Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption

lots of fun

This is a great game. I'm pretty jaded about point and click games in general, but this is just nicely realised and balanced and a fun experience.

A Kickstarter game that was released about 4.5 years late. Such egregious mismanagement of over $500,000 of backers' money should not be forgotten.

Below is a comment from the Kickstarter comment section:

"A history of the Hero U release date timeline:

In December 2012 (the original project launch date), you advertised to backers a release date of October 2013. (~1 year)

In October 2013, you set your new target as June 2014. (~8 months)

In October 2014, 'I can’t promise a specific date, but it will be in 2015, and hopefully in the Summer.' (~10 months)

In November 2014, 'Lori and I have committed to a release date of Oct. 15, 2015.' (~11 months)

In February 2015, 'We are still on target for release on Oct. 15.' (~8 months)

In May 2015, (the second Kickstarter), you advertised to second round backers an estimated delivery date of March 2016. (~10 months)

Now, in March 2016, your 'best guess' is November 2016. (~8 months)

You've suggested you were only 8 months away twice already, and you've thought the project was doable within the next year for almost four years. I wish you all the success in the world, and I hope the end product proves to be amazing, but you've slipped dates 6 times as best as I can tell."

I've never played quest for glory but played the demo and really enjoyed it. Found it fun. So bought this game but then got to experience past the demo and hated how restrictive everything felt. The time limit to do things is so severe I hated it and it ruined my feeling of enjoyment. I felt frustrated and annoyed I could barely do anything. I can't recommend this game so I requested and got a refund. As it's not a game I can happily keep playing. Also it seems like trying the demo got rid of achievements, the section on your profile which would usually list achievements and show what they are are gone and I was not getting any in game that was listed on the store page.

Its Quest for Glory X.

A little known addition to the quest for glory saga. Personally heard of this while it was on Kickstart & quickly forgot it afterwards. Well, shame on me.

If you have played the old sierra Quest for Glory games, you know what this is about, to those that have not, its an old school style point & click adventure game with RPG elements.

It is made by the original Quest for Glory writers, and it shows, in a good way.
Is this for everyone? Hmm, neutral on that one, but for fans of adventure games, absolutely.

8.5 / 10

Worthy successor to the Quest for Glory series.
It's a shame Point and Click RPGs died with QfG because this game proves it they can still be done well and be very entertaining. In terms of story, character interactions, puns and just sheer content this game towers over it's predecessors.
Still, I had couple of gripes. One of them is while Quest for Glory had a lot of replayability due to different solutions to problems depending on class and skill choice, in this game you are rogue and there is not that much you can do about it, you'll be raising pretty much every single stat you have and because of that there is little reason to replay the game, since you most likely gonna end up doing things mostly the same.
Tied to this fact are the puzzles. Like in Quest for Glory puzzle solutions are tied to be being trained in a specific skill rather than monkey wrench logic, but because you are supposed to be trained in every skill the alternative puzzle solutions are rather rare and usually insignificant.
Other minor gripe I had is that the game offers certain task to complete that don't really have any tangible rewards on their own. I get it - it's roleplaying game so often you'll help someone just because you felt like it or because that's a type of character you are playing but from gameplay perspective it just left me scratching my head wondering if I did something wrong or out of order because game didn't react at all to any information I gathered or situation I resolved by doing it.
Still, game is absolutely worth it's asking price, and as a fan of original Quest for Glory series I had a blast playing through it. Hopefully we can expect a sequel or another game of this genre soon.

Loved the school/time based system and even grew to love the characters. Got really invested and addicted and ofc it's punny as all hell.

This is the sequel for the series of Quest for Glory from back in the 1980s-1990. The game is long, interactive and fun. Well worth the money. The combination of RPG on a good story. It does not disappoint.

BottomLine at the Top:

Intro:

Pros:

Meh...:

Cons:

Final Thoughts:

• Coalition of Point & Clickers Main Page
• Coalition of Point & Clickers Curator

• Follow Main group
[*] Follow Second group

For me this game was a no. It simply didnt allow me, as the player, to figure things out on my own at my own pace. Many of the quests are time locked, in that even though they are given to you, you are not actually allowed to "solve" them until a specific, unannounced time in the future when some pre programmed script kicks in giving you all the tools and information you couldnt have found no matter how much time you wasted looking for it previous to that.
In short you have to play the game all the way through, and suffer endless lost hours doing pointless things, because you dont realise their pointless, and well that just left me feeling upset.
YMMV as they say and this game certainly has its following, so feel free to make up your own mind.

