I just found another town. I don't know where I went before exactly that I missed it but I just followed the coastline mostly, thinking maybe I'd missed a shallow sea path.
The map got all distorted for a while and I didn't seem to have any status effects? Not sure what that was about but maybe this town will tell me!
Edit: oh it is the sweltering heat. That would explain why it went away at night. Cool effect.
Made it to Troy. I thought it was kind of neat how they didn't let you do the immortal stuff when you had the normal party members. I was expecting something along the lines of what happened at the pass given the contents of the dream but didn't expect it to go quite like that or Heracles lines thereafter.
Need to go back and visit the other shrines with my new immortal though; just went to Poseidon's shrine.
It is nice that they have the temple of Apollon and of Poseidon near Troy.
Edit:
And beat the Darkness or rather Reion did. Guy killed Steira. I revived her. Then a couple turns later he did his back to back attack on her again and I had no more revives. And then he did it to my hero. And then I watched as Reion flailed about, tried to flee, etc. until he finally came out on top :P.
Edit:
"You won't eat me, will you (eat me)?" Is how I read that and said No (I will not eat you). Apparently I told the poor thing I would eat it though :P.
So these are the spiders, of which people were not fond...lol they're annoying.
...
I like what the game does with the weather to portend that there is something bigger going on in the world than your search for your past and identity--with the earthquakes/holes, sweltering heat, and the most recent change. It makes it obvious that something is wrong with things, when more often than not things wrong are just "there are more monsters than usual" or "soldiers are burning towns!" Here it feels the earth itself is in a bad way and that's a neat, apocalyptic vibe. The sweltering effect was starting to outlive its welcome though :P. (Kind of reminds me of Meteor hanging over the earth like that if we're looking for FF7 similarities, although, again I think the main similarity I've encountered so far is the focus on the poor and oppressed in story-lines and NPC dialogue).
So I'm through Persia. I liked the centaur stuff and it was nice that they made people "not speak Greek" even if it made them come across as dumb at times, which is a bad side-effect but still I like that they made it feel like a foreign country for the characters (with touches such as the secret Hermes statue in Benghazi and no Hermes statue in Persia (Persepolis I'm guessing? Although it being not in a valley makes me think Susa in Elam).
One thing I really don't like about the combat is the amount of times the enemy reduces the damage of the attack. It seems to happen particularly often with my hero. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or there is just a parry system but I hate that sound effect when they partially defend :P.
The sweltering heat effect is interesting, but it does get rather obnoxious after a while. Makes me start to feel queasy when I've been staring at it for a while.
I do really like the repurposing of Greek myth that this game does. Other people have noted the lack of historical accuracy in the depiction of ancient Greece, which is certainly true, but there's some neat engagement with the mythological element of the culture. For instance,
the way Prometheus stole not fire, but immortality to give to humanity, and how that intersects with the main characters.
Not going to click the spoilers but...I feel the historicity angle isn't really important. It is a game about myths and it seems to set itself in a mix of mythical and classical Greek setting. Mythical Greek setting is already a mix of classical Greek trappings and myths about a pre-classical Greek past. Anachronism and lack of historical fact isn't so much a problem because we don't even have a time and it makes sense that we don't.
What I am so far disappointed with are the trappings. Admittedly, as I said going in, that would probably always be the case. I spent a lot of time in my education dealing with classical Greece and I am going to have nerdy things that I want to see when I go to ahistorical but hopefully quintessential Sparta or Athens and such and there's been some fan service but not as much as I'd personally want. But I'd personally want a whole lot of it so...I realize I've got an idiosyncratic perspective on it.
Kind of want to get through Olympus now but this spider cave lol...want to click on that spoiler...
We could definitely do that. People can @me or I can just check based on going through the thread, then add the list at the bottom of the OP. I may also edit in people's various impressions of the game at the bottom of the OP for posterity's sake too. So anyone coming upon the thread later can immediately get a gist of what people thought of the game.
I put about 10 hours into it in the first few days, then decided I was going too fast so put it on hold while I fooled around in DB FighterZ with my friends and also beat Celeste/Iconoclast. A lot of people seem to be getting to where I'm at though, so it's probably time to go back and beat it!
