Honestly, I may not be the most suitable person to review Heroes of Loot, because I just don't get the appeal in it. Looking at some glorious reviews from other sites, I feel like I am missing something here. Is my eyes so bad that the game looks unpleasant on my tablet, or am I just a weird soul who doesn't like what everyone else likes? Did I play the game wrongly? Did I miss a special feature that would totally make the game fun and epic? I really don't know, but I can tell you that I did not have a fun time with it at all. In fact, I got so bored of it I removed it from my device.
Heroes of Loot is a roguelike dungeon crawler. You choose between one of four characters: the elf, warrior, wizard and valkyrie. Even though all of them have different stats (only three: strength, magic and the rate they gain xp), they all play the same way! You would think the valkyrie or the warrior would be melee and thus provide a different gameplay, but not at all. ALL the characters are ranged and all of them control the same way using a virtual stick on the left and a right virtual button to shoot. What makes the game even more ridiculous is that the shooting is auto-aim. So really, I could close my eyes and just hold the shoot button and win. And maybe I missed something, but the special abilities unique to the characters wasn't conveyed to me in an obvious manner or differ enough for me to notice.
As you traverse through the dungeon maze floor after floor killing baddies, your character gains experience. When you level up, your stats get higher and apparently gain new combat animations. Again, this was not conveyed to me at any point in time in the game, so I am just assuming you do. To move on to the next floor, you have to find the key, hidden within one of the monsters littering the level.
Along the way, you pick up coins and gems that you can use to buy things in the shop that will help you on your quest to get as far down the dungeon as possible. As always, the levels get harder and harder as you progress, so you really have to be on your toes later on as ranged attacks come from all around you. There are also runes that you can pick up for a temporary magical ability to go alongside your standard attack, and useless people you can rescue that will give you a few extra coins.
To make things more interesting, the game at least offers side quests that you can get in a room on certain floors. However, these quests are usually the basic "Kill 100 bats in 100 seconds" or "Collect 10 Diamonds in 50 seconds" type. If you succeed, you get a reward and if you don't nothing happens. Yea, exciting right?
The thing that I don't like about old school roguelikes is the fact that it doesn't have any sense of progression. When your character dies, you start all over from the beginning. Coins will not be carried forward and neither is the xp or level, or even keep any of the things in your inventory.
Now, it may be that I just don't see the point in playing a game that repeats itself from the beginning over and over again. But to be fair, I have played roguelikes that have some sort of progression. Dungelot is a superb example of a roguelike well done. At the end of every playthrough, you get to keep the coins and level up your character's skills. But with Heroes of Loot, I just don't understand why people play it. It is said that Heroes of Loot is a nod to the days of yore when old school was the new school. Well maybe I am too young to really appreciate it. Sorry, but this is not getting a good score from me. For better scores, please check out other reviews around the web.
