Welcome Time Wasters!
This last week was still a busy one for me. However, I was able to set aside some time to further check out that game I talked about last week. That mystery title is Next Up Hero.
Next Up Hero is an online game that allows players to come together and take on dungeons and the various challenges that they present. These challenges can range from defeating a certain amount of monsters, taking down special enemies and more.
The big draw of the game are the different heroes that players can unlock. The game starts the players out with a few heroes to get them going, but more are available for purchase with the in-game currency. These heroes honestly aren’t too expensive to buy, which is a nice surprise.
The low cost of heroes means that players are able to quickly find out which ones they like and put their future money into upgrading them. This can unlock additional skills for their heroes to use. Monster drops can also be found in the game and players can use them to give their heroes extra stat boosts and other buffs.
Next Up Hero also features a special mechanic to help it stick out from other games. This mechanic is that players can pick up other fallen heroes to have them help in battle. They can also be used for special attacks, depending on how many of them you have. These heroes are the echoes of previous players. You can even resurrect one of your own past heroes. Actually, that’s mostly who you’ll be resurrecting.
Next Up Hero may only be a month past its launch, but the game’s user base has already plummeted, if it was ever high. There are basically only ever between two to six players online at any time. This makes it difficult to find fallen heroes to resurrect. It also makes the co-op aspect of the game pretty much useless. In fact, I never even got a chance to check it out.
That’s where we get to the next problem with Next Up Hero. Players have to always be online. The only reason that this really sticks out as a negative is because of the game’s servers. For example, there are “Featured Ventures” that players can take part in every day, but I didn’t get the chance to because I kept having trouble connecting to the server. Even when playing other ventures, there were a couple of times where I was kicked from the server for some reason. It’s all a bit unstable.
All of this is a bit unfortunate, because Next Up Hero is a mechanically sound game. The gameplay is actually fun and there’s even a small story for players to enjoy, but everything else just kind of drags it down. It feels like a prime case of a game trying to cash in on multiplayer, when in all reality it would’ve worked well enough as an offline single player game with a few online elements here and there.
Visually speaking, Next Up Hero has a nice bit of charm to it. The game’s graphics aren’t going to blow anyone away, but it does have its own style. It feels like the perfect type of visual presentation that would draw kids in, but something just must not have clicked.
The audio is about the same as the visuals. There’s voice acting in some parts and it’s even not bad, but it doesn’t matter much because of the little reason there is to play the game. The same is true of the sound effects.
Maybe Next Up Hero will gain some steam over time, but it really doesn’t look good for the game. That sucks as it is a solid experience. Probably one of the biggest flaws the game has is its asking price. The developers want $20 for the game, but it’s just not worth that. This feels like a $10 game max. While it’s fun, there’s nothing so deep and engaging about it to warrant that $20. If the game ever goes free-to-play, maybe check it out then.
Next Up Hero earns 3 GiN Gems out of 5!