Review: Palm Heroes v1.03

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Trying to combine the various elements of a turn-based strategy (TBS) game with that of a role playing game (RPG) with any level of success is a difficult endeavor for a desktop franchise.  Trying to do it in a Pocket PC game seems almost impossible, yet that is exactly what Palm Heroes set out to do.  On top of that they are doing so without the help of the large game design studios which is quite a feat by itself.  The game is available for all types of Pocket PC’s able to meet the following requirements:  Windows Mobile 2003 or later, 5 MB free space , 6MB free memory, 240×320 or 640×480 touchscreen.  There is a fully functional (but map and save limited) trial available here.  Does the game have what it takes to deliver… continue on to find out.

In a word… YES, absolutely yes, but keep reading to find out why it might even make it into my all time top ten list of games on any platform. 

Even with the lofty goal of trying to bring two genres, neither of which are well suited to the tiny screen, of games together; Palm Heroes shines like almost no other game I have played on the Pocket PC.  The fit and finish of the game is absolutely amazing, the intricacies of the design and the level to which the maps and scenarios are thought out is definitely one of a kind. 

I’ll be honest I am somewhat of a junkie for RTS games and TBS games, but I have never really been quite as enthusiastic about RPG games.  The whole idea of quests and closed ended storylines was never of much interest to me, so when I started reviewing and playing the game I was not sure how I was going to like it.  I had thoughts of the RPG side of the game ruining the fun and spontaneity of the TBS side.  Or the TBS side being to cumbersome to control when paired with the RPG.  Well I can honestly say that I was floored by the gameplay; the way the game was laid out; and I found myself getting lost in the game.   Sometimes playing it at night until the battery went dead. 

General Gameplay

The game is centered around the hero you start out with,and as you play the game you build up the attributes of your hero, this is the RPG part of the game.  In addition you control a kingdom which needs to be built up as well with the normal types of additions you would see in a real-time strategy (RTS) or TBS type game.  As you do this you can build an army that travels with your hero to seek out new areas, other kingdoms, and eventually your opponents.

As your kingdom grows you can build additions to your castle for things like upgraded troops, additional resources, and increasing your magical powers.  There are also lots of other building types scattered throughout the map for things like increasing your hero’s experience (which in turn increases his powers and attributes), gaining additional resources, and recruiting troops.  As you add on to your kingdom you can also recruit additional heroes that can scout for you or guard a mountain pass while your main hero is laying seige to another players castle.

Like other TBS games you have a limited amount of things you can do, or amount of space you can travel on the game board, and in this case I think it adds to the playability of the game.  Normally in a TBS game there is so much that needs to be done that a single turn can take several minutes to complete, but with Palm Heroes many of the tedious tasks are handled differently or done automatically making the game much swifter for on-the-go play.  Things like collecting resources are done by your hero as he travels the game board so there are no peasants to watch over to make sure they are mining for you, and the recruitment of forces is regulated on a weekly basis so there is no need to keep up with new force production; the game takes care of it.  This is a very nice simplification that makes gameplay much quicker than other TBS type games, and in my opinion makes for a much more enjoyable experience. 

The AI that the computer players use is also very good.  This is one place where I was sure I would be disappointed.  I mean it is a Pocket PC game and there are so many variables to consider with this type of game I am truly amazed at how they were able to craft the decision making abilities of the computer players.  For the most part they act rationally and in longer games you can sometimes forget that you are playing a computer player because each AI has a definite fingerprint it uses much like playing a friend. 

The game also has a huge array of extras that really add to the experience as well.  I will cover most of them later in the article but I want to touch on a few here.  The thought that went into things like the maps and quests that are included in the game, as well as the some of the ways that you have to modify your gameplay based on the resources that are available to you really bring the game up to the next level.  These are things that some desktop RTS and TBS games do not have going for them and Palm Heroes finds a way to squeeze them into a portable game as if they should have been there all along. 

I have played the gamut of RTS and TBS games for the Pocket PC over the years and while I do still like a few of them; Palm Heroes simply outshines the competition when it comes to all around game play. 

About Your Hero

The hero is the heart of the game, and is the primary for exploring the map, collecting resources, and fighting off evil invaders.  Your first hero is also your most important asset.  The board itself has limited opportunities to upgrade your heroes so you will probably want to build them up quickly.  Additional hero’s can be upgraded as well, but in my experience the starting hero is usually my most powerful even at the end of a game I have dominated. 