I do really like the repurposing of Greek myth that this game does. Other people have noted the lack of historical accuracy in the depiction of ancient Greece, which is certainly true, but there's some neat engagement with the mythological element of the culture. For instance,
the way Prometheus stole not fire, but immortality to give to humanity, and how that intersects with the main characters.
Took me a while to find the right tower to jump from (after Driskos) but I'm now back on my way.
...
Gard was a godsend against the spider-cave boss (idk what it is in the recommended translation, but the defense up spell is what I'm talking about). Learned it just before fighting him and a couple applications took him from doing over half my hp on the hero every hit to about 10 (and similar benefits all around).
Finally had the opportunity to sink some decent time into this. The setting is probably the most intriguing part of the game so far for me, ancient Greece is a setting I don't think I've played through in a JRPG before (never touched a Glory of Heracles game before this). Obviously it's not very historically accurate in a lot of ways but it's still nice enough set-dressing to see familiar names crop up. It has a whole lot of pretty unique and interesting ideas going on as well. I really like the system by which guest party members can permanently die if you let their hp drop below a certain threshold. Really made me want to work to keep them alive, but I always hate letting NPCs die in any kind of game if it can be avoided. The sprite work is quite nice (playing on a CRT via S-video), The Dark One in particular looked absolutely stunning when the screen scrolled up and down.
I'm only up to Sparta so far, so still quite early, just fought my way through the nearby monster cave. So far the game has been easy-sailing, not much threat of death. Playing games like this always makes me realize how much I appreciate good tooltips in an rpg. It's a bit annoying that there's no way to find out what an item does outside of the sell screen. I'm sure that info was in the manual, but well, I don't have one nor would I be able to read it if I did :P
Yeah tooltips are the first things I'll probably look up in an older game. I like knowing roughly what items/spells do. Should actually look up some of the spells in this game tbh, but most have been straightforward or the ally/enemy AI has used them and shown me what they do.
But lordy, magic criticals lol. Just randomly getting one-shot'd from full health is fun (especially given the circumstances) :P. Oh well. At least there was the bank in New Athens. Climbing Mt. Olympus is an ordeal. But I killed Momo (I think that was its name) and my future is looking a bit better atm.
Edit: Okay. I can guess what is in that spoiler :). That was a nice turn on the myth. That said, I do wish the gods had interacted more/had more personality/flavor. Maybe they will going forward.
To be explicit: So far I think they do Zeus well as a jealous and wrathful leader of the gods. I think they do Hermes well as a patron of travelers. I think they do Prometheus well. I like that they have Uranos around to have some conflict between generations of gods.
Right now I'm feeling vary unsure about all sides in the conflict and I think I'm supposed to. The story is definitely heating up atm.
It was more that they do show a lot of the other gods and they are just sort of there for the most part. I think they could've done small things to express the various purported relationships among them. Not really important to the central narrative or anything but more as adding personality and color to heaven. (and just as fan service).
The game doesn't really have enough cutscenes or dialogue to give a lot of personality to individual characters. There's a lot of interesting story ideas but the script isn't as fully elaborated as would come to be the expectation for RPGs in later generations.
IDK. I think there could be better NPC text. Some of it is really fun, but there's a lot of repeated text and what not.
To be more explicit: Like I think making Dionysus drunk was cool. They could've put gods with relationships in the same "house" in heaven and have had a little bit of color text like they had with him. Little stuff like that would go a long way imo.
I get that I'm picking at the edges. But I do think there are plenty of feasible things they could've done to make the Greek trappings better realized.
I agree with you that a lot of the big ideas are pretty cool. Like the weather stuff we talked about above or that thing in your spoiler that ties into, imo, a pretty strong "second act" of the story so far. I think the conflicts are cool and just what people stand for and who is really "on your side" is an open question to me atm.
...
Heracles taught me that conceal helmet has a multi-target gard spell on it :P. Magic items are so useful in this game. They really are.
Sometimes I do get reminded of real world geography by the map, despite my (fairly petty) complaint about the shapes of the landforms.
