HCG Review: Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment (XBLA)
Posted January 29th, 2010 in Articles, PS3, PlayStation Network, Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox Live by Darrick Morgan
Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, an Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network game, is a great example of a tactical RPG, or may be described more accurately as a platform turn based strategy RPG. This game reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics how you can move your characters from one box to another. You are to use these characters you are given against a pre-determined amount of “baddies” on that particular level. In the training exercises that they have you do at the beginning of the game, you are Tobias, a young boy, who is, you guessed it, just learning about the ways of the sword, the bow, and magic. This does not mean that you are restricted to controlling only one character, you control everyone on the battle field unless there is a special character that assists you in that specific battle.
The game play aspect started out a little clunky and slow but once the game got going it really felt like you could get sucked in and keep playing this game for hours at a time. You are able to use different types of physical attacks such as a regular sword slashing attack and a long range attack that you can switch to, like a bow or another long range weapon and target your enemies from afar. There are also magic attacks like a regular damage attack used to hurt enemies directly, hexes that can slow down or hurt enemies over time like a snare or poison; your magic can also be used to help your characters like the heal spell that gives an ally of your choosing his/her health back, or cure that can take off poisons or snares. Even the technical aspect of this game is exceptional; for example, some regular attacks that you do can actually hurt allies standing next to you if you swing a huge weapon around. The same thing goes with magic, if a magic spell that you use has an area of effect damage to it, you will hurt any allies in the area. So be careful when you choose to unleash a huge magic spell around your allies, because your enemies may die but your allies probably will as well.
The graphics in this game were decent as far as the reactions to attacks and the magic spells that are cast for an arcade game. But as far as the surroundings you can tell that there wasn’t that much put into it and that they were more focused on the game play aspect instead of how the game looked. There were no problems with any of the sounds while attacks were being made, but the surrounding ambiance sounds were very plain.
This game is rated teen for blood, fantasy violence, and mild language. When playing the game, the blood was squirts of red bubbles coming up from a character or enemy that had been attacked, and a prolonged squirt when that character or enemy dies. As far as fantasy violence goes, the above fight sequences is as much violence that you are going to get from this game. If there is any language it is unnoticeable and not overly vulgar.
This relatively new XBLA/PSN game is developed by Hijinx Studios LLC (previously known as PhoenixSoft) and published by Konami Digital Entertainment Inc.








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