Your starter hero is available when you begin the game, and is usually a certain type based on the type of kingdom you are playing.  You can get additional heroes by recruiting them at the tavern, if you have upgraded your castle with one.   You can only have a maximum of four heroes at a time, and if you lose one you will normally have to start over with a basic hero and try to build them up from scratch, although sometimes they will show up again at the tavern in the week after they were lost.  In some battles you will quickly see that your hero is outmatched by your opponent and the only way to save your hero is to shed his legions and retreat back to one of your castles.  Losing his troops is usually tough but if your hero has upgraded his skills it is often a better choice than losing him altogether. 

The way you build up your hero’s attributes are many including: finding treasure boxes in the map (these give you the option of adding gold to your kingdom or taking experience points and adding them to the hero), fighting other heroes,  entering certain buildings in spots on the map, and adding new buildings to your kingdom.  Each of these will add certain attributes or increase the power of the attributes your hero already has.  For instance when you find a treasure box and choose experience points for you hero you will get closer to the next level.  Once you reach the next level your hero will gain, for instance, an attack point, and be able to learn a new skill.  This skill could be a new level of spells they can cast, or upgraded armor which increases their defense ability or any of the multitude of traits available within the game.

When you do get a new level you get the automatic skill increase and then you get to choose one of two new abilities or ability enhancements.  this is a nice touch as it allows you to tailor your hero to your gameplay, and you will quickly find out which ones work with your style and which ones you can leave on the table for later.  In really long games you will eventually reach a point where you character has all of the abilities so you can choose the ones you need most early and then add the rest as you begin to dominate your opponents. 

The only problem is that as you increase in level you need more and more experience points to raise your level so the first few decisions you make are very important.  Additionally once you gather all of the treasure boxes you must defeat your opponents to gain more experience.  I have often found myself raising my initial hero to a level 10 or so (at this point it takes many experience points to add a new level), and then saving found treasure boxes for some other heroes so they can take advantage of the smaller number of experience points to grow in levels.

Be careful though since your opponents’ heroes are leveling up as well, and when you see an opposing hero on the map near you there are only two ways to tell how strong that hero is:  There is a very elusive spell (and to be honest I have only gotten it once or twice) that will allow you to cast it on the regular map and see the strength of heroes you do not control; and to enter into a battle with them.  Unfortunately, in the latter instance I have often found myself way overmatched and had to retreat losing what is sometimes a significant force I was trying to transport to my main hero.  This can be quite a setback not only for the hero that has to retreat, but also for the main hero who may be quite depleted himself and gravely in need of the forces you were trying to transport to him. 

Your Kingdom

After your hero the next most important thing in the game is your kingdom and its castles.   Your kingdom is where your hero will get his legions of warriors to take into battles.  It can also provide resources, and increase the skills of your hero.  Some additions can even increase your castles defensive strength to help when opponents lay siege to it.  Each of these things are available by adding new buildings to your kingdom. 

When you add buildings to your kingdom they either add abilities to your hero or they produce an asset of some kind, either warriors or resources.  When resources are provided they are added on a daily basis.  When warriors are provided the numbers refresh on a weekly basis.  The abilities that are added are a one time addition, but your hero must revisit the castle to take advantage of the new ability.

Just as your kingdom is a very important part of your overall game; your castle is the most important of the kingdom.  If an opponent wants to take over your kingdom they must attack your castle(s).  Don’t worry, you have guards to help you.  All troops that have been produced and purchased, but not added to a heroes legion are left at the castle to guard it and can be used to defend it against opponents when a hero is not there, in most cases you will want to leave atleast a small number of guards in each castle unless you have an excellent defense around the castle and need the legions elsewhere. 

Eventually you will outgrow your initial castle (or decide to start a reign of terror and you will need another castle to increase your available legions or add to your kingdoms resources.  When you decide to gain another castle you have two options, you can either find an empty castle or attack an opponents castle.  Normally an empty castle will have a limited amount of guards, and an occupied opponents castle can have untold legions of guards, and the power of the hero that is guarding the castle.  However an unoccupied opponents castle often makes for an inviting target as the legions are normally assigned to the hero and off on patrol with him, and the troops left to guard it will not have the benefit of a hero’s abilities to enhance their strength or provide support with spells. 

The map

The map is the entire field of play, and contains your castle; the castles of your opponents as well as any empty castles; many other buildings that offer resources, abilities, and legions; and sometimes guards to certain territories on the map.

