The Lost Heir 3: Demon War Reviews

It's a tough game and way too long considering the lack of checkpoints... but I've gotta take my hat off to the sheer number of different paths you can take. If you've played the prequels you should obviously finish the trilogy

A lot more meandering than the first 2 games. The whole first couple acts (Back to School and One Piece Light) felt kinda divorced from what I was interested about in this series. Last act is pretty cool tho, and I like seeing your allies joining you to finish the fight. Ah... could have been better. But I still enjoyed the game aspects of the gamebook, and I like that checks got harder and were often multi skill checks. A lot of the classes get some neat uses.

difficult, but good. I found this game actually made me go back into the previous games to remake new characters with new class/prestige class combos which I normally never have to do for games like this. if you like replaying these stories, then you will like this game, If you want to win everything in one go, you probably won't like it very much.

It's really difficult to rate this game. I have very mixed feelings. On one side - I'm happy that I've played it and the story is outstanding. On other side - lack of save/load ability breaks everything. Yes, I understand that when you cannot save/load at any random place makes you super responsible for your choices. But it just doesn't work for games of such lenght!!!!! If you're bringing a character from 1st part to 2nd, then from 2nd to 3rd - means you have spent many many hours of playing/reading. And what do you get at the end? Any wrong move, that might be not so obvious, leads to a terrible ending, that makes you feel "why did I spent so much time on it and struggled that hard to get so sh..ty ending"??? That's what people are complaing about in the comments. And I agree! You should not remove save/load from a story of such scale! I'm lucky that I found a hack, a workaround and manually saved files, but will everyone do the same? I doubt. Now... I don't know if I can recommend it or not. The story is amazing and very interactive. So, yes, I recommend. But first read on other forums how to do your own save/load. And do it as offten as you can (you will need to restart the app each time, btw). Otherwise you will get a terrible ending with 99%

The series as a whole before the individual game The series is great. However, their is a warning, the set of games, especially the last one, are harder than most of these type of games. The writing is great, the stats carry over between games, different events can happen based on the stats you have or what classes you choose. However, for your first run, expect to fail. However, there is a lot of replay value in these games and they are very enjoyable. This last game is the climactic conclusion to the story. Your character will learn about the demons and search for an artifact to fight them before the big final battle. Once again, more classes, bringing the total amount of classes your character can be to a whopping 35 classes. The mechanic of managing the ship, which helps bring you to the artifact, is not as fun or as extensive as managing the army in the previous game. There is however, a major plot thing that can be fun at the end. [spoiler] After you find the artifact, your character has to turn himself into a demon so he/she can perminantly kill other demons. Failing checks in this part can cause your character to become more demonic, giving bonuses but also getting you closer to bad endings. [/spoiler] There are several endings in this game, of which there are (I think) 2 good endings and 6 bad ones. That said, I really like the game. It does some interesting things that many of these games don't try, and still offers a lot of choice for playstyle.

While there are enjoyable moments like the first two games, blatantly unfair skill checks overshadow what fun there is to be had. For example (no major spoilers), my priest (with maxed magic) was constantly failing magic skill checks because other skills were also being checked. Failing to properly cast a spell because my priest wasn't agile or durable enough was extremely annoying. Even worse is later on in the game where you are heavily punished for failures. If you really enjoyed the previous two games, then it's worth buying for a conclusion to the story. However, expect frustration with poorly thought out and game ending skill checks.

I understand the disappointment of other writers here about the suboptimal conclusion of an furthermore awesome saga. I played both part one and two of "The lost Heir" and enjoyed them very much, would also recommend them to everyone else who likes "computerbased storybooks". Why I can´t recommend Part 3? The story is still great...in spite of getting a little bit "hasty" in the first half...I like each of the presented locations... ...the big problem, as also stated in the two other negative reviews so far, is the lack of influence/ estimated influence of choices: In the endgame I played so far as "educated" "bad" High-End-Necromancer with nearly maximized bodily stats and without magic weapon and as "good" High-End Demon Summoner with highest possible skills in willpower, magic and swordplay...with also very high, but not maximized bodily skills and with magic weapon...and it changed: Nothing! ^^ I lost skill check after skill check...losing humanity...leading to one and the same end. And the shown skill checks don´t make sense to me...opposite to the checks shown in part 1 and 2, which seemed much more thought and worked over. Especially disappointing was the absolute lack of effect of high level willpower and demon control in the endgame (except for one little scene in the midgame where a summoned demon makes a difference). So I hope for the author using these critics to correct those points in his hopefully coming up next epic saga. :-)

Pros: -You go to many new and interesting places. Meet new allies and enemies. -Longer than the first two games. -Learn the main villain's motivation. -There's a big battle that takes into account many of your previous decisions. -You can slowly sacrifice your humanity for demon powers. -Realm decisions! -Love the lore. -Much better than part 2, felt like an adventurer again. Cons: -Really hard to develop secondary skills. You either lose a bunch or get lucky and get a small bonus that won't matter. -The game constantly reminded me I had a warhorse, but I never got a chance to use it. -Would have liked more interaction with my companions. Some storylines don't get resolved, some characters just seem to disappear. Most of the end you're on a solo quest. Final Verdict: -First time players may find it's mechanics frustrating, but it's a game you have to play from the beginning more than once. Playing it again I really appreciated all the different classes you can develop.

NO SPOILERS. What the others are saying rings true. I can not recommend it. The end feels terribly rushed, and ends abruptly. More than that, its designed to make you fail. You will fail skill check after skill check, because the game DEMANDS it. It is impossible to have such high values for so many parameters. In the end, the game is rigged and your choices dont matter.... A shame, because i truly liked the first two parts.

I'm a little disappointed in this conclusion to the trilogy. If you are a straight up Wizard or pure fighter, you will only reach the bad ending every. Single. Time. This is not simply due to you picking the wrong choices, but mostly for not having skills that said OP Wizard or Knight shouldn't HAVE to have. If my Wizard picks the option to attack the demon who is trying to burn down the building i am in with ice magic, he should NOT be punished with failure for not being agile enough. The same goes for my badass Knight girl, who (SPOILER) lost ALL of her humanity and was forced to experience the bad ending, because she either wasn't agile enough, or didn't know enough about magic........... If you are reading this, Mike Walter (the Author): please consider the 'fun vs function' dichotomy when you are writing your next story game. Too much of the former, and it is hard to take the story seriously. Too much of the latter, and it becomes difficult to enjoy said story. I know how hard it is to write: you drive yourself crazy scrapping idea after idea until you 'finally' come up with something that you are satisfied with. The problem is that, far too often , what the author likes will not necessarily be to the audiences' liking, and, unfortunately, there is no formula to help you guess what that is until after you have released your story. All that aside: i did experience moments of enjoyment in TLH3, but they were overshadowed by the instances of function overpowering fun, and said function, i'm sorry to say, wasn't very well implemented. 7/10