Developer: Lonely Troops
Publisher: Lonely Troops
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Hero of the Kingdom III – Review
Lonely Troops will give you their third game of the ‘Hero of the Kingdom’ series. Wherever you went in this medieval world, searching for peace and a place to settle, faith had decided otherwise. You fought battles against bandits and pirates to save your loved ones, over and over again. This time you’ll join your uncle for your newest adventure. Tackle their new achievements, explore their quests and give a friendly hand to aid your neighbours in this adventurous RPG.
Story
This time around you live with your uncle Ben in a small cottage in a village in Green Valley. He is ready to learn you the basics of hunting and prepares a little task for you. These tasks contain the gathering of a few items. Before you start your quest, he gives you a bow and arrows and after you resupply your uncle‘s stock, you can explore the village and the surrounding areas. Each neighbour or friend you meet along the way will have something to do for you.
Until at a certain point you get visions of a princess in a castle who wants to go to ‘the Forbidden Valley. Her dad forbids her but she went anyway (spoiled little ****). She takes home some rocks and even if the father disagrees with it, she keeps them even when they could be the harbingers of evil. The dad is scared because of the Monster who can make the Earth rumble, scared of losing his precious little spoiled girl. So you can imagine, there will be a lot of trouble coming your and her way.
Graphics
The graphics are mediocre, to say the least. It is a 2D game that acts like a 3D game, which is a fun approach. More basic shapes and drawings like weapons, herbs and ingredients are stunning. We like it when games don’t forget about the little details in icons, because they are equally as important. The houses, taverns and ships are drawn alright for this kind of game. Eventually, the whole scene is pretty okay, except if you look at the animals or monsters… They are just not what we would expect if we take a look at the other graphical elements.
Sound
Sound-wise, there isn’t much to talk about. The background music derives from the medieval era. There is no voice acting found in this game, but whenever orcs are talking, you can occasionally hear a grunt. Besides all of that, they made sure to give us the feeling of immersion by adding realistic sounds like flowing water, tweeting birds, rumbling rocks and animal noises.
Gameplay
Hero of the Kingdom III is an adventure and role-playing game, where you start off living with your uncle Ben in a cottage in a village in the Green Valley. This game mainly focusses on point and click, so if you looking for intense battles, this isn’t the game for you. The tasks or quests you get are pretty straightforward and include killing NPCs, gathering, skilling and exploring areas. Sometimes you need to look further for some of the items you need, but you mostly can get them fairly quick.
So how can you kill a mob with point and click? Well, each mob or NPC has requirements next to it. That means if you don’t have enough fighting points, potions, weapons or life; you can’t pass the mobs. Which mostly leads in grinding until you finally hit the fighting level or run back to one of the villages for your supplies. This has to do with the fact that the monsters you have to defeat often block roads or areas you need to go to in order to progress.
Something we find a little odd for an adventure RPG is that you can’t die, but you’ll need to restock your life points by eating and setting up your camp every so often. At your camp, you can get a good night’s sleep and a healthy meal, which you can buy as a take-away package or make it on the spot. Because when your life points reach a certain amount you can’t fight or gather anymore.
The skills you can exercise increase over time. First, it is only fighting skills but after a while, you’ll get your basics like cooking, fishing, lockpicking, gathering, woodcutting by completing several quests. Before you get to practice all of those skills you’ll have a little road ahead of you.
Items you collect can be traded in by certain vendors and vice versa. Look out for this one because each vendor has specific needs or wants. You can’t just drop off a load of junk at one vendor like in other RPGs, which gets you frustrated because you keep running around from vendor to vendor to get what you require.
Conclusion
The team of Lonely Troops have a decent game series running for them which will make players who enjoy gathering and exploring very excited. While the game falls in the RPG genre, it’s not a traditional RPG game, as most mechanics in the game are translated into a mere point and click actions, which work well for this title. []The scenery is not the most visually stunning but can be appreciated if you look at the little things. For gamers who like to relax it is a great choice because after playing it we were totally ‘zen’.
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