The map is available in two views: the hero view, and the map overview.  The hero view is a section of the map centered on the selected hero, and follows the hero as he travels around the larger map.  The map overview shows most of the map as it has been discovered by your kingdoms heroes.  If you have found buildings you will see outlines of them on the map view, and if you have seen them as owned by an opponent, the opponents color will fill in the outline of the building.  If you have not explored an area of the map it will be shown in a standard shroud which prevents you from knowing any of the details of the area until it has been explored. 

My one major nitpick with the game lies in the map.  With only two views and no way to really zoom to levels between the two views it makes playing some of the larger maps cumbersome.  You have to mentally keep track of where each hero is on the larger map and where each target is, or you must continually be switching between the larger map and the smaller view.  I would have liked to see the ability to have one or two levels of zoom between the hero map and the map overview that would provide the ability to see some detail relative to the two other views.  The place where this really hurts is when you are down to the final stages of the game and you are hunting down an enemy to finally exterminate them it is sometimes difficult to track them down when you are switching back and forth between the two maps and I often found myself confused as to where I was or where a certain hero was. 

The layouts and quality of the maps though, is absolutely superb and some of the maps I would consider to better than those provided in desktop RTS/TBS games.  There are also some very special things included in the maps, like portals that act either as shortcuts or isolate certain areas allowing you to control those areas by controlling the portals, and obstacles like towers or gates in which you must visit a far off area near an opponents castle to gain entrance to the area that is being guarded.  These two are an excellent touch and while they are not unique to this game, they are well done and enhance the game tremendously. 

Playing the game

You start your game by choosing a map to play on, and the amount and diversity of maps in the game is tremendous.  Maps are available in 3 different sizes and with a variable number of opponents.  Most of the maps are your standard battleground style, but some are based on a quest that your hero must perform.  These were the most interesting and some of them were well thought out in that you had to do things in a certain way to progress through the game.  For the most part, all maps allow you to explore at your own pace, and decide the fate of your kingdom based on your decisions as you build up your resources. 

Once you have chosen the map you want to play on you are given the choice of difficulty you want to play at.  The difficulties range from easy to impossible (and they do mean impossible).  Even after playing for a few weeks I was still decimated when trying anything more than hard.  This was good though because when I needed an ego boost I could always go down to normal and work my way back up.  I didn’t last long on either of my tries at Impossible, but I will keep trying.  You can also choose any of the available starting slots and on some maps you can choose which kingdom/warrior style you want to play.  This was only available on a few maps, and I would have liked to see this option used on more of the maps or at least as an option on more. 

Once you have done this the game begins.  When you start out you will want to send your hero around to collect resources so you can build up his experience and increase the production of your kingdom.  This is a real plus compared to other games where you have to send peasants out to get resources and then watch to make sure they aren’t just standing around after the resources are gone. 

The resource mounds that are scattered throughout you kingdom and the map in general are normally just there for the taking.  You walk your hero up to them and they get added to your kingdoms resources. 

Some will be guarded though, and in a nice twist to the game, you are asked if you want to battle them, and told roughly what you will be battling.  Normally the guards for treasures and resources won’t be able to match up with an equal force from your hero since your hero will generally add some extra abilities or upgrades to your forces.  Sometimes when your forces are too strong for the guards you will receive a message stating that the opposing forces are fleeing and ask you if you want to pursue them.

Resource piles aren’t the only places to get goodies throughout the map.  There are also a variety of buildings that will add to your kingdoms daily resources, or add abilities or legions to your hero.  These buildings are usually always guarded, but the bounty they provide will almost always be worth the battle losses.  When a building provides abilities to your hero it is a one time asset gain, but buildings that provide legions refresh weekly with more legions.

As the game goes on you will normally need to explore more and more into the map to continue building your hero and kingdom and as you do you will run into your opponents.  This is where your most powerful hero will do the majority of the work, and your less powerful heroes will take more of a support role.  As your hero goes out into the wild world of the game he will take on untold forces and will inevitably lose some of his legions.  As this happens it is important to have a hero who acts as a runner bring backup forces to him. 

This is the point where choosing your hero’s upgrades wisely becomes paramount.  If you have a hero that is acting as a runner or support for your most powerful hero you will want to choose upgrades that offer him travel abilities like logistics or pathfinding.  These abilities allow the support hero to travel greater distances and lessens the movement penalty for straying from the defined paths.  As you take on more castles this becomes more difficult since you can only have 4 heroes.  In most long games you will have to leave at least one castle unprotected at some point, but hopefully your opponents will have to do the same and you can raid and take over their castles.  I have gotten into a few games that lasted quite long like this; where my opponents and I spent much time just passing castles back and forth while my main hero tried to hunt down the opponents heroes. 

