My Impressions - Boot Hill Heroes
Do you like Earthbound? Do you like the old West? Then you'll probably like Boot Hill Heroes, right? At least, that's what I thought when I started playing. Here are my impressions so far, written out as I play:
When you launch the game you get to choose between "New game" and "Quit". No options proper.
By default, all the text scrolls automatically, and hella fast. No "keep the subtitle onscreen for as long as it takes the average person to read the text twice" rule in effect.
The "full screen" setting extends the game into the background if you alt+tab. Nothing to stop you from changing several functions to be mapped to the same button. Kinda feels as though this game isn't terribly well programmed right from the start.
Our colorful villain gang. Kinda lacking in detail. Could have put more care into drawing them.
(Correction - the art style just looks sloppy in general. A contrast with Earthbounds neat and distinctive artwork, which used very strong lines)
(Correction to the correction - could be because I'm playing at full screen, and the graphics don't scale well at all. "Medium" which is about 640x480 is the first setting on which text written on in-game graphics is properly legible. Still doesn't look very good though)
"As long as the hearts of men still wander, evil finds a way of returning". Really. You couldn't do the actual quote, so you went for a far less effective knock-off.
The hero's "yes" nod is basically
. Disconcerting.
Stuff you can grab flashes every few steps as you walk, which is nice.
I'm not sure if this is just the character's way of speaking or a translation hiccup. (Edit - probably the character, but that still doesn't sound like any fake western-speak I've ever heard)
I literally woke up, fought some varmints in the barn (the tutorial not really explaining anything about the battle system or my stats) and now the sun is going down. (Edit - days go by very fast. Wake up cutscene - a few screens worth of stuff to do - go to sleep cutscene)
See my notes about the artwork above. This isn't even ("even") FF6 intro sequence quality. I'm sure the game was programmed by a very tiny team or whatever, but it's not freeware, it's a (mostly) full-priced game.
The music is lively and decently western-ish though. A lot of horns (bugles?). I approve of those. Bugles are cool.
So we get all the combat tutorials *after* the obligatory "kill the rats" quest… err, I mean "defeating the king varmint". Makes perfect sense.
The game has a weird non-Euclidian geometry layout. You go Up into a house, and the door you just came through is on the Left side of the screen.
The hints tell you to pattern your attack/defense to the enemy attacks, since those take time. But the most common enemy type so far just throws on a block and keeps spamming quick-hitting low-damage attacks, and I have no idea what to do here besides brute force. I've learned at least a dozen skills so far, though I can only use four at a time, and got about twenty or thirty different random drops that have weird pictures and classifications that the game does not bother to explain.
One advantage over Earthbound - though the story only provided us with one horse, it spontaneously clones itself to fit the entire party.
An obligatory fetch quest that comes from a spot at the end of the town - you only get there after you've explored everything - and sends you back to the start of the town. While disabling your ability to gallop. A quest which repeats three times in a row. Fun.
Our temporary party member left now that we're in town, and for some reason this means enemies now spawn in smaller numbers. Counter-intuitive - combat is easier on your own.
Now we get a proper introduction to each member of the gang our father died fighting against. An effective sequence, if not overtly imaginative. This game has decent music.
Jesus fuck, the first proper dungeon has WAY more enemies than Earthbound would have. Like a dozen separate enemies per screen. Really can't be bothered to fight all of them without an emulator speedup button. Hope I don't end up under-levelled.
Whenever I played RPG's, I get the urge to work out more IRL. Good thing your dog follows you around almost constantly, so you're never too far from a save point (though I'd rather dispense with save points altogether) if you feel like doing some pushups or whatever.
I don't think you can use items, actually, in or out of combat. Your only way to deal with wounds (not HP loss, as that resets after combat, but "wound" status effects) is to go back to town and find a doctor.
We run into the reassembled gang hiding in a cabin in the woods, and listen in as they talk about how "our secret employer paid us to disguise ourselves as Indians and set fire to the town of" etc... and it's just...
. Earthbound had a specific aesthetic and a certain quality to its writing, while this... does not. It's not an outright parody of a cliche as much as an earnestly thoughtless retread. Not entirely sure what the point is. There was a dialog earlier about accepting or rejecting the necessity of killing - hope there's something to that, at least.
