Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
Developed by Heliocentric Studios and published by Team17, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos is an action RPG heavily inspired by the likes of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Released yesterday for Nintendo Switch and PC, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos allows you to play either alone, or with up to three friends (locally or online) to save the land of Tasos. It had been subjected to a century-long war when the Titans wreaking havoc were subdued and trapped within the island’s four Great Dungeons by the Goddesses’ sacrifice of their power. As time went on, the Dungeons’ seals grew weaker - and so the need for Heroes to take on these evil Titans became critical. So you must journey across the land to each of the Dungeons, to defeat the Titans and save the day!
Playing through the game and working your way across the vast world, taking on the all of the challenging procedural dungeons is a lot of fun, and feels really rewarding. There’s a real sense of progression in Rogue Heroes, with Gems to collect in the Dungeons that are kept upon death, to be spent on all kinds of buildings in Intori Village, as well as to upgrade your character - and with all treasure (aka your Gems) being required to be left behind upon entry to any of the four dungeons, this encourages you to continuously improve and expand upon the village, gaining shops, Tailors and much more in the process, instead of letting excess Gems go to waste. You can display fish you’ve caught at the Docks, and rearrange your household furniture, as well as customise your character’s appearance, and this all adds to that driving force, keeping you interested in gaining more Gems and Intori Gold to buy/build things and fully upgrade your Hero.
Graphically, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos is gorgeous - it has a very simple look that, as mentioned above, is clearly reminiscent of A Link to the Past, and has an expandable village that you can customise to look how you want, from building placement, to what items you want to sell at stalls. You can build a variety of shops, including the tailor; Rusty Needle, which will allow you to unlock different classes of Heroes upon collecting certain types of thread; a Fitness Center where you can upgrade your stamina and combat endurance; the Lost Iron Forge, a blacksmith you can visit to upgrade your sword; and much, much more. Enemy designs are varied, ranging from the standard “dungeon-style enemies” such as skeletons and bats, the stereotypical RPG enemies in the form of green blobs, all the way through to more inventive creatures such as the Mud Lurkers and Lost Travellers - and of course the big ones: the Bosses. Sadly the procedural dungeons feel quite samey upon repeat visits, as whilst they do rearrange between tries, many of the rooms will feel identical to an earlier attempt. There’s a Bestiary to record your enemy encounters, and this is done in a very unique way, in that to record a creature in the book, you need to smack ‘em with the book to kill them. You can even master each enemy after reaching a certain number killed, and again, to fully achieve mastery, you’ll need to smack ‘em again! With a minimalistic score that really highlights the land itself, and atmospheric noises with the clanging of swords and smashing of pots, it makes the world feel totally immersive and a joy to traverse.
The world is well fleshed out, with Intori Village growing and becoming more filled with life as you progress, with Houses available to be purchased for people to move into, and a Farm for you to grow crops to sell at the market. People you meet along the way can even come and move into the Village. Making sure to build the different ‘store-type’ buildings as soon as you can is important, as these will prove to be crucial for your success. Useful tools can be purchased from Rick’s Tool Shed that will help you make it through each of the Dungeons, as glass ones will be made available during a run but don’t last forever, and you can stock up on Potions from Abigail’s Elixirs. Warp Stones can be found all throughout the map also, being activated on use - and these will drastically cut down the time spent travelling across the huge map if you’re trying to get somewhere in a hurry.
There was one slight hiccup we ran into whilst playing, and that was that on our first foray into Terakar Keep (the first dungeon) three party members died quite soon into Floor 2. We’d already revived one, thus destroying the Sacrificial Altar, so needed to hunt down more to revive the remaining two ghosts. Through fear of losing yet more health (the joys of playing with kids!), we backtracked - knowing there were unused Altars in the previous floor - re-entering a room that requires grappling hooks to get out of, at any side. As all remaining party members had died and subsequently revived, our glass grappling hooks had been destroyed, rendering us trapped with no way to exit the room from any angle - and with no bombs or other methods to cause our own deaths, we had to quit right out of the game, losing the gems gained in the process.
It’s a hugely fun game, whether you’re playing alone or with friends (even online co-op, in these COVID times), and has plenty to keep you invested. Everything has a sense of purpose, and even the normally-mundane things such as chopping down bushes or just the distance travelled is recorded, allowing you to feel like no time spent mindlessly chopping or wandering around is wasted. The kids really enjoyed playing it too, and we had a great time exploring the world together - the only downside to playing with them is that whenever one character walks through a door or crosses a boundary to another area, the whole party is dragged through instantly, which can make things a little frustrating at times when you’ve got a daughter that just wants to wander off every five minutes - but the other side of this would require all players to go through to change screen, and I could see that being more time-consuming than necessary. Priced at £15.99 on the Nintendo eShop, it’s really well priced for the amount of content included, and how much time you’ll sink into it. So if you’re an RPG fan looking for something new, we’d highly recommend you check out Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos.
In the end, we decided to give Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Have you played Rogue Heroes yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Team17 for the Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos Xbox review code!