Winning the War

The only major thing I think this game is lacking is a strong economic factor.  Something where you can win the game through economic strength instead of just brute force.  While some other games provide this at the expense of overall gameplay, I think that the choice to have battles determine the outcome fits very well into the overall game and I don’t think the game suffers to badly by the choice.  With that said, to win the game you will have to destroy your enemies to win the game. 

All battles within the game take place on a mostly similar battleground.  The battleground is a standard hex based field with each of your legion types able to move a certain number of hexes in a single turn.  There are also obstacles on the battleground which can impede the ability of your forces to attach, but can also provide cover for certain weaker forces.  During a castle siege the player who owns the castle is provided with castle walls, a drawbridge, and if you have chosen to upgrade your castle you may also have a moat and attack turrets to help in your defense, but otherwise the battleground is the same size and setup. 

During battles in which a hero is involved there are some added functions available for use.  These are spells and are bestowed upon the hero by either kingdom upgrades or by finding them on the map.  Any spell that is learned can be used during battle, but only once per round.  This is where strategy takes its turn as you must have a basic plan for each battle and use your spells wisely to limit the damage inflicted on you legions or, use your spells to inflict maximum damage the opposing forces to end the battle quickly. 

A battle can end one of three ways: with one force decimating the other and the hero being lost for the losing side; with a hero deciding that his forces surely cannot win the battle and choosing to retreat to one of his unoccupied castles; or with a surrender in which the losing party must pay a sum of resources and turn tail and run.  The surrender option is an interesting one, but in my play I have not seen it used very much by the computer and to be honest I am not sure what the benefit is when compared to retreating.  Either of the last two still involve the forfeiture of the hero’s legions, and also the loss of whatever position that hero had gained.  In a castle battle the hero defending the castle may not retreat (I am not sure whether surrender is an option here or not), so be sure to keep an strong force as guardians of the castle.

Battles are one of many places where this game shines brightly.  The breadth of legion types as well as the uniqueness of many of the legions and the abilities they have rivals even the best desktop games, and shows that the makers of Palm Heroes have really done their homework and want to create a truly compelling game.  There are the standard foot soldiers with differing attack and defense strengths, and a fairly standard supply of ranged attackers such as archers and elves.  The really interesting part comes when you have fourth or above level legions as each of the different kingdoms has special warriors with very unique abilities.  There are flying legions where you can go through obstacles; there are legions that can attack multiple enemies that are adjacent to them, there are some that can attack more than once in a single turn, and there are a few legions that can gain back lost strength by sapping the opposing force and adding it back to their own power.

Future of Palm Heroes

Palm Heroes has been around for a little while even though it is only at v1.03 and an amazing amount has been added to the game since it first came out.  The best part of it all is that when you purchase the game you get all of the upgrades for all 1.x releases.  Unlike most games though you get many new features with each point release.  Some other franchises would call their point releases a new version and charge you for it. 

In fact they are already working on a 1.04 release that will include a brand new gfx set, including monsters and hero portraits, and lots of rpg enhancements.  Judging by what I have seen in their other releases I am sure 1.04 is going to be a great upgrade.  Pickup the game now and be first in line for the upgrade when it becomes available.

Final Take:

I could go on for many more pages trying to cover everything that Palm Heroes has to offer, but I think the best way to describe this game is to say that other than staring at a tiny screen, and using a stylus instead of a mouse: I often forgot I was playing a PocketPC game and got so immersed in the game that I can’t tell you how many times I ran my battery down playing it for hours at a time.  This game is absolutely tremendous, and I have no qualms at all putting it in my top ten games of all times when you consider the resources the game is constrained to and the input options that are available.  The developer have done an absolutely tremendous job with this and it shows that an independent design house can do amazing things.  

Best Features

• Amazing combination of TBS and RPG game styles
• Depth of the add-ons and upgrades
• Computer AI is very challenging
• Above average graphics and animation
• Ability to play scenarios from multiple angles
• Game automatically picks up where you left off
• A ton of upgrades included with initial version

Areas for Improvement

• I would love to see an enhanced economy with the ability to starve out opponents or otherwise affect your opponent economically
• better map navigation and zoom levels

The Run Down

• Palm Heroes, version 1.03
• Windows Mobile 2003 or later
• 5 MB free space
• 6MB free memory
• 240×320 or 640×480 touch screen
• Trial Available (map limited)
• Full Version $19.95

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