A dragon has arrived to your kingdom with a promise for disaster and destruction. But there are no heroes or warriors strong enough to defeat it! The common townsfolk must find and prepare a hero to confront the dragon. It’s time to stop some bad dragon business! Hero is a cooperative game where the whole party gets to win… or lose.
We at The Nerd is the Word were lucky enough to get our hands on the Print and Play version of HERO before the completion of their Kickstarter Campaign.  As ready as I was to get the gang together to slay us a dragon, it’s almost impossible at our age to get everyone together at the same time, so me and  my damsel in distress (my wife) decided to take on the dragon ourselves!
I can’t remember the last cooperative boardgame that I have played, I usually prefer to be the lone ranger, make decisions on my own and pay the price if my strategy crumbles apart like a stale piece of bread. Cooperative board games force you to see things in other players perspectives, forcing conversation between players and full interaction getting each and every player involved in the gameplay. I can honestly say that it’s been awhile since I’ve sat down to play a boardgame and each of the players were just as into the game as the player currently taking their turn.
Lets start off with how the game looks:
While we were able to get our hands on the print an play version, we only had a black and white printer available! Keep this in mind when you consider backing this game as we highly recommend getting the full version of the game to truly admire the art work as well as the fully transparent cards. The art work may be pretty simplistic and could use a little bit more detail but the idea of giving the character layers of equipment with the different transparent cards gives the style a fresh and new feeling.
The overall look of the “prototype” board is quite pleasing to the eye, we can only image what the final product will end product will look like! The set-up may look quite complex at first glance but once you understand what each card does and the actions you need to take, it almost becomes second nature. Once we finished our first round (Dragon 1 – Us 0), setting up the game only took a few minutes, the longest part being getting the cards organized again. Overall the look of the game is really nice, and having everything laid out in front of you to see really helps you get fully immersed into the game.
Gameplay:
Instead of going through the entire process of the game, were going to jump right into our personal experience with HERO. If you want to read over a full set of their instructions for the game —-> CLICK HERE
In a nutshell, HERO is both simplistic and both complicated at the same time. I’ve played many different RPG’s and have created what feels like hundreds of characters. Character creation is by far the most important part of any RPG and this doesn’t differ from HERO at all. Building your Hero from the ground up, you don’t want to send him in unprepared to face the dragon, but don’t take too long as the dragon will continue to relentlessly attack the kingdom. Our first play through of the game ended up with us being defeated by the dragon – this was due to multiple reasons. The main reason being – we did not work together. If there is one thing you must do to defeat the Dragon it has to be to work together!
Currently our record is Dragon 2 – Us 2, we found a way to work together and utilise each main characters abilities to help each other in the long run. We can easily say that the game is fun to play and has a great replay ability. The cute little characters you create bring a lot of laughter to the game which adds to the enjoyability of gathering a large group of friends to play this game together. If you want a strategy game but want to have a few laughs while playing, we highly recommend this game for you!
There has also been talk that there is the possibility of a FREE-FOR-ALL mode of the game, but for now they want to focus on the original way the game was intended to be played – cooperatively.
Conclusion
While we have had a tonne of fun with the print and play version of the game, we highly recommend that you get the full version of the game to get the full game experience. The gameplay was fun, original, we had a lot of laughs and we slayed us a Dragon… what more can you ask for in a boardgame?!
Be sure to click the banner below to check out their Kickstarter page!
Leave a Reply