This is a decent game, although it's not quite what I expected. I had been expecting more puzzle and adventure game elements, but this game is definitely more of an RPG. You play as a young wannabe thief, Shawn. Shawn is caught during his very first break-in attempt and is enrolled by a mysterious benefactor to study as a Rogue at hero school. Rogues consider themselves to be far superior to thieves; rogues are charming and honorable and brave, and thieves are selfish cutthroats.

The game unfolds over 50 days. You are on a strict clock, but the clock is more turn-based than real-time. If you stand still and take no actions, time will not pass. Time only passes when you walk or interact with any object or person. Most days unfold using the exact same schedule. You have to be in class until 2, there is an elective at 3 that the game strongly suggests you take, you have to show up at the dining hall between 5 and 6 PM, curfew is at 10, and bedtime is around midnight. If you go to bed after midnight, you will suffer (minor) penalties on the following day. The game definitely railroads you onto this schedule, so if you try to pump iron in the gym instead of going to dinner, the game will warp you to the dining hall, and if you try to read a book in the library too close to curfew, Shawn will refuse to do it.

Time comes at a premium in Hero-U, so a lot of the game is figuring out how to cram in enough activities to raise your stats. You will spend most of your days following the same basic routine: Class, gym, elective, dinner, rec room, sneaking about a bit, bed, repeat. It is very fun to see the stats increase at first, but by the end of the game I had most things maxed out and I did not notice very much difference in the gameplay.

There is also a social aspect in the game. Shawn can chat with and make friends with a number of teachers and staff, his roommate, and his classmates. The characters are all a bit flat, and friendships don't have too much of a gameplay benefit, but nonetheless I found this aspect of the game to be welcome. There's even a bit of a romance aspect tacked on with both men and women to flirt with, which is quite minimal but also a nice touch.

Most of the aspects of Hero-U could be best described as "adequate, if not stellar". The combat works and gets the job done. The abundance of time-gated content is a bit frustrating, but understandable. The character progression, world-building, and overall story is decent.

There is one place where Hero-U really shines, though, and that is the attention to detail with with the environment and the general writing with the flavor text. Every picture, every suit of armor, every random pot and bush and tree has multiple interaction options. These serve zero gameplay purpose, but the writing that went into these things is enjoyable and warm and funny. There's a staggering amount of well-written flavor text hidden away in this game which has no function other than to reward exploration. These delightful puns and other tidbits are funny, cheerful, and somehow nostalgic.

There's a lot here to make me optimistic about Summer Daze, and I will be picking it up as soon as it is available.

Extreme Nostalgia saw me to the end, but the core time based mechanic for advancement made the game feel like actually going to school. The Quest for glory games had great replay because you could advance through the story as fast as you wanted, being deliberately slowed down was frustrating.

[quote]Visit SaveOrQuit.com for detailed game reviews, posted daily![/quote]

‘Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption’ is a point-and-click adventure game with RPG elements, made by the creators of 'Quest for Glory' series. While trying to steal an item, our character Shawn gets caught and sent to the Hero University where young people learn to use their strengths and become heroes worthy to society. Shawn, being rather light on moral principles, is assigned to a Rogue class.

From then on, we play through each in-game day, go to the class in the morning, and after that do a variety of other things - we can build relations with our classmates and get to know them better, we can practice and improve our skills, we can go into dungeon areas to fight monsters and find loot, or we can do various quests that pop up. Over time we get to explore more of the university and learn a lot about the game's rich world and backstories of each character, as well as our own. On top of all this, there are plenty of jokes and humourous moments.

In addition to point-and-click mechanics and interactions with the environment, the game also has RPG elements such as skills that we can improve throughout the game and relationship-building with NPCs (this includes all relations, friendship and romance alike). Aside from this, there is also time management. The time does not tick down in a live manner. Rather each activity we do and each dialogue we have causes some in-game time to elapse. At specific times in a day, certain things happen, such as class, dinner, bedtime, etc.

In some of the dungeon areas we can end up engaging in combat with various creatures. The combat is turn-based and allows for some tactics to be used. It is also avoidable as our character can sneak past the enemies too with enough patience and stealth stat.

There are also many puzzles and mini-games to do, some of which are done during our exploration of dungeons, and other times when doing other activities.

