Arisen Force: HeroTest Steam Charts & Stats

Before I start, despite the game being cheap, I still highly recommend getting this game on discount. This is a MIXED review, leaning towards not recommended. Arisen Force had a decent premise, but extremely poor, lazy, and boring execution. It's an Extremely Janky game with so many bugs that made it annoying. It really felt like this game needed more time in development and it's quite disappointing and I'm actually quite glad I got it on discount. First, Story. It's pretty much straightforward no bs, goddess summons you to stop big bad. It's a pretty simple premise. The issue comes from the dialogue. Some would probably argue that it's because of the translation but I feel like even if it was translated better, if all the characters say are 1-2 sentences, it would still have no substance. Not only that, the mc was summoned from another world and normally that would be fine, but there's so much 4th wall breaks that tries to be funny but obviously fails because of the combination of poor translation, delivery, and concept. Second, Characters. It's a game where you use historical and mythical characters to stop the big bad. None of them actually matter in the storyline, since there barely is any story and dialogue so they're pretty empty, not much to say. Third. Gameplay. I think this is the game's strongest suit. It's pretty fun running around and just beating people turned monsters up and there's really not too much to complain about it. Enemies don't take hitstun against your normal attacks and skills unless they specify that it lunges them airborne and it's not exactly an issue since your attacks are pretty fast and wide.It also has a system after hitting the enemy a certain time, they get into a "weak" state where you can "execute" them and deal bonus damage. The only real issue I think this game has in this aspect is the fact that the bosses and adds are ALL damage sponges. Seriously, Add clearing takes so long that you generally ignore most of the adds and just rush to the boss it's ridiculous. I only rushed the game so I don't necessarily know if there are builds that can dish out a lot of damage but for the casual gameplay? NAH. Fourth, Stages. Ok, it's a tower premise so I didn't really expect much but the screenshots are so deceptive. They show you the "Character Worlds" instead of the tower. The tower sucks, it's so boring and repetitive and it was a chore. "Start Stage - Look for Gems to Unlock Doors - Boss" literally rinse and repeat with mostly the same scenery with different lighting depending on how far you are in the tower. Fifth. Equipment. You obtain these via drops or in chests. I'll include skills and skill tree here as well to make it shorter. To start, anyone can equip anything, you can give King Arthur a bow, spear, dagger, or anything, no restriction which is pretty cool which means you can build your characters how you actually want. There's also tons of skills shockingly and it's pretty fun to use a lot of them because of the damage they dish out and their "flashy turn your brain off" animations. To obtain them, they're also in chests but they drop from the "Sealed Gates (Doors,Weird I know) and can be bought from a certain vendor. I however sensed something amiss and the game is quite biased against daggers, I have not seen a single dagger skill aside from the ones I got from Ping'er and haven't seen one from the vendor. Every weapon has dropped so much skills but not once on dagger it's crazy. The skill tree, everyone has the same one and it's all about passive skills, no active skills which actually makes it good. I love having freedom on my builds and prioritizing passive skills in these type of mechanics. Overall, The game had potential but I came out a bit disappointed, I still had fun at the start but the more I played, the more I wanted to clear the game and leave. I really wanted to like it because it reminded me of octopath and wandering sword like a 2.5 D pixelated type game. I'm giving it a 4-5/10 sadly but since I got this on discount, I'll be generous and say it's a 6/10 (Still leaning on not recommended).