I saved just before a solo section with two active wounds - and the game actually healed those, which was very kind. Oh yeah, and the solo section consisted of hopping across logs, fighting otters and alligators, in pursuit of a gambling villain, so some bits of earthbound wackiness are still around.
And… we run into an Indian girl. Now. Imagine how she would talk in a 1920's pulp novel - "paleface stranger" "the spirits tell me" "in the language of your of your people, it means" and all. She talks *exactly* like that. It genuinely reads like a parody of some sort. (Edit - she's literally riding around on an elk)
tl;dr: So far, it's not particularly well written or very interesting. Also, not too well programmed or drawn.
There's an entire peaceful village full of native stereotypes.
"Our ways may seem hopelessly primitive to you, but we may yet teach you" etc. Get the spear, hunt the antelope, use all parts of it. And now we hunt the elusive antelope. On foot, because of course it won't appear when you're on a horse.
And their medicine man is actually a bad guy in disguise urging them towards war. Oh those poor, naïve, close to nature, mystical, bow-using natives.
Got into the first boss fight (with the ancestral spirit of the tribe, "tainted by anger") that actually posed a challenge. For a moment I thought I'd have to level grind, but just pausing the game constantly to cue up the right actions (and using the "tell me what the boss is going to do next" skill) helped. An interesting fight, all things considered.
After wondering through the desert, our heroes are rescued by a travelling circus. Sure. That actually fits the pulpy tone.
Restarting the game resets the resolution to full screen.
The game loves to get you stuck in spots that look totally passable. Particularly when on horseback.
There was a long and fairly involved circus quest. The quest is about someone surreptitiously causing trouble in the circus. In the end, it turns out to be the circus owner, trying to hide his actions from the circus employees. Then he calls on the circus employees to murder you.
At the end of the quest, there's a gauntlet of fights. You fight through 4 fairly difficult battles, culminating with a boss. The boss knocked out my entire party with one attack (even though I finally had a three person party, and close to getting the fourth. "Retry" dropped my party back at the start of the gauntlet. I've decided I'm not interested enough in finding out what comes next to try that again.
I really wanted to like the game, and a big part of the problem (beyond the writing and programming, which I feel are objectively not very good) might be because combat never clicked for me and I ended up under-leveled - which in turn caused me to avoid combat, vicious cycle etc.
When you launch the game you get to choose between "New game" and "Quit". No options proper.
By default, all the text scrolls automatically, and hella fast. No "keep the subtitle onscreen for as long as it takes the average person to read the text twice" rule in effect.
The "full screen" setting extends the game into the background if you alt+tab. Nothing to stop you from changing several functions to be mapped to the same button. Kinda feels as though this game isn't terribly well programmed right from the start.
Our colorful villain gang. Kinda lacking in detail. Could have put more care into drawing them.
(Correction - the art style just looks sloppy in general. A contrast with Earthbounds neat and distinctive artwork, which used very strong lines)
(Correction to the correction - could be because I'm playing at full screen, and the graphics don't scale well at all. "Medium" which is about 640x480 is the first setting on which text written on in-game graphics is properly legible. Still doesn't look very good though)
"As long as the hearts of men still wander, evil finds a way of returning". Really. You couldn't do the actual quote, so you went for a far less effective knock-off.
The hero's "yes" nod is basically
. Disconcerting.
Stuff you can grab flashes every few steps as you walk, which is nice.
I'm not sure if this is just the character's way of speaking or a translation hiccup. (Edit - probably the character, but that still doesn't sound like any fake western-speak I've ever heard)
I literally woke up, fought some varmints in the barn (the tutorial not really explaining anything about the battle system or my stats) and now the sun is going down. (Edit - days go by very fast. Wake up cutscene - a few screens worth of stuff to do - go to sleep cutscene)
See my notes about the artwork above. This isn't even ("even") FF6 intro sequence quality. I'm sure the game was programmed by a very tiny team or whatever, but it's not freeware, it's a (mostly) full-priced game.
The music is lively and decently western-ish though. A lot of horns (bugles?). I approve of those. Bugles are cool.
So we get all the combat tutorials *after* the obligatory "kill the rats" quest… err, I mean "defeating the king varmint". Makes perfect sense.
The game has a weird non-Euclidian geometry layout. You go Up into a house, and the door you just came through is on the Left side of the screen.