Many of our choices and actions (or inactions) have consequences and can alter how some events happen and what happens to other characters.

Overall, a really fun hybrid of RPG and point-and-click adventure, with a really strong narrative and world-building, many fun gameplay mechanics that come together very well, and a nice level of presentation with a lot of beautiful art.

For a more in-depth review, please check here: https://saveorquit.com/2020/08/31/review-hero-u-rogue-to-redemption/

It's not often that I quit a game, but with about 18 hours in and about half the game completed, I just don't care enough to finish this game. It's not a terrible game, but it's not a game that I personally enjoy. I feel the mechanics of building up skills is neat, but the repetitive nature of each day just wears on. Each day, run to this place, train this skill, run to next place, train skill, all while trying to manage social and other factors with a constantly running down clock. I almost wish these school segments were menu based, functionally the same, but streamlined and faster. The exploration is fine, and there's a lot of flavor to everything, but I feel like the more I keep doing the same thing, the blander it seems to feel to me. You put 16 chairs in a room, and I'll go through the dialog options for every single one of them in hopes that I get something out of it. The best case scenario, is I find something useful, but more often than not, I'm just getting the same or slightly different flavored puns. Don't get me wrong, I like puns, but at some point, it becomes tedious. And that's my problem, with the game. The story is interesting, and I'd love to see it end. I hate leaving games unfinished, but I'm not enjoying this. And, I'm not going to play 3-4 other games of a series to know what happens if this is my experience with this one.

This review is kind of a gut-punch, because I was a huge Sierra, Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory, and Coles fan back in the day. But this is just underwhelming in every way.

The game is far too long. Mandatory 50 game days, which could've easily been pared down to about 20. Compare this with Quest for Glory 2, which had fewer than 20 whole game-days. Most of the time is spent in a very dull stat-building and time-management simulator, grinding up skills and abilities (largely for no reason) eating, studying, training, looking for money. There are only a handful of events outside of the grind.

Combat is tedious, and enemies constantly re-spawn. The same enemies, which there aren't many of. Walking melee, flying magic, ranged casters, and a couple of mini-bosses, and that's it. Fighting the same battles over and over while exploring the same areas over and over is a total chore, on par with the time management.

Worst of all though, is the humor. The old Quest for Glory games were highly satirical, in the vein of Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Brooks, Monty Python, etc. They had teeth, and weren't afraid to make fun. Other than a lame jab at Donald Trump ("Art of the Steal") the humor here is toothless, and almost entirely pun-based. The only characters safe to poke fun at in any way are cartoonishly bad people. Other than that, this is Burger King Kids' Club all the way.

My guess is that this is the end-point of PC humor. Safe, bland, inclusive, without a shred of irony or insight. There's plenty of girl power, and the male hero is free to try to hop in bed with any of the other students, male or female (which is odd, that all the male students are down to be turned out), but this doesn't even pass the bar for modern Californian Progressivism. Where's the black character? Where are the lesbians? Where's the trans (no spoilers, please, nor use of the word "trap"). I thought those were mandatory, as long as you're checking boxes.

The story has only a tiny amount of the big world-building that Quest for Glory had, though it appears to take place in the same universe. There are a few hints that something big is coming, but then never does, and the game just sort of peters out at the end, with a couple screens of congratulations.

Overall, too long, dull, unfunny, and unsatisfying. I'd recommend any player skip it, but especially fans of the old series. Go play Quest for Glory 1 and 2 again.

I can't recommend Hero-U and I hate that I can't. Quest For Glory 1, the VGA remake is a staple of my childhood and it is unavoidable that I'd compare the 2 games. One of the key pieces of Quest For Glory, that my young mind loved, was that unlike a standard RPG where your character just grew - QFG made you think about how to practice and improve the various skills you would need and how to fit that into your journey so that you succeeded in later goals. In fact, it did this much better in my eyes than games such as Skyrim did years later.

So a game like QFG required a lot of practice and similarly Hero-U does as well. Unfortunately, they took this sort of odd school model and forced all of the practice into a very bland "This is the practice area" route. And then stuffed the entire game onto an annoying day-to-day school schedule where certain things only happen on certain days regardless of your individual progress. What they removed in the process is the sort of organic practice/explore model that existed in their games previously. Where you the player would explore the world, looking for ways to safely practice your skills (that may not be immediately obvious) in an attempt to explore more of the world and take on larger risks.