I'll put them in spoilers:
The volcano seemed to be in Sicily?
I was just sailing around Driskos down to Troy and it sort of looked like I went through the Hellespont.
Persia sort of seems to be on the Persian gulf in Elam (which is where Susa, one of the capitols was).
There seems to be a Sinai peninsula between Benghazi and Persia and a patch of green for Egypt, which could be the flood plain?
Greece is basically just a straight object though, which is disappointing as I've said, but in terms of simple directions, things seem to be in the right relation to eachother mostly.
Bit confused what Therma is supposed to be. Is it Thessalonika? But that is on the coast of the Aegean.
Atlasia is in the Atlas mountains. And I'm guessing Boar closed the pillars of Heracles.
Edit: about selling items and a late (I presume) game village:
I'd actually been wondering if rusty equipment could be clean lol...but then my inventory was clogged and I sold it all. And now...I find it can be cleaned :P
Edit 2: PSA about after you've completed gathering the stuff you need for the story in act 2:
Heracles needs to leave the Oceanos dungeon through the main door and leave your party. I excave'd and missed this and was very confused when Albion refused to acknowledge the bloods and I couldn't do anything in the cave with the stone people or anything so I looked it up and you need to do this to progress.
Wasn't expecting that to happen...and now I'm a bit lost :P.
Baor was a bit of a weird fight for me. Didn't seem I could debuff him and could never really get many buffs up because he kept silencing, confusing, and paralyzing large portions of the party. I got through him on criticals basically, with low damage from spells throughout.
Now the world is flooded (don't know what Prometheus's plans were, my memories are gone despite Heracles finding them in some unspecified as of yet place).
I'm looking for Oceanos it seems but...no idea where he'd be since I cannot get to his temple or anything. Idk.
I'll look it up I guess...I tried flying around with Pegasus and couldn't spot any signs of where I could even try to go.
Edit: if I had kept up what I was doing I'd have made it alone lol...I got the first message but didn't respond to it in the proper way...
In any case, the next location is cool.
Edit 2: Was not expecting that twist, I was expecting another similar twist for a while before it didn't pan out.
protagonist is Baor. I thought the last guy who joined was Baor, but he seems to be my son.
Edit 3: this boss...the concealed helmet makes the front guys mostly inconsequential but...if the one on the left uses taxton on either the main boss or the guy on the right things are ruined pretty much :(.
Especially if he does it on the main boss. Upped magic damage is so much.
Edit 4: It was critical magic apparently. That's good to find out but he got me that way again lol.
Edit 5: yeah critical hits are my bane lol. Because they cut through guard the servants can two shot me if they're lucky, even when I've reduced their normal attacks to hurting 1 or 0.
Edit 6: yeah getting really deep into the fight and then dying to criticals is extremely annoying :(. I can't really control for them. They take away half of my life (or much more with the main boss) and getting two together just kills me. It is like, given my items and equipment, I've come across a pretty good strategy. I can keep the main boss from attacking me for most of the fight and get the side guys damage down to negligible and then...massive spike damage and I'm dead. The anger cue is annoying too, because it seems even if you do kill the guy when he's angry, he comes back alive ready to critical. Ugh. It is so nice when your party revives with their buffs intact in this game but not when the enemy does :P.
Edit 7: and again, one guy does it one turn then before I can heal the next guy criticals :P Ugh...I hope I kill these guys soon.
Edit 8: and to a crit again...lol.
Might load a pre-Mount Atlas save and go buy a silver ring to speed this battle up and have less turns I can be critical'd to death on...
I did go back and get a silver ring. So much easier as you can clear the side monsters quickly when you are forced to kill them and it is easier to make up for the taxton healing going on in that phase in-between taxtons.
Also I got critical'd about once (the only time I let the left monster go into a rage--didn't let him do that but on the other hand you kind of want him alive as a husk because next time he is revived he heals the main boss 100 some unless you get lucky and intercede before he can move (or rather before his brother can move more often)).
Conceal helmet is still a good idea imo because I had the main boss use physical attacks on me occasionally and those hurt a lot when he's been buffed by taxton.
