Dawn of Heroes Review for Nintendo DS

System: DS	Review Rating Legend
Dev: Wicked Studios	1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid	4.0 - 4.4 = Great
Pub: Majesco	2.0 - 2.4 = Poor	4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
Release: Sept. 13, 2010	2.5 - 2.9 = Average	5.0 = The Best
Players: 1	3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+	3.5 - 3.9 = Good

The biggest shortfall of the combat is the inability to skip past the combat animations, which get repetitive quickly. When you’ve watched your Summoner suffer the same status effect rendering her moveless for the twentieth time and realize you’re going to have to sit through it every single time she’s in your party for every round she’s active, it gets annoying quickly. You’d think it wouldn’t have been hard to include a button press to skip over the current animation to speed things up but apparently the developers decided we were to watch every combat rendering ad nauseam and appreciate the work they’d put into it.

Dawn of Heroes screenshot

Music and sound effects are nothing special and don’t particularly help or hinder the overall package. While I wouldn’t call the music particularly grating, it does get repetitive and led to my muting of the Nintendo DS on several occasions when I was all battle-music’d out. It should go without saying there’s no voice acting. Or at least I hope it should.

Dawn of Heroes also supports multiplayer battles against friends. This was a feature I was unfortunately unable to try out but is a wonderful inclusion. As fun as the battles were against the computer AI, playing against a buddy would be even better. The tactical aspect of the game would be put to their best use when trying to out maneuver an living, breathing opponent.

All in all, Dawn of Heroes is a fun game with a lot to offer gamers on the handheld platform. Tactical RPGs aren’t abundant and ones that are both fun and have character are even less common. The game certainly isn’t perfect; combat can get repetitive at times and battles take longer than it seems they should, but it is hardly enough to distract from the overall fun factor it offers. Dawn of Heroes is a wonderful game with a unique charm and has thankfully finally made it to store shelves. I, for one, plan on keeping this in my regular DS rotation with plans to finish more of the optional objectives.

By Caleb Newby
CCC Freelance Writer

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

3.8

Graphics
Graphics are colorful and fun, but the character art is reused far too often.

4.5

Control
The stylus makes for an ideal method of battle planning and grid movement.

3.4

Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The music can get repetitive after an hour or two, but it’s not overwhelmingly bad.

4.0

Play Value
Although a few aspects are annoying, such as the inability to skip combat animations, the game offers a nice balance of complexity and accessibility and should keep gamers coming back, making it easily worth its price of purchase.

4.0

Overall Rating - Great
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

Explore the massive world of Brimthule as you meet its unique inhabitants.

Choose from more than twenty-five playable classes from six factions to create your own party of heroes for the ultimate team.

Complete more than fifty playable missions with branching paths, side quests and hidden side quests.

Face enemies from twelve unique factions.