Hero-U messes with this model a bit more in how time progresses. You realize very quickly that many actions will progress time 30 minutes to an hour at a chunk. It quickly gets to the point where you start questioning whether you have time to listen to a door or walk up a flight of stairs and it boils down to you only 'clicking' on 2-3 things per cycle. On top of that, certain actions are only available at certain points of the day, forcing you to explore when you should be sleeping and then punishing you in the morning for doing exactly that. Additionally, you often only find out how long any given action takes after doing it, which is slightly dishonest to the player. I think this was a huge miss on the design of the game. They obviously wanted to prevent min-maxing (and failed in the process) and also wanted to enforce or educate on time management and the way time works in a school atmosphere. By and large the model was used to save art resources though which I can understand.

Another example of a miss: The principal wanders the hallway during certain hours of the day and reprimands you for not having on your school outfit. His placement is obviously to create a mini-puzzle of sorts gating several of the adventuring areas past him (he also acts as sneak practice). The idea is sound, in a better game he would have been placed closer to something of interest as opposed to directly at the cross path of almost everything in the school. In his current placement, he doesn't really directly protect anything (and thereby doesn't make the player ask "How do I get there/that" and also creates a constant annoyance throughout almost the entire game. Once you've run past him once, you will run past him a million times and get angry when you fail to do so. Think of it this way, if avoiding a teacher is a puzzle, you want to limit that puzzle to either randomized occurrences or a singular instance and ideally you want the answer to be something of interest.

The idea here is sound. Stuff QFG into a Hogwarts-esque school where safe spaces sit adjacent to unknown risks. A school schedule marries perfectly with QFG's normal practice and time management requirements. Then I'm left puzzling and nitpicking why it plays so damn boringly. Lockpicking raises easily with nothing of great interest to pick, sneaking doesn't get you anywhere nearly as fun as previous games, Combat is poor despite a mildly interesting trap mechanic and any room of interest typically has a timed event before you can do anything unique with it. Many of the conversations you have do not lead to uncovering anything unique - they are more plainly a way to practice greetings and gift giving. There is simply nothing to go out and explore here. I can't get lost in the woods or a desert. Oh and the intro was the best part of the game.

I hate downvoting, but I don't think I can honestly upvote. I do look forward to any future sequels or attempts from Transolar Games.

I'm always looking for good new adventure games, especially in the likes of Quest for Glory / Heroine's Quest / King's Quest and friends. This is not it.

The vast, vast majority of the game is going through a day cycle at a school over and over again. Attend a lecture, go to dinner at a certain time of day, go to sleep, etc. It got old VERY quickly. There's little sense of "adventure" as you're just waiting for events to happen on certain days.

The truly ugly piece of game design this game throws at you are the events that happen at certain points during the year. You'll be given an advancement in the story and a vague idea of what to do. What the game won't tell you is that you need to be on X day in order to solve the puzzle. So you'll naturally go around everywhere trying to find a solution *on days when the puzzle can't be solved*, wasting a ton of your time. Yep, if you're playing a walkthrough of the game, the appropriate course of action most of the time is simply to wake up and go to bed, advancing the time so that you can actually advance.

After having a bunch of secret areas open up only because a certain day was reached to find things I had been spending a lot of time searching before because an npc told me to look for them...I was done.

The time-gated mechanic of this game is a complete failure. Sorry. The game seems well done aside from that.

Funny how all the screenshots in the store page are of different action scenes and not the 10-12 rooms and hallways you're stuck in 90% of the time. And holy crap the stairs. Every section is separated by stairs with a mandatory 10 second cutscene, that the protagonist even mocks himself. A literal 5% of the game is probably just staring at stair cutscenes. Why wasn't it just made instantaneous?

Hero-U was created by Corey and Lori Cole who are the original creators of the Quest For Glory series. They do not have the rights to the QFG series so could not create anything new within that franchise but Hero-U is about as close as they could come. If you played the original QFG series then you will recognize a lot of references in books, statures, paintings, etc... to other characters from the series such as Erana, Rakesh, Uhura, The Dark Ones, etc... There are references to places from he other games as well but this game takes place in a new land that we've not heard of before (at least not that I can remember) and with new characters. For those of us who played QFG this is sort of like playing a new installment in the QFG series and my review will largely be based in comparisons of how the game plays compared to the QFG series.