In any case, happy I defeated them even if I redid two other bosses to do so :P. I still have the save file without the silver ring so maybe I'll get my revenge some day but really it wasn't a problem of strategy so much as a problem of a) damage output in the second phase and b) that spike damage.
But it worked this way and that's enough for me :P.
Edit: But yeah, the part after that fight is pretty neat imo.
Story is pretty damn good in the end, imo. I think the thing it does best with the Greek setting is the scheming and strife between the gods at the core of its story, but the story largely stands on its own, imo.
The second half really picks up. The strength of the first half is the focus on the weak and oppressed as well as the weather issues. A lot of the writing is charming and amusing and while there is some Greek fanservice, there isn't enough for my taste. I think the game really picks up coming out of Olympus as the narrative takes, with (in another FFVII-esque turn) an environmentalist turn, and looks inward at the characters and has this "game of the gods" thing going on. You also are in more of a fantasy land at this point and for me this sort of moves me past my disappointment with the wider Greek content. Moreover, this "game of the gods" thing is the best Greek content in the game.
I realize that my whining about under-using the setting is a bit over-the-top, but it is just honestly how I was (and looking back still do) feel about certain aspects of the game and it does matter to me in particular. Still in the final analysis I prefer to weigh my more unmixed feelings towards the end of the game higher, because I feel like what I would be doing otherwise is judging the game more on what it is not than on its merits. (On the other hand, I do think my suggestions of how it could've been a little better were pretty reasonable and within the "constraints" of a game at its time).
Beyond this, the game goes there in a certain place, providing an interesting scenario complete with that boss I was struggling with above, which is, again, part of the better use of the Greek setting so that all came together nicely. There's a reason I kept trying that boss despite him being pretty frustrating without a silver ring: the game had me quite engaged.
....
The thing is, I feel similarly about the combat and the leveling. I felt in the first half that my characters grew really slowly and that the main character struggled to do meaningful damage (often being parried in my case and just being so much weaker than Reion). Coupled with mindless battles, it could get tedious and unrewarding. I feel in the second half a) the leveling curve is much much steeper, b) player abilities are more powerful and rewarding, and c) the main character stopped being so disappointing to me.
Basically, I feel the gameplay became better too, although it could be rough at times, e.g.
It took me three times defending against my party to not die (first time I had practically no health) before they sheathed their weapons. I ultimately had to put myself in the back row too after checking that, yes, I was doing the right thing and understanding Gaia properly and it was just that I was taking too much damage
Glad you liked it in the end, MoonFrog. As for your concern about Greek content, I understand where you're coming from but as I said earlier it's more a flavor than an accurate representation. More than anything, I imagine Nojima and the other writers were using the setting and mythology as a pool of ideas for their story. Which also mean each entry takes some different elements not seen in the others (for example,
Ps. We should keep a running tally of members participating, if they beat the game and what score they gave it, no?
I'd say this game gets a 7/10 If I had played it back in 92. It's more of a 4/10 nowadays though.
I actually enjoyed the gameplay and balance more than I did the last time I played, probably because I knew what to expect and the little tricks that make battles somewhat broken but fun. As for the story, I said it before but I think it's really well done and worthy of its reputation.
So, 8/10 as a game that came after FFIV but before DQV.
Yeah. It is a good game imo. I don't know how I'd score it personally because, well, I've never really thought about what scores I'd attach to games and so I'd just be throwing a number up into a vacuum without any reference to how I would rate other games.
Yeah those random fights are pretty hard. I just banked my cash and rolled with it. Also I'd advise you either keep a save before finishing the mountain or make sure you've got a silver ring on you. The next part is a lot easier when you can cast once more without Steira.
Well, I've had the flu all week, but tried to finish this finally tonight....I don't know if this is the last boss but it's making me fight him and his lackeys alone and I have no desire to do this. The whole game is a cake walk and then this. I'm done playing whack a mole with resurrecting healers who hit like trucks when I have no attacks or time to use them.
