manage to only play half of it or something lol we'll see.

Early Game

The music kinda reminds me of Super Mario 3 more than RPG music heh.

I wish I had known about this back when I was playing 1989 games. Cuz this probably would have stood out more among its contemporary JRPGs. Now that I'm used to 91 games and excited for Link to the Past and on, the Look and Sound of this just aren't notable. But compared to its contemporary Dragon Quest III, possibly. Now, it likely can't get higher than a 3 star, despite the fact I can't deny I'm hooked right now, the Greek mythological setting being a unique feature just isn't some spectacular thing to me. It's very well-paced (so far) and has the class Dragon Quest style, grind then new town grind then new town setup, which I can't help but like. But yea.

The night/day feature is mostly just serving to be tedious so far. And I wish the footstep sound, well, didn't exist lol.

Even tho I can't deny the hook rn, and the music is pretty good tbh for an NES game, I'm really trying to enforce my rule of only playing the excellent games through. I mean, look at this Cerberus lol

Yeaaaa it's time to move on. I keep missing lol.

Look: 7/10 Fine enough, very standard NES JRPG Look for its time

Sound: 7/10 Some of the tunes seem particularly good and this could have wound up higher, not sure.

Play: 7/10 Very DQ2-influenced, so that's not my thing. I don't like constantly dealing with status ailments, especially early in the game. It seems well-designed, with Antidotes findable in the first dungeon etc, and some good game design, but lots of the QoL stuff I look for is missing, without the spectacular uniqueness of, say, its contemporary Mother.

Feel: 7/10

Attachment: 7.5/10 I can't deny part of me wanted to push on anyway. That darn RPG hook :-p A big part of the issue was I messed up on a save and lost like 30 minutes of grinding. But if I'm not willing to do another 30 mins of grinding... it's lesser on the scale of JRPG hooks.

Overall: 7.1/10

This game occupies an interesting niche in the NES/Famicom world. Most RPGs went for the cliched fantasy-esque settings, but Heracles no Eikou II (a.k.a. Glory of Heracles II) does something a little different: it goes for a cliched Greek-esque setting instead! And while that originality doesn't extend to the overall aesthestics and gameplay of Titan Qu—erm, Heracles no Eikou II—there's still a fun and unique romp within, albeit a kind of short romp marked with rather extreme difficulty shifts.

In Heracles no Eikou II, you play as a young man who is enlisted by his Queen to join the fight against the titan Cronos, whose evil haunts the land despite him being sealed. So you have to break the seal and then break his face. But you need the Chaos Axe to break the seal, which requires finding three "Zuis" to forge. Except the only person who is said to be able to wield the Chaos Axe is the legendary hero Heracles, and he has a small "in heaven" problem...so what's the hero to do? The plot is simple, unsurprisingly, consistenting of the usual "go to X, do A heroic thing, go to Y and be a hero, yadda yadda". It still entertains, in large part due to the Greek influences. Various mythological figures appear throughout the game, as characters, monsters, and lore. There is one particular part of the plot that has a really cool idea in a really dumb scenario, but other than that it's smooth sailing.

The characters are quite typical JRPG-wise. The hero usually hits things in the face, but also gets healing spells to a lesser degree. He's joined by three companions: the centaur, who wishes to be brave and specializes in healing and support magic; the statue, a female figure crafted by Hephaestus who seeks a soul and wields attack magic; and Heracles himself, who rips the faces off of things that don't even have faces. Battles are turn-based, with various spells and status effects and whatnot. Attack spells all deal fixed damage, save for elemental resistances that can reduce damage by 25% or negate attack spells entirely. It's really not that different from Dragon Quest gameplay-wise. There is one particularly unique aspect, which is the source of the review's title: your party members dodge enemy attacks like crazy. While leveling does boost your stats, each level you gain also makes your characters more likely to avoid attacks, often with a noticeable difference in how often they're hit from one level to the next. It's an interesting element that definitely makes each level you gain feel like an increase in your heroes' skill and helps to cut down on the need to pop into the menu and heal between battles.

The game's difficulty curve is rather parabolic and bizarre. Early on, you'll need to grind so your lone hero can carry himself through dungeons, and even once you get a party of three, you'll need to toughen up to survive later encounters and your MP will end up taxed healing and curing ailments. Then, around the mid-game, the difficulty drops—you'll get sufficient levels through regular progress, your heroes will have an assortment of useful spells, and you can get a pair of utterly game-breaking weapons with absurdly useful special effects (one lets your hardest hitter attack twice, the other casts a free one-group spell that does absurd damage). Even more egregiously, the fourth party member you get is ridiculously overpowered, with stats hundreds of points above what your other party members will have. That might sound like the end-game will be a breeze, but end-game enemies do about 15 damage a hit to this fellow—which translates into about 150 damage a hit for your other three members, who'll probably have around 300 HP. In short, they're very prone to dying if a group of enemies decide that they really don't like someone. In fact, high-Agility enemies with instant-death attacks, painful magic spells, and disabling status effects make the end-game very challenging even with your other members at high levels. It borders on outright unfair, given how poor luck can leave you with both of your healers dead or everyone paralyzed (which, since it doesn't wear off, is an instant loss if your entire party is paralyzed).

Despite the wonky difficulty and other quirks, such as many spells having unclear effects (if said spells actually do anything at all), Heracles no Eikou II was actually a quite enjoyable little romp. It might not be for everyone, but it might be worthwhile for a fan of classic JRPGs like Dragon Quest.