Little Town Hero

If you’re looking for some tough fights and cute gameplay, then Little Town Hero is definitely what you’re looking for and I highly recommend it, especially if you need a shorter and more relaxing game this fall.

Despite having a battle system that, while interesting, can feel at odds with the rest of the game’s tone, Little Town Hero is a delightful, small-scale adventure that will calm and charm you with its serene setting, fun characters and joyful presentation.

Little Town Hero is Game Freak’s first adventure outside the world of Pokémon. While it falls short in gameplay and randomly generated nightmares, it’s visuals and soundtrack are reminiscent of older Game Freak gems.

Little Town Hero exudes charm from every corner of its adorable little village, and couples that personality with an absurd and utterly unique combat system full of combos I loved discovering. Its knack for turning exciting fights into slow-paced battles that sometimes hand you frustrating losses based on random dice rolls may have worn on me at times, especially before I unlocked some of my hero’s stronger abilities, but it’s still a town I was happy to have visited.

Game Freak went bold with Little Town Hero, and they did indeed make a game very different from Pokemon. But their desire to go big and bold kind of backfires because of the touchy battle system. If you like a challenging RPG, you might like it, else, you might want to consider waiting to get it.

Developer Game Freak is primarily known for creating the Pokemon franchise, but they also like to take advantage of their independent status (contrary to popular belief, they are not owned outright by Nintendo) by releasing various quirky side projects. Games like Pocket Card Jockey, Giga Wrecker, and Tembo the Badass Elephant aren’t nearly as successful as the exploits of Pikachu and pals, but they all have their followings, and developing these weird experiments undoubtedly helps the folks at Game Freak stay sane. Game Freak’s latest side thing is Little Town Hero, an adventure that takes pl...

Game Freak's newest project is an adorable game that's marred by severe optimization and gameplay balance issues.

Little Town Hero boasts a unique, strategic battle system that draws heavily on card game mechanics. Despite the fact that the story and art design seems to be aimed at a younger audience, combat is far too slow, strategic, and challenging to keep the attention of most kids. It’s an interesting combination of traditional RPG storytelling with Heartstone-like mechanics and difficulty that’s sure to captivate some, but will likely miss the mark for most.

Little Town Hero sets out to tell the cutest story about the littlest town where everything is perfectly peaceful. Well, until now.

It takes more than a village.

Little Town Hero. How do I even begin to describe Little Town Hero? Well, I’ll say this much: if, prior to reading this review, you thought the game looked quirky, fun, interesting, or any combination of the aforementioned adjectives, let me nip that in the bud right now. You’re probably gonna wanna temper your expectations a little.

I didn’t expect to have so much vitriol for Little Town Hero going into it, however, I found very little to like. Its 18-ish-hour runtime felt like an eternity as I slogged through battle after battle. I struggle to fathom who this game is designed for, but all I can recommend is to stay away lest you get dealt a bad hand.