You do not play your usual Hero character from QFG you will play a young man named Shawn O'Conner. You do not get to name your hero in this game unlike the QFG games. You will not get to choose or alter any of your statistics before playing which was a staple feature of the other QFG games. There is essentially no Character Creation. Instead you play with a pre-made character with predefined stats. I don't like this as much. I liked being able to give my character their own name and to alter their statistics.

The other thing you will notice is that there is no option to play fighter or magic user or as the later unlocked paladin. As the name of the Game suggests "Rogue to Redemption" focuses on playing as a rogue. After a while of taking your classes you will be given the option to take an elective course which let's you choose between magic, first aid, and science. For those wanting a little bit more of a QFG feel taking the magic elective gives you a little more of that.

Most QFG games are not on strict timeline certain things trigger specific events but you can generally complete them at anytime. In Hero-U many events occur on a specific timeline and you must complete them within a certain time frame. For example helping Katie find the Treasure. If you don't complete helping her during the Mid Term Break you will not be able to help her find it later because even if you have all the pieces she needed to supposedly find it she will succeed at finding it without them or you. So you have 3 days essentially to complete it. Some things you can't solve in your own time frame even if you know the solution early. For example catching the thief. Even if you have what you need to set the trap and know where to set it and everything you can only set the trap for him on the last day before your class will be disbanded if the thief's not caught and stuff returned. I personally don't like these kinds of timeline structuring. I prefer to be able to do things at my own pace and when I'm ready for them. It was one of the features I very much enjoyed when playing the QFG games.

I hate having to be forced to go to bed or forced to go eat (only skippable if your in the sea caves for example). I also really hate the way that it breaks up my day. You start everyday (except breaks) in your Rogue, er... I mean Disbarred Bards class. After that you have 1 hour between then and your elective class (or several hours till you must be in the dinning room and eat). After dinner you have several hours till curfew. Then if you sneak out after curfew you have several hours till you get sleepy and go to bed whether you wanted to or not. I don't like this strict scheduling. I'd prefer if it were a little more open but I do understand that from a role playing perspective you would have to follow a schedule like this at school. But I would also like more options to decide to simply skip dinner and continue on studying/training. Once you get close to dinner or bed there are many tasks that it will not let do. So I can't choose to skip diner to exercise or practice throwing or study a book. I don't like that very much at all. There are guides out there on how to maximize your time to get the most skill training out of it but I still find this aspect very unpleasant. I also don't like that if your not paying attention it's easy to miss your elective class. Everything else forces you to the schedule of class, dinner, bed so why doesn't it automatically force you to your elective class as well? If you miss it you miss it for good, there's no make-up lessons for you and it will not continue on from YOUR last lesson.

I love stat building, it was one of the parts I very much enjoyed with QFG games but I find the stat building system in Hero-U to be less enjoyable. Partly because it is restricted by the schedule so much. You have a rather limited time to do it in before being forced to another event/place. Also I don't like how limiting the skill building activities are. You may notice Shawn doesn't have a health+energy+mana bar like is the traditional setup for the QFG hero. He only has one bar. Actions can still draw from the health bar as they use energy but not the same way as QFG games. Since many skills required a certain amount of energy or mana in QFG you could train a lot more of it then you can in Hero-U. Most skill building activities such as lifting weights, practicing combat, throwing, climbing and agility (on the tightrope) can only be performed 1 (in some cases 2) times a day. So you can't just go and train your strength all at once to prep for a day in the dungeons or something. In this sense the stat building and game play feels very different from the QFG games. It takes much longer to max out a stat and requires careful planning of your day to do so too.

Fighting feels quite different different. It's still turn based but, I'm not a fan of the fight interface. I prefer the older QFG combat system. Also unlike QFG spell casting in Hero-U requires you to use items (rune stones) instead of just cast spells. I don't like that at all. There also are none of the traditional options to practice dodging/parry only attack and use item really or skip a turn or run away (which brings you back to your bedroom... I have mixed feelings about that too).

I'm not particularly impressed by the movement and interaction in the game either. I admit I'm really locked in to a preference for the old King's Quest/Space Quest/Quest For Glory style of point and click interface. The Hero-U deviates from that quite a bit. You click on various objects which when moused over show their name. Clicking on it gives you a series of options. I feel like that takes some of the discovery aspect of game play out of the equation. If you can use an object it will show up in the options menu if you can't there's no experimenting. I miss the experimenting, especially when those experiments on the original Sierra "Quest" games often led to humorous results or messages. One of the biggest issues I have with the mechanics is that I really want to be able to use the keyboard but there are no options to use keyboard. Sometimes moving by clicking points on the screen is fine but sometimes I'd like the freedom of moving with the keyboard and having shortcut keys to the menu options would also be fantastic but is sadly missing. I know they're right there on the screen but my instinct is to push tab or esc or something to view them.

