Leonardo Production in tandem con WhispertGames e Leonardo Interactive upon publication, they finally post the new on our PCs Shattered Heaven, a single player title in which you will have to equip several members of a team to meet hordes of enemies in different dungeons. This is not an absolute novelty, given the playful references to other famous productions: despite this, will Shattered Heaven have succeeded in its intent? Let’s find out in this review!
Rebuild Paradise
The world has been devastated by victory of the world of the dead: the fate of the few humans left on Earth are in the hands of a few warriors and enchantresses. In this context our heroes arrive at the last bastion of Paradise: a tower that stands in a world of light, from which champions and heroes stand as bulwarks against evil. The purpose of the tower is to find ancient relics and form an army capable of defeating the forces of evil.
Although the story section of Shattered Heaven is pretext, it’s really a pleasure for the eyes to continue the story, thanks to an unmistakable aesthetic style: basically every element of the game, every narrated piece of the story puts us in front of a “picture”, i.e. images so intense and detailed that they kidnap us instantly, and undoubtedly satisfy the sight without making us regret a three-dimensional graphics. The style is there, and perhaps it’s the gameplay that has fallen a little short.
Warriors, spellcasters and cards
In Shattered Heaven you will be called to piece together a team of three who, from time to time, will face dungeons in which they will find consumable items, weapons and armor but not only: there will also be special cards. The facts as well as the personal equipment of each element of the group, in Shattered Heaven each character carries a deck of cards with him, customizable before and after each mission (in a sense even during).
Before leaving for the dungeon of the mission you have chosen, whether this is a main or secondary mission, you will have to equip a deck of cards for each class of hero you will take with you (of course, at the beginning there will only be 3 but don’t worry, they will add up other heroes throughout the game). Each deck reflects the skills and blows the hero will inflict on the enemy: for example, the warrior who wields a shield will tend to defend his group with cards that enhance the armor of each hero, while the thief instead wields two short blades and will tend to hit the enemy with bursts of blows.
The cards from the decks will come found Basic in each dungeon as a final reward, but can also be “created” through a profound crafting system. This will allow you not only to create the same cards, but also potions, weapons and armor (they will also be transformed into cards). Each hero then has a large skill tree that branches out in several directions, the latter allowing for in-depth customization of the hero in question, for example allowing the player to create a different warrior than a friend’sprecisely because of the different nature of the paths that have been chosen.
Before each adventure you can also select the difficulty of that mission: in Shattered Heaven increasing the difficulty will change not only the rewards (which will be richer with the increase in problems of course) but also the effect of some cards that could undergo contextual boosts (but watch out, enemies will also be stronger). Once the group is ready you will notice that each hero has a limited number of hit points, armor and actions: they can all be increased during the mission or just leveling up the hero.
In the dungeon you will explore isometrically different rooms in which you could find puzzles, traps, items and treasures or enemies: in the first case it will be enough to choose the correct answers to obtain information or objects, while in the second you will need dexterity to defuse the problem; in the third case it will be a party while in the fourth, well, we start to get serious and the fight will start. Once you get into the action i characters will have an action order expressed with a chain at the top right of the screen: from here you can decide how to face the enemy, selecting the reference action of each hero.
you will have five cards per turn, drawn from your hero deck: these can change or be rearranged according to the effects, which will vary from damage to the enemy to increased defenses to traps and curses of all kinds. Even the opponent will unleash cards and powers against youwhich you won’t basically see, but that they will be summed up in attacks and magic of all kinds. The skills and weapons you obtain will enhance or apply different factors to the cards. If a party member dies during a fight he will come back to life with 10 hit points at the end of the fight, and it’s up to you to heal him with potions or skills.
Shattered boring
Shattered Heaven purtroppo it’s a roguelike which presents a repetitive looping gameplay e fails to give too much emphasis during the fight. If all went well before reaching the heart of the action, where everything had to explode in a blaze of beauty and a sense of power, it is instead cut short by the banality of the combat itself. The actions that the characters perform are monotonous, without graphic effects that give that “sense of power” required, for example: if the warrior enhances the armor of the group, the effect of the card in question will be limited to causing a shield to appear on the character.
Over time, card games have come out galore, one of them Marvel Snap (which won the Game of the Year Mobile), a title where even a card’s effects fulfill the action and make the game spectacular. In Shattered Heaven this does not happenor rather, there are effects, but they don’t give the satisfaction of power and resolution that a person would expect.
The general gist is that once a card is thrown, the action will be quick and lackluster. Shattered Heaven is a title that should also aim for thisat the spectacular gameplay, while this does not happen and the result is that if you are waiting to throw an immense and devastating fireball, as aptly described in the image of the card and this results in a ball of fire that fulfills the enemy almost like a crumpled sheet of paper , the disappointment is maximum.