The hints tell you to pattern your attack/defense to the enemy attacks, since those take time. But the most common enemy type so far just throws on a block and keeps spamming quick-hitting low-damage attacks, and I have no idea what to do here besides brute force. I've learned at least a dozen skills so far, though I can only use four at a time, and got about twenty or thirty different random drops that have weird pictures and classifications that the game does not bother to explain.
One advantage over Earthbound - though the story only provided us with one horse, it spontaneously clones itself to fit the entire party.
An obligatory fetch quest that comes from a spot at the end of the town - you only get there after you've explored everything - and sends you back to the start of the town. While disabling your ability to gallop. A quest which repeats three times in a row. Fun.
Our temporary party member left now that we're in town, and for some reason this means enemies now spawn in smaller numbers. Counter-intuitive - combat is easier on your own.
Now we get a proper introduction to each member of the gang our father died fighting against. An effective sequence, if not overtly imaginative. This game has decent music.
Jesus fuck, the first proper dungeon has WAY more enemies than Earthbound would have. Like a dozen separate enemies per screen. Really can't be bothered to fight all of them without an emulator speedup button. Hope I don't end up under-levelled.
Whenever I played RPG's, I get the urge to work out more IRL. Good thing your dog follows you around almost constantly, so you're never too far from a save point (though I'd rather dispense with save points altogether) if you feel like doing some pushups or whatever.
I don't think you can use items, actually, in or out of combat. Your only way to deal with wounds (not HP loss, as that resets after combat, but "wound" status effects) is to go back to town and find a doctor.
We run into the reassembled gang hiding in a cabin in the woods, and listen in as they talk about how "our secret employer paid us to disguise ourselves as Indians and set fire to the town of" etc... and it's just...
. Earthbound had a specific aesthetic and a certain quality to its writing, while this... does not. It's not an outright parody of a cliche as much as an earnestly thoughtless retread. Not entirely sure what the point is. There was a dialog earlier about accepting or rejecting the necessity of killing - hope there's something to that, at least.
I saved just before a solo section with two active wounds - and the game actually healed those, which was very kind. Oh yeah, and the solo section consisted of hopping across logs, fighting otters and alligators, in pursuit of a gambling villain, so some bits of earthbound wackiness are still around.
And… we run into an Indian girl. Now. Imagine how she would talk in a 1920's pulp novel - "paleface stranger" "the spirits tell me" "in the language of your of your people, it means" and all. She talks *exactly* like that. It genuinely reads like a parody of some sort. (Edit - she's literally riding around on an elk)
tl;dr: So far, it's not particularly well written or very interesting. Also, not too well programmed or drawn.
There's an entire peaceful village full of native stereotypes.
"Our ways may seem hopelessly primitive to you, but we may yet teach you" etc. Get the spear, hunt the antelope, use all parts of it. And now we hunt the elusive antelope. On foot, because of course it won't appear when you're on a horse.
And their medicine man is actually a bad guy in disguise urging them towards war. Oh those poor, naïve, close to nature, mystical, bow-using natives.
Got into the first boss fight (with the ancestral spirit of the tribe, "tainted by anger") that actually posed a challenge. For a moment I thought I'd have to level grind, but just pausing the game constantly to cue up the right actions (and using the "tell me what the boss is going to do next" skill) helped. An interesting fight, all things considered.
After wondering through the desert, our heroes are rescued by a travelling circus. Sure. That actually fits the pulpy tone.
Restarting the game resets the resolution to full screen.
The game loves to get you stuck in spots that look totally passable. Particularly when on horseback.
There was a long and fairly involved circus quest. The quest is about someone surreptitiously causing trouble in the circus. In the end, it turns out to be the circus owner, trying to hide his actions from the circus employees. Then he calls on the circus employees to murder you.
At the end of the quest, there's a gauntlet of fights. You fight through 4 fairly difficult battles, culminating with a boss. The boss knocked out my entire party with one attack (even though I finally had a three person party, and close to getting the fourth. "Retry" dropped my party back at the start of the gauntlet. I've decided I'm not interested enough in finding out what comes next to try that again.
I really wanted to like the game, and a big part of the problem (beyond the writing and programming, which I feel are objectively not very good) might be because combat never clicked for me and I ended up under-leveled - which in turn caused me to avoid combat, vicious cycle etc.