I'm also disappointed that they moved away from dying in the game. On one hand I appreciate that I just get brought to the infirmary but on the other I miss the humorous death scenes/messages. Also, the passing of time is different than QFG, when you are standing still time does't move but when you are moving, learning, practicing, talking, etc... each of those does take time. QFG 5 introduced romances to game play and that's revisited here but I'm not very happy with Hero-U's version.

Overall though this game offers a fun adventure in similar to QFG that fans will likely appreciate.

No offense to the devs. I appreciate their work. But this game is lame for the price ($35). Boring, slow, obtuse, boring again, grindy from the start. You have to manage bedtime, eating, and killing rats and that's it for the first 25 hours of gameplay. How does someone not get that isn't fun for a $35 game? I do like the pop culture references and puns. Don't like the vague puzzles or skills challenges that have no explanation or intuitiveness to them. Don't like the inventory system as there is no information on items or their effects.
I can see some folks loving this game and this game style. To me, it felt like an updated late 80's pc game that's way overpriced for what you get.

I was a big fan of the Quest for Glory games. The original was the first game I played with a soundcard (back when PCs only came with a beeping speaker). I realize this game can't live up to those big budgets or scope (they burned through two kickstarters and a home mortgage), but the end result is mixed. It combines some of the basic gameplay and humor, but adds a huge amount of drudgery. Every day you have to go up and down stairs, boost your stats, talk to people, explore a dungeon, and try to solve the adventure game puzzles in the few spare moments. But the problem with the latter is that so many of the puzzles are not determined by the player, but simply timed events that happen and you react to. The fun parts of the game are simply overwhelmed by the work you have to do to improve your guy. And the improvement is just done by walking someplace and clicking, then watching an animation or screen. Not something fun.

Beyond that, the NPCs are largely caricatures and stereotypes. You have a pirate girl. A young Roma lady. Two of them seem to be borrowed straight from The Maltese Falcon. None of them are particularly likable, and curiously, there are more male romance options (3) for Shawn than female (2), because although you can flirt with the female staff members, you can't romance them. Which is a let down, because they are the only interesting characters in the game.

I really loved Hero-U:RtR, best game since the Quest for Glory Anthology and it was even better!

There's only 2 things that annoyed me about the game.
1) Not enough time to train all your skills up to 100. ;p
2) In turned combat, it takes to long for enemies to walk (or crawl) towards you.
2.1 It would have been way better if there was an option to choose that sped-up combat animation.

Otherwise, I really hope there's a sequel or something. I really want and need more games like this to play.

There are some great moments in this game, but, for most of your time you will be slogging through repetitive actions, your exciting moments will be cut short due to a strange timer system, and uninteresting combat will make playing this a real drag.

The game takes place in a Hogwarts-style hero academy, which is cool. The characters are great, the writing is excellent, and the game is well presented. Unfortunately, you have to adhere to a school schedule almost every day in the game. You get up, go to class, which just skips a huge portion of the day. You have a little time until dinner, which is absolutely mandatory. How mandatory? The game will literally teleport you to dinner at a certain time of day. Say, on a day with no class, you decide to explore a dungeon. You fight your way to a deep part, solve a puzzle, then come up against an enemy you have to outwit. Uh oh. the early dinner bell sounds. Skip dinner? Sounds reasonable in the middle of action but no such luck. Your character will decide that he must attend it. Next thing you know you're outside the dining hall and have a couple of hours to chat before bed.

Say you want to sneak around at night, get up to no good. You have a few hours but again, at a certain time of night, you are instantly teleported to bed, starting the next dreary cycle. I don't even want to finish it after 10+ hours.

I love the old QFG games but the great moments in this game are too few and spread out between this excruciating cycle of mandatory tasks and combined with a very uninteresting combat system, the game fights you the whole way. To top it off it's $35, which makes it a hard pass in my book. Even at 50% I wouldn't recommend it.

I had a fine time with this game. It will be underrated because of the impossibly high standards its creators set for themselves with the first five Quest for Glory games. Nevertheless, this game shows what quality is possible even when massive setbacks occur during development.

