Intro

"Heroes of the Seasons" is a turn-based RPG developed by Starmage using RPG Maker MZ that was created for the Sleigh the Competition! 2023 Christmas Game Jam over on RPG Maker Web. An event obviously meant to celebrate the upcoming holidays. Though, I'm not entirely sure why this game's name was changed from "Heroes of Christmas" to "Heroes of Seasons". And while I didn't snag any screenshots before this change was made. There are still remnants of this present in the game with the various characters talking about what a honor it is to save Christmas to the screen where you hire mercenaries for your team containing the phrase "Select up to 3 Mercenaries to build your Heroes of Christmas."



I suppose someone could've bugged StarMage about the existence of various other holidays that take place during this time of year such as Hanukkah, Festivus, Saturnalia, and numerous others. Or the choice in expanding it to seasons means the commercial version of this game will include holidays that take place in Spring, Summer, and Fall as well. Though, I suppose I should stop wondering about the name change and focus on reviewing the game itself.

Story
Summary

In this game we play as a group of mercenaries hired by Mayor Nelly to save the holidays from Goblin King Frinch whose hatred of Christmas is legendary. So legendary he's known as the biggest Christmas-hater of all time. A being whose hatred makes Scrooge and the Grinch's feelings towards the holiday at the start of their respective stories seem like mere disdain for the holiday. And that's really all there is to the main story.

Side Stories

The game does allow you to interact with the mercenaries after every battle and these conversations help to flesh out the mercenaries a bit from Orthon being a massive flirt to Delilah being a greenhorn. And while this isn't the first game to do something like this. I'm of the opinion that this is always a nice touch to include since it makes these characters feel like actual characters instead of interchangeable game pieces.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what to put here at the moment. This is because the amount of main story content in this game contains so little dialogue I could probably fit all of it on two of three pages of paper. And some of that time is spent on fleshing out a pair of girls whose importance to the story as a whole isn't particularly clear. So much so that this game probably could have kicked off with Mayor Nelly overhearing King Frinch's declaration that he would ruin Christmas and running to the pub. After all, I have a hard time believing a mercenary unit could be hanging around the local pub without the mayor knowing about it.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front this game features a turn-based combat system with certain skills counting as instants. So it's possible for your characters to perform multiple actions on the same turn if your willing to spend the MP on those skills. Beyond that the game features a pretty standard system with the player being able to choose between abilities which includes your basic attack option, to guarding which restores a small percentage of your health and MP, to consuming items. Albeit I never made use of items the entire game. While fights in this game can be pretty brutal since your enemies can hit back pretty hard. Your characters can also hit extremely hard so fights in this game tend to be rather quick with control of the fight quickly shifting in the favor of the player or the enemy rather easily. Though, I'm a pretty good hand at using glass cannons so I only ever suffered from one party member going down in the middle of a fight, but it was nice that knocked out party members in this game still gain experience.

Though I think the accessory system might be in need of a bit tweaking since you can stack multiple copies of the same accessory on a character. And while this would make sense if we were dealing with badges or rings. In this game your accessories tend to be more along the lines of mittens, boots, and cloaks. At least that will be the case during your first playthrough since your not going to have enough funds on hand to buy a bunch of frying pans.



Though why a frying pan would count as an accessory when you have to devote an entire hand to it is beyond me. If anything it seems like Brock's trusty drying pan should be a weapon, but this ability to equip four of the same accessory is still weird. After all, I had my main attacker wearing four sets of mittens so he could get an extra 40 attack points in order to make his free multi-hit attack so powerful it's kind of insane. At least as far as the demo goes.



The above fight includes seven mittens in play with our archer equipped with four of them so it's possible for him to do over 800 damage a turn against neutral targets and even more against targets vulnerable to Orthon's current attack attribute. An attribute he can easily switch with three instant cast abilities. Though it'll definitely take you a couple of fights to get Orthon geared up this way but once you do so he'll just pulverize the enemies to dust.

Graphics

Graphically this game is pretty good. Though, I'll admit I've come to expect that from Starmage over the years. Albeit I do have one minor complaint about this game in that it does look a bit weird when the character portraits are present without a dialogue box beneath them.



This is because much like the avatar's in Meta's failed metaverse the characters in this game don't have any legs.

Sound

Sound wise the game was alright in my opinion. Which in my case means I don't have any complaints about the sound effects or music, but don't have anything particularly positive to say about it either. Mostly because I tend to only notice background music when it's a song I'd be willing to listen to on my own time like My Glasses are Addicted from "Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis" or feels really out of place like the ominous music that plays in the background at times during conversations in "Eureka Seven Vol. 1: The New Wave".

Conclusion

As a game jam project "heroes of the Seasons" is pretty solid for a game that is meant to be twenty minutes long and places a heavy emphasis on combat. As a future commercial project I think the game is still in need of a bit of tweaking when it comes to combat difficulty. Though, I'm guessing that's going to be taken care of by the various modes that are planned, but inaccessible in the demo build. As it stands the demo is still fun if your looking for a short RPG where you kill a bunch of enemies, and it also offers some replay value in the fact that you can pick between a small selection of mercenaries to create your team. So feel free to feel your enemies with arrows or blast them with magic and expect a few jokes about the enemies hating various things like espressos along the way.