Game Has Potential But... – Heroes of Destiny: Fantasy RPG Review

The tank, healer, dps roles sort of have a WoW feel to it, which I can appreciate. The elite characters are only unlocked with diamonds ($). You can choose to unlock non-elite characters with gold (in-game currency) or diamonds, but diamonds give them better stats. When you level up a character, you can pay diamonds to get an extra skill point. The talent trees gives the illusion that characters are different, but the trees are actually very similar. For example, the shaman and the priestess both have an area heal that expands with first-tier skills and the heals for more with second-tier skills. The fact that you have to move every player on your own makes it utterly clunky as you level up—especially since your tank doesn’t have an area effect aggro or taunt. To his credit, one or two attacks will make enemies stick; however he has a low hit rate so sometimes when he misses, there’s 1-2 seconds where your fragile players get hit and sometimes one-shotted. It would be great if you had a programmable AI for your characters that can be swapped on or off. For example, (1) passive stance which flees a reasonable distance when hit and engages with range and (2) aggressive stance, which approaches the closest target and engages. Of course, you should be able to override AI by clicking your player. After awhile, the game gets hair-pulling frustrating because your swipe to move a healer from danger keeps landing on a friendly player and instead of fleeing, he turns around and heals, which delays him for 1-2 seconds. Dead. When you die, time slows down and allows you to resurrect your play mid-action with diamonds. Seems like a distracting grab for money. The levels are only 5-min at most. Who really is going to resurrect? You don’t have limited energy; and you can restart just as easily. Honestly, I think they are better off giving healers a resurrect function. If they really want a $ opportunity here, make players have limited energy to play stages or make stages 2-3x longer so that it’s more rewarding to not restart. The diamond purchases at my level (party level 60 or so) are not always consistent. For example, to get an extra skill point it is about 10-15 diamond. To resurrect, its 6 diamond. To buy a fancy weapon, it’s about 100-200 diamond. To buy a new character, it’s 500-600 diamond. It’s really arbitrary. I mean, shouldn’t an extra skill point be worth more? Why are 3 item pieces (which get replaced quite often) worth as much as unlocking a new character? The lack of social features also makes the game a little dismal. I think the game would have been better if you controlled your own character and among you and friends (or a PuG), you can play a stage. If that required too much resources, the game could introduce guilds and you can choose one of your characters and then the other 3 must be copies of your guild members’ submitted characters. It seems like the game is trying to emulate an older F2P game but throw in better graphics and opportunities for $. While the premise of the game is fun, the business model is a bit distracting.
Review by Are all the names taken? Wth? on Heroes of Destiny: Fantasy RPG.