Lots of humor
Plenty of warm, seemingly handmade paintings
Good music which is always nice to hear
A surprisingly cool setting and backstory
Potential for replay (Took me around 80 hours to finish one playthrough with no hints)
Similar mechanics to Quest for Glory
Enough to do that I'm positive I missed some things and am curious what they are! (What's behind that door?)

I do very much recommend this game

TLDR; Engaging, bookish, and addictive RPG-lite adventure that grows on you the more you play it. More than the sum of its parts. The somewhat homespun nature of the game only endears it to you more. Highly Recommended.

Long Version: Like alot of other reviewers, I grew up playing Quest For Glory 1-5. Quest for Glory II, specifically is probably the most I've ever loved a game; I've spent more time in it than I would ever care to admit. It's just flat out my favorite game of all time. That being said, when the Kickstarter campaign(s) went underway for Hero U, I was pretty unimpressed by what I saw, and having already spent a bit of money contributing to another game's Kickstarter, decided to pass on helping fund it. That is a decision I deeply regret, and I can't believe I ever doubted the Coles. I love this game. Full on. I have no idea where any of these negative reviews by QfG fans are coming from. The tone is dead on, the dialog is fantastic (and groan-inducingly punny in places) and it genuinely, effortlessly feels like it belongs in the same universe. I'm not an easy to please person. There's no way I'd say I dig this game if I didn't. I've started and stopped most of the games in my library. But after a couple minutes adjusting to the games aesthetic ("sweet PS3 graphics" is probably the first comment I made while playing it :/) I was hooked. There's a couple of things rough around the edges graphically, but It actually looks pretty good, and once you get the ball rolling, all of the game's virtues become apparent, namely the writing, and the way you develop relationships with other characters. It doesn't feel like a huge grind getting your stats up, which admittedly could be kind of a slog with the original QfG games.

This isn't Quest for Glory and it's not supposed to be. If you want straightforward point and click adventure, it's only going to partially scratch that itch, and that's not a complaint. The game cherry picks elements from time management games, which I was initially worried about, but it actually makes getting your stats up feel a litle more urgent. As opposed to, say, picking up and throwing a rock for 10 minutes in real time to getting "throwing" points, you click knives next to a target and you get the points, sacrificing precious in-game time but none of yours. This results in the pacing of your day-to-day activities moving at a nice clip as you try to sandwich in as much as you can before you have to turn in for the night. The combat system, while relatively spartan, feels fair and never turns into a chore. Exploration is fun, and there's always something witty or informative to be said about just about anything you click on. The game can breeze by if you want it to, but if you want to throw yourself into the game's lore, there's plenty of cool stuff to read. Also thrown in for good measure is some light dating simulation, though I feel it would be more of a challenge to *not* have people fall in love with your character. All in all, for a game that on the surface takes place in relatively conservative square footage, variation is the key to the game's success. I really loved that it felt like I had *so* much to do, and *so* little time to do it in (spoiler alert, you have plenty of time to do it all in).

Just get the game. If you want something with a lot of heart and soul, and want to feel the amount of love a developer has for their own universe, this is for you. When the next one comes around, I'll be the first one funding that Kickstarter.

This game really feels like a love letter to the fans of the old Quest for Glory games. I can't get enough of it.

You've got the old progression system where you gain skills by doing them, you've got the scripted events that still give you a sense of personal agency throughout.

It's like sitting down at the Cole's table and playing D&D with them as the Dungeon Masters.

The writing is decent. Playful, doesn't take itself too seriously. Maybe too many puns. If you don't like puns, you'll haaaaate the dialogue. But it still sets a good tone.

The school that the plot centers around feels small at first, and then you start to see more and more of it. The game rewards you for pushing your own boundaries, but never pressures you. You can easily get lost in the day to day, talking to your classmates, avoiding filthy Terk the Jerk. The joy when you realize you can break into his office. The sheer malicious JOY.

But really, Hero-U feels like an early 90's Sierra game. I didn't know how much I was craving more Quest for Glory until I played this. Those games always had a sense of wonder to them. It FELT like a good fantasy setting where anything is possible, along with a sense that you have to work to surpass the obstacles in front of you...

I pray this does well enough that there's more. I will be there for every single one. And if you like slower paced RPGs with an emphasis on dialogue, and a more intimate, clever adventure, this is the game for you.