Seeing as how I'm playing with save states on my SNES mini, last ones are hours earlier. There's no way I knew to hold a conceal helmet or silver ring for this express purpose. You should be able to beat it with what you're given in the area, but I'm not sure you can. I was having no trouble staying alive because I have Zeus' Armor, I just can't do any damage to the main guy once they start defending him, and then they get to use all their turns to heal him over and over. Terrible terrible design.
I think a lot of this later-game stuff is balanced around having the Silver Ring to be honest.
Also based on some of the comments in here, I think I'm much closer to the end than I thought I was...hmm. If I didn't have an early deadline tomorrow I might've tried to sweep the rest of the game tonight.
Hmmm yeah I went at him for a long time without a silver ring (you can see my diary above). The conceal helmet just has "Garder" on it, which you are saying isn't needed for you because of Zeus's armor.
The thing is, when the left one is revived, he'll use taxton and when the right one is revived, he'll often revive the left one. What silver ring does is it allows you to either intercede and kill the right one before he revives the left or kill it before it gets in a second turn (which, when you're lucky and he doesn't ilmore at first, has the same effect).
The problem with the left one is that when it uses taxton it is easy to kill but you don't entirely want it dead because then it could be revived and taxton again. At the same time, at low health, it gets angry and when it is angry it criticals every other turn. Moreover, this buff persists in death. So you want to kill it before it gets angry, i.e. right after taxton, which is exactly the opposite of what I just said. As such, he is going to get healed a lot. (Moreover, outside these considerations, he'll guard the main boss at some point and die). Silver Ring also cuts into that: You make up more damage on the main boss when you attack twice.
The problem for me in the second phase was that it takes SO long without a silver ring and eventually I get critical hit death. Like, I controlled for physical damage with the conceal helmet. I controlled for magical damage with the blue nectar. But neither prevents a critical and two in a row before you can heal is a killer. And the thing is, healing takes up turns where you could be preventing criticals or where you need to use nectar so it doesn't all come together smoothly even if you do hypothetically get to move first.
Hi all! So a decent number of people are still playing through Heracles III (including myself, though I think I'm pretty much at the endgame). We've started the next game for the club - which is Ultima 7, by the way - but that doesn't mean everyone still playing through this has been left behind!
Instead of having multiple active threads on gaming side, I've requested that these threads be moved to Hangouts once a new thread goes up, so that we can continue discussion without cluttering gaming side up. It can take a while to put decent time into an RPG, so I want to keep this thread open and active for as long as people are still going through the game.
That being said, an important part of a shared club is doing a post-mortem discussion. So: For those of you who either beat or dropped Heracles III, what did you think overall? Thoughts on the story? Thoughts on the gameplay? How do you think the game compares to other RPGs at the time? Do you think it "holds up" today?
I'll post some thoughts of my own once I beat it. But yea - what did you all think?
Well--lightly spoilerish stuff but I think it is mostly safe--I'll summarize my takeaways:
The Greek fanservice is lighter than I'd hope; this is disappointing to me particularly in the first "act" where the game largely operates on "traipse about Greece." There are small things, like Sparta educating women or the location of, say, a shrine of Apollo near Troy. Notably, I think the best fanservice is in the main story, which takes a more driving role in the second half, namely the portrayal of the gods as being at strife and being jealous, vain, and not entirely trustworthy. I think this is a far cry from typical JRPG god which is usually less human in either its good or its evil.
The dialogue can be quite amusing and charming but there is too much repeated text among NPCs. The second act also introduced a fantasy country in northwestern Europe and it is worth noting that when I no longer was seeking Greek fanservice the towns were not such a mixed bag for me and more enjoyable.
I think, in the end, the story is pretty strong and interesting. I like the war among the gods. I like that my feelings of unease about my various alliances with gods and men were indeed intended. I enjoy the end game twists, even if the one with that boss we were just talking about is a bit "shocking reveal that doesn't really add to the character (because said character is empty)." I feel it did play well with the story of the conflict and I liked visiting the places it took me and the ending credits (which I think the rock had to have been a reference even if what was happening there was pretty much the complete opposite of what happens in said myth, i.e. he gets out).
I think the game shares its focus on the plight of the poor and oppressed with FFVII. Here you had repeated stories about slavery and also the Centaur story. There you had all the slum content both in Midgar and outside of it.
