I don't know how I did it, but I managed to fix the color issue for comments. (At least, I think I did.) So no more whited-out text, with luck. (Not so nice is the technical difficulties I'm experiencing publishing this post so that you can actually read it!)
Anyway, since I promised to talk a bit more about my flash game addiction, the basic description for Heroes of the Realm is that it is an MMO Card Collection game, with each card being a hero who brings troops to the field. It's entirely automatic, so it's mostly a management game. Collect the resources from your buildings, equip your heroes with items so that they're more powerful in battle, set their AI so that they're a little less stupid than they are by default, basic stuff like that. Upgrade your buildings so that you can provide better support for your heroes. Again, lots of standard stuff.
You have resources to gather, spent when your army goes on adventures. You have a hero-specific resource. You use up energy (accumulated over time) when doing stuff, but using energy levels up the YOU, person controlling everything, unlocking new features and allowing buildings to progress further. You have quests that give you rewards. It's nothing special. I started doing it expecting I'd be done with it within a week. And yet, I got addicted. I was drawn in by the quests, thinking, "Okay. I'll complete that quest, and I'll be done." And yet, when completing that quest opened up three new quests, I would think, "Alright, I'll complete those three, and then I'll be done." And you can guess how that worked out.
When I ran out of an overabundance of quests, I set a goal to keep myself addicted: "Get into the top-7500. Then I'll quit." When I overshot that into 6,000 overnight, it became "Get into the top-5000. And stay there." Which I haven't 100% done. I occasionally fall hundreds upon hundreds of ranks for whatever reason (I guess something to do with my army, but I'm not sure), even though I'm mostly there. However, it's irrelevant. Because that felt so easy that I set an actual challenge for myself. Having at times been in the lower-4000s, and even having once glimpsed inside the 3,000s, I made the call, "Not stopping until I get into the 2,500s!"
All of this on a game that by all rights is objectively boring and repetitive. There's a decent amount of activities you can do. Join/create a guild, battle in the arena by choosing fights from a list of 18 opponents, letting your heroes automatically fight in the Colosseum in various leagues where you're pitted against 7 opponents over the course of a day, and keep those same 7 opponents for three total days. Go adventuring in the player portal, forming a 3-hero army of yours and with each of the other two players doing the same to take on uber-enemies. Go adventuring in the normal portal, progressing through maps to fight the boss monster of the map, and try to earn the triple-S rank for a level, and upping the ante by increasing the difficulty from one star to two and ultimately, 3, trying for the same. Of course, attacking other players is an option, too.
Then there's the more passive activities, as I mentioned. Upgrading buildings, doing research to accomplish various things from increasing resource production to increasing the effectiveness of your units in battle to making things more efficient and cost less, and so on and so forth. Heroes get customized by being leveled up and given stat points, the equipment they are given, the elemental gems that can be encrusted into the equipment, and the skills they can earn at level 10 and 20. (10 is easy to get to; 20 is a bit of a larger milestone.)
Quests usually involve trying these things out, and doing them well. Nothing special. Even all of these elements together aren't particularly unique. (Though I do appreciate the amount of backstory you can find by looking at the various flavor text. Every hero card has some, and every group has the history behind its founding listed, and via the oracle collection, you can get even more details about each hero by observing what collections they are a part of; a hero in a vengeance collection obviously has bad blood, etc. It's a nice touch, especially in how it offers you some explanations behind multiple iterations of the same card. X versus Young X, Vengeful X, and such.)
Plus with all the technical problems that come up, and complaints, and time-consumption for little reward, and how frustrating getting what you want can be, it really isn't a game that should be that worthy of praise. Yet here I am, writing what is effectively a glowing praise of the game, because somehow in spite of all the issues with the game, I find it fun and, yes, exactly as the game itself in its description says...incredibly addicting, once you get a little immersed in it.
Anyway, since I promised to talk a bit more about my flash game addiction, the basic description for Heroes of the Realm is that it is an MMO Card Collection game, with each card being a hero who brings troops to the field. It's entirely automatic, so it's mostly a management game. Collect the resources from your buildings, equip your heroes with items so that they're more powerful in battle, set their AI so that they're a little less stupid than they are by default, basic stuff like that. Upgrade your buildings so that you can provide better support for your heroes. Again, lots of standard stuff.
You have resources to gather, spent when your army goes on adventures. You have a hero-specific resource. You use up energy (accumulated over time) when doing stuff, but using energy levels up the YOU, person controlling everything, unlocking new features and allowing buildings to progress further. You have quests that give you rewards. It's nothing special. I started doing it expecting I'd be done with it within a week. And yet, I got addicted. I was drawn in by the quests, thinking, "Okay. I'll complete that quest, and I'll be done." And yet, when completing that quest opened up three new quests, I would think, "Alright, I'll complete those three, and then I'll be done." And you can guess how that worked out.
When I ran out of an overabundance of quests, I set a goal to keep myself addicted: "Get into the top-7500. Then I'll quit." When I overshot that into 6,000 overnight, it became "Get into the top-5000. And stay there." Which I haven't 100% done. I occasionally fall hundreds upon hundreds of ranks for whatever reason (I guess something to do with my army, but I'm not sure), even though I'm mostly there. However, it's irrelevant. Because that felt so easy that I set an actual challenge for myself. Having at times been in the lower-4000s, and even having once glimpsed inside the 3,000s, I made the call, "Not stopping until I get into the 2,500s!"
All of this on a game that by all rights is objectively boring and repetitive. There's a decent amount of activities you can do. Join/create a guild, battle in the arena by choosing fights from a list of 18 opponents, letting your heroes automatically fight in the Colosseum in various leagues where you're pitted against 7 opponents over the course of a day, and keep those same 7 opponents for three total days. Go adventuring in the player portal, forming a 3-hero army of yours and with each of the other two players doing the same to take on uber-enemies. Go adventuring in the normal portal, progressing through maps to fight the boss monster of the map, and try to earn the triple-S rank for a level, and upping the ante by increasing the difficulty from one star to two and ultimately, 3, trying for the same. Of course, attacking other players is an option, too.
Then there's the more passive activities, as I mentioned. Upgrading buildings, doing research to accomplish various things from increasing resource production to increasing the effectiveness of your units in battle to making things more efficient and cost less, and so on and so forth. Heroes get customized by being leveled up and given stat points, the equipment they are given, the elemental gems that can be encrusted into the equipment, and the skills they can earn at level 10 and 20. (10 is easy to get to; 20 is a bit of a larger milestone.)
Quests usually involve trying these things out, and doing them well. Nothing special. Even all of these elements together aren't particularly unique. (Though I do appreciate the amount of backstory you can find by looking at the various flavor text. Every hero card has some, and every group has the history behind its founding listed, and via the oracle collection, you can get even more details about each hero by observing what collections they are a part of; a hero in a vengeance collection obviously has bad blood, etc. It's a nice touch, especially in how it offers you some explanations behind multiple iterations of the same card. X versus Young X, Vengeful X, and such.)
Plus with all the technical problems that come up, and complaints, and time-consumption for little reward, and how frustrating getting what you want can be, it really isn't a game that should be that worthy of praise. Yet here I am, writing what is effectively a glowing praise of the game, because somehow in spite of all the issues with the game, I find it fun and, yes, exactly as the game itself in its description says...incredibly addicting, once you get a little immersed in it.
RSS Feed
