Healer’s Quest – Review
When applied (in)correctly, humor can make or break a game. Misplaced jokes, especially when they’re about the game you’re currently playing can amplify its flaws, and even bring new ones to light. Even if it is taken carefully, misplaced humor can still break the immersion and take you out of it. Healer’s Quest makes promise on making it, with fun, lighthearted, humor that picks apart cliches in the very genre it is in. The question remains though, if humor as the main component of a game will give it enough legs to stand on.
Story
Finding a wand in a forest, you try to cast some spells with it. When that fails, you attempt to give it one last try and cast some spells on a nearby tank, only to find out it only heals him! Being the rude tank you’ll always find with the groupfinder, you are ready to give up your role as healer, when you get caught in the throws of adventure with a party rapidly forming, and a quest quickly unfolding in front of your eyes. The party you’re forced to deal with however, seems to be of the same toxic caliber most online parties are made of: assholes, idiots, and lowlife losers.
Healer’s quest dialogue is almost completely made up of poking fun of established RPG tropes like the previously mentioned annoying people in parties, standard quest design, and the stupid enemies you encounter. Every other line will be about how some element of what is currently going on in the game is weird, funny or stupid. Responses to these lines may be mixed, there is no joke that is universally liked.
Graphics
The art style of the game is one of crayon-like drawings, which gives the game a cute atmosphere, as if it was drawn in the imagination of a child. The game features a wide variety of monsters, with detailed animations and attacks. Maps have the same art style with a good amount of variety and imagination, from the usual rivers and forests, to castles with floating towers and large skeletons standing up in giant pits. While the art direction in the game does fit, the text that the menus and dialogue work with, may become a little hard to read at times, but we don’t directly see how that can be helped with this kind of art.
Sound
As you play through the game, you’ll encounter several quirky, upbeat tunes to score your play. With little cues for any interesting sound, there isn’t a lot of variety to listen to, as goes for flavor lines of the characters. None of your party members speak, they make little noises when hit, and your player character speaks the names of the spells when you cast them, as you cast them. If you’ve been reading my reviews, you’ll know I’ve not exactly spoken highly about sound in most games. That is because in most games without spoken dialogue I quickly forget that sound even exists. The loops and repetitive sounds quickly drown out and Healer’s quest is a good example of this. That is not to say that the music is bad at all, just that while there’s diversity it can’t always stave off annoyance.
Gameplay
A traditional RPG with a twist, Healer’s quest only lets you play as the most underrated class in games: *drumroll please*… the healer. You have a selection of spells you can cast that you upgrade as you level up, but the catch is, you need to decide which four you want to use for each fight. Each of your four other party members, (a paladin tank, barbarian melee DPS, warlock and archer ranged damagers) have their health gauges with parts sectioned off where if their health is above or below a certain threshold they perform optimally. Other than the health of your party you have little control over the fights, except the small buffing spells you can cast besides your normal heals. When they die enough times they will occasionally stop dealing damage for you making the fights harder for the first part of your encounters, but after a while they’ll come to their senses, and start fighting again.
As stated before, you have a Zelda-esque top down overworld map where you can encounter random enemies to train up your characters, where you’ll find your towns, taverns and dungeons. And speaking of the dungeons, they’re littered around the map, where you can enter them to a side scrolling screen greeting you with similar random encounters and a self-proclaimed standard mini bosses. You can unlock a couple of handy shortcuts in the dungeons if you want to get out as well, which are always welcome.
Conclusion
Humor in games can be enough to save a game, but not enough to carry it entirely. Healer’s quest looks to be a good example of this. While it does revolve around the funny dialogue, it serves to poke fun at the tired old routines found in most RPG games, including this one. The gameplay loops are built around the humor of the game and that is enough to make them no longer chores, but doesn’t make up for them. The core gameplay loops still have only limited substance, so the game is best enjoyed in short bursts to not burn yourself out on it.
Healer's Quest - Review,
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