Those Cheeky Heroes Or2 Review

If you played the first "Those Cheeky Heroes", beat hard mode and think this sequel "Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaiki da Or2" is going to be easy then you're wrong. After playing it for several hours without going through the new tutorials, I lost more than I did in the prequel.

I don't know what the "Or2" stands for but, people are guessing it stands for the Japanese "Orz" or just the letters of "PS3" shifted one step back i.e. P to O, S to R.

Anyway, for those of you who doesn't know about the game. The idea is similar to Bullfrog's classic Dungeon Keeper for the PC. You're the God of Destruction and you must dig out a dungeon that's good enough to support an army of monsters who will fend off the heroes who try to invade. You only have so much time before each wave to create as best an environment as you can by digging, digging, digging and more digging. It's one of those easy to pick up and play but hard to master games.

The most apparent difference right from the start is there are now several continents to conquer, each one with its own set of heroes to fend off. The other difference is that you'll notice the heroes are much harder to defeat because you can no longer depend on an army of lizard men to save the day like in the prequel. They've got a whole bunch of new tricks up their sleeves bringing using items such as poisoned food, recovery items and even save points!

In other words, you have less time to twiddle your thumbs as you watch the heroes go about exploring your dungeon. You'll be too busy trying to get rid of the items they drop to kill off your monsters. On the rare occasion, I found it to be a little too hectic when more than one hero is dropping off items but otherwise, it keeps the gameplay interesting.

The good news is you too have some new tricks. It must be pretty odd to be the "God of Destruction" when all you could do is dig... So perhaps that's the reason why you can use a quake attack too, helping to stun those irritating wizards who just can't stop using their healing spells! It's not always effective, requiring a few tries sometimes and costs you some digging points but, it adds to the overall strategy of the game.

Not only that, the evolution system's been changed too although it can still be hard to get the balance right and evolve your minions to the heroes' level. By producing the right habitat, you can now make them evolve stronger without saving up those digging points to upgrade their levels. For example, having lots of lizard men around with only a few insects will force the insects to evolve to the next level so that they can survive longer or having too many insects around, will make the slimes evolve etc. It can take some time to workout how to get it just right but, it's obviously much challenging now.

Of course, you can replay every continent as many times as you want to get a better rank and high score which was what made the first game so replayable. As if that wasn't enough, there's even a "The Demon King's Room" mode which is basically a sandbox mode where you can dig out your dungeon to your heart's desire without worrying about heroes too. There's even downloadable content too but I haven't looked at what's available yet.

Presentation hasn't changed much pixel sprites yet the animations remain detailed and smooth. However, each of the continents come with their own music and a little "live camera" focuses on the heroes the moment they get killed so you don't have to follow them to watch them meet their deaths. They also say things as they run around or die which can be very entertaining such as "I'll find you!" or "Save point!" even though there's no voice effects.

I beat the first game's hard mode so many times easily but I've still to beat the last continent in this game so you can tell how much more challenging they've made this sequel! Despite that "Those Cheeky Heroes Or2" is still a very fun and highly replayable game. Again, just don't let the graphics fool you!