Duty of Heroes is indeed an RPG. There’s a storyline. You are a hero trying to discover why the land around you is corrupted, why the wolves, the elves and the goblins are stirred up, you are sent on quests and along the way, you rescue a few townspeople, other adventurers to join your brave band of do-gooders and hire others at a tavern in best DnD tradition.
You begin the game by choosing a log-in method; Game Center, Facebook or registering an account. There are three classes to choose from, warrior, archer and mage. Your character will be named with your real name if you choose to use the FaceBook log-in method, or your Apple Game Center name if you select the Game Center method. So much for my wanting to name my female mage “Tits McGee” in honor of her paperdoll. Yes, barely covered boobs front and center, shining in their fair glory each time quest text is required. But I digress. You jump into the action and kill a few wolves by tapping the “Go” icon – the game does the rest for you and you level up a few times during the tutorial. And you learn about your “home” castle where you build resource buildings that will yield wood, stone, iron and coins.
You don’t actually move around in this game as much as tap icons and quests and your character moves to the proper location. You don’t actually fight either. All you have to do is tap “Go” and the game does it for you. The teams square off on either side of the screen and each character takes their turn until one side wins. Once you reach level 30, you can use the “skip” button for new instances and “continuous attack” for grinding instances, i.e. if you’ve already beaten that particular battle, you don’t have to watch them fight it all over again, you are guaranteed to win and if you’ve got to clear the instance 5 times for a quest, just select the number of repeats hit “auto” go get a cup of coffee and come back to collect your rewards. Daily and progressive quests can be grindy as they ask you to complete instances 5 or 6 times. Thank goodness for the “continuous attack” button, which is also great for rushed mornings, where you log in, select the highest instance you’ve defeated, and use up all the energy regained over night. The bar will rebuild while you are at work.
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The game is linear and features open up as you progress in the storyline (and levels). There are 80 levels in the game currently and you unlock all features by level 40 while additional power slots or upgraded skills open up at different milestone levels. You gain (buy) all your companions fairly quickly, and need to equip them and build their power. Other features include new dungeons, pets, mounts, elf summoning (pay coin, get chance to increase power), skills, item strengthening, etc. and etc. The features are plentiful as are ways to gain coin and items. Like many FaceBook games, having plenty of friends that play the game helps. You send each other gifts and visit each other to “hasten” a build or resource production. The first thing you do when you log-in each day is to collect your off-line XP and all your gifts – whether they are given by the game or given to you by your friends, make use of your gifts – which could be XP and/or other in-game currency like coin, courage, soul stone, beast soul – all used for different features that ultimately increase your power.
So much for the RPG, as for the MMO part of it, there is “town” where many all toons congregate so you can see who the paying customers are (Hint: the ones with the wings) and where the quest givers stand around. Guilds you can join where there are plenty of guild gifts and a guild boss that can be summoned and killed, guild war events and team events. The combat does not change and your toons duke it out without your intervention.
There’s PvP, believe it or not, a team arena and a class arena. Here, the paying customers shine as they can purchase items for the costume slots and more powerful companions (good luck saving up 10,000 medals for them, much less 40,000 for the 3rd tier)
The gating factor in this game is energy and power. Energy is what you need to start combat in any instance and it you regain it at 5 clicks (or one combat) every half hour to a maximum of 200. Bottles of energy can be purchased for real money and you also get them as rewards and gifts. Power is determined by level, heroes (companions), equipment, skills, pets, mounts, and costumes, all which can be improved by various items gained in the game (some if you play enough) except for costumes which are purchased.
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You might wonder, “why play this game?” It appeals to those that do enjoy these types of time management games and chasing after the rewards on the many leader boards. There are daily PvP arena leads. The toons are displayed and you can click “admire” on any one of them to gain 10 energy. Each dungeon has a leader board; your guild has leader boards, you can “grow” your personal castle area. If you enjoy Farmville, you might enjoy Duty of Heroes. While reviewing this game, I developed this obsessive compulsive behavior of wanting to log in at various times of the day to check on builds and skill / equipment progress – It’s a hold-over from playing RTS games, I’m sure. I swear I don’t play Farmville!
Game Play – 3.0: Unless you enjoy click fests and time management games, give this one a miss.
Visuals & Sound – 5.0: Lazy sound design. Repetitive town and dungeon music themes, your wolf-like mount gallops, and there are three combat sounds: “Schwing” “Schoop” and “Kablooey.” Some backgrounds actually have a nice painterly effect, but nothing to write home about.
Longevity – 5.0: At time of writing you can have three different toons but the leveling experience is the same and there isn’t anyway to skip the tutorial, so there is little replayability value. Sometimes it is amazing how long some of games hang around for, especially if the publisher does not shut it down. Who knows? Maybe “Farmville” Combat RPG will become a “thing.”
Polish – 4.0: Poor localization and all text refer to the player as a male. The game often hangs transitioning between the player’s personal “home” and other zones.
Social – 6.0: World chat, guild chat, PMs, a FaceBook page for players to find “friends” create a certain amount of social contact.
Final – 4.6
Pros:
- Free to play
- Umm…
Cons:
- Hangs often
- Grindfest
Publisher: Shenzhen Youlong Size: 96.7 MB iOS: 6.0 or later. Optimized for iPhone 5 Reviewed on: iPad Air First Gen Other Platforms: FaceBook
