In some ways, the game is better than its better-known competition of the era; in several others, it lags behind.
Graphics/music
The overworld graphics are functional and perhaps par for the course for 1987. That said, towns (but not houses, palaces, shops, etc.) are integrated into the world map, such there is no transition between town and field boundaries. This was pretty neat.
Heracles did have some pretty well-detailed enemy sprites for any game released on the NES, particularly for that era. There were some primitive battle animations -- nothing to write home about, but then again, better than what other JRPGs were doing at the time.
The standout track of the game is the main/overworld theme, which is actually pretty catchy, in my opinion.
Everything else is pretty repetitive and gets annoying after the first few hundred times that you hear it.
Battle mechanics
In this game, Heracles is pretty much a pure physical fighter by nature. There is an assortment of magical items to use, but there is no separate MP system. Heracles must expend HP to use them (a mechanics used in the much later SNES game Paladin's Quest). Depending on when you find/purchase these items, they can either be invaluable or largely useless.
The game had a limited-use weapon/armor system, which seems innovative for the first 1/5 of the game. Afterwards, to progress farther away from Athens, you pretty much need to hire Hephaistos, the blacksmith, to travel with you and repair your equipment after every battle, thus removing this mechanic. One battle mechanic that does stay throughout the game, and which tripped me up in my mid-game, is that there is a one-handed vs. bow vs. trident vs. two-handed sword weapon system. Certain enemies are vulnerable only to one or two weapon types, and anything other than a one-handed weapon disallows the use of a shield. Since Heracles goes solo, defense is paramount, and the use of a shield can make the difference between getting hit for 1 HP and getting hit for 30 HP. Midway through the game, I struggled to have sufficient defense when the enemies became stronger because I was using a two-handed weapon. Thus, I power-leveled quite a bit to make it through until I could reasonably revert to a one-handed weapon.
Nonlinearity and difficulty
The game is also very non-linear, even more so than Dragon Quest II. Lots of clues are given, and in no particular order. However, given the progression of enemy strength, there is, in hindsight, a more-or-less "intended" sequence of events that I deviated from quite heavily, which probably also contributed to my overleveling. If I were to play this again, I would definitely try a different order, knowing what I know now.
Inventory management is a huge problem in this game. There are 10 item slots, and, most of the game, you will need 8-12 items. This is also where the non-linear part can be painful, because can easily end up with a bunch of items that won't be used for about 3-4 subquests down the road. Note that I'm not really complaining about the nonlinearity of the game. I appreciate the challenge, but it can be tedious to figure out what else is dispensable and what isn't every time you find something.
One byproduct of the nonlinearity is that, if you're like me and train until you can comfortably handle the enemies in an area, the endgame will probably be extremely easy, since the final dungeon's enemies are no stronger than what had been encountered in various previous areas. On top of that, the game tops out at level 30, reached at something like 16,000 experience points. There is an easy-to-defeat enemy late in the game that yields 200 XP. For comparison, Dragon Quest I requires 65,535 XP to max out at level 30, and the most that a single enemy will yield is 115 XP. And even at level 30, the final dungeon is not a complete cakewalk in DQ1, as it is in Heracles. Even Hades, the final boss, was plinking me for 1HP per hit in Heracles, whereas you still have to be mindful of your HP against the Dragonlord in DQ1.
Then again, you could argue that not everyone will be at level 30, but it's pretty hard to be underleveled for the final dungeon if you were well-prepared for the previous areas, and, if you rarely run, you'll probably hit a sufficient level anyway.
Random-number generator hell
What I will complain about is the random-number generator (RNG), or more specifically, the probabilities based on it, in Heracles. I once had eight "random" encounters on consecutive steps, and in general the probability for a random encounter seems as if it's somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8, which makes it extremely annoying to get anywhere until you have (and use) the Holy Bell, an item that suppresses random encounters until the area changes.
Another probability that was set too high was the chance to miss, which seemed to be between 1/4 and 1/6. (By contrast, Dragon Quest I's chance to miss was generally 1/64, going higher for evasive enemies.) This led to rather drawn-out battles, and, in some cases, three consecutive rounds in which both the enemy and I missed.
If Data East had halved or quartered these probabilities, the game would have been more enjoyable, and, I think, generally a bit more balanced given its nonlinearity and the exploration required.
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