I think it also shares an environmentalism bent with FFVII, which comes to the fore in the second act but ties back to both the crisis of the sea monster and the sun in the first act.
And again, I think it is interesting to consider the Darkness in light of the future Sin. Both are presented at first as these monstrous sea creatures waging war upon humanity but as the story develops it comes out that they are very much a product of man's Sins in a concrete way.
I thought the hordes of allies concept in the beginning was interesting but it is very much only a thing at the beginning.
I think the opening balance is boring. Leveling felt very slow in the first act. I felt I was getting parried way too often and putting out disappointing damage. There were hardly any exciting choices in combat. I think that the second act, again, mostly improves on this situation. I leveled quicker. I felt more in control and powerful, suffering fewer parries and having more combat choices.
I liked leaving combat up to the CPUs to discover what items that I had had secret magical effects. (I realize this sounds strange right after the last comment :P Perhaps it is).
I feel some of the last bosses are a bit rough in terms of design. The silver ring saga above is one example, as is the boss I talked about in spoilers above. I really wish that, as TheIlliterati pointed out, they had sold a silver ring in that town.
I think overall the combat is passable and goes from 'meh' to okay but nothing special, really. I think this boss that keeps coming up is perhaps the most interesting fight in the game and while that is meant as praise for said boss, I don't mean it as glowing praise for all the combat in the game.
Overall, I think it is a solid game but with some high points (in the scenario) that make it more noteworthy than that.
I haven't played many original versions of RPGs from that time (1990-92). Really just SMT1 and 2 (the latter of which I am currently working on). Saying this makes me think that I probably should play the original versions of, say, DQIV and DQV someday :P.
Well I finally completed the game. Lots of spoilers below.
I played on PC with the bsnes balanced core in retroarch. My characters name was Kratos.
The first half I found a little grindy, but that was perhaps me not knowing where to go a few times and wandering around a little. The second half was better in that respect especially once you got the spell to teleport between towns and then getting Pegasus, but there were still a few places where it was a struggle.
First off, I didn't realise you should be jumping down the holes. It wasn't until I got my third party member that I figured it out, and went back and completed the ones I missed. By then the early holes had equipment I was well beyond.
One thing I found frustrating was the spell names. The game didn't make it obvious what they did. There was some pattern behind them, and for the ones I used frequently I was ok with, but there many that I was guessing at what they did. Likewise the items. It wasn't obvious in the field what they would do. Speaking to store owner described them, but I'm sure there were a few that were wrong. It said one thing and they did another. I don't have any firm examples unfortunately. It was something I noticed early in the game.
I left each character to do their own thing at the beginning of the game, and around the half way mark I switched over to giving them commands as I found that the party members were spreading their attacks a little and I wasn't clearing enemies as quick as I wanted. Once i did the change I found it easier to focus on particular enemies first.
The heat haze was a cool effect for 5 minutes and then became a chore. I was glad when it finally went away.
Once I made it to Persia I found the wonders of the silver ring, and always made sure to have a couple with me all the time. I didn't bother wearing them just had them in my inventory so all party members could access them. When Steira got the OneMore spell I could spam that instead (except for that one spot).
Once I found the Reasoniong Sword that was all my character (Kratos) ended up using. It would do high damage relatively frequently. Paired with the Reasoning Shield to recover mana which in the end I didn't need to use much.
The most difficult parts of the game for me were the climbs up both the Mountains. Mt Olympus, my character died multiple times because of those spell casters where they would get the last action, and then the next round the first action, and devastate me. It was frustrating to go back to the start of that level. Then on Mt. Atlas going up, again I would get into situations where I didn't lay down my defences quick enough and the spell casters and birds would destroy my party. Finally made it to Baor and just scraped through that encounter with two characters still awake.
I loved the twist towards the end,
where you are revealed as Baor, and then you go back in time to the encounter I just described above. Seeing it from the other side. And then figuring out what to do to get through that.
Right at the end I had a couple of glitches. I don't know if it was the translation patch that caused this. The text boxes were scrolling up with the text.
