Choose My Adventure: Villagers & Heroes starts off feeling like a different game

I admit that it’s been a very long time since I had played Villagers & Heroes – since 2020, to be exact – but considering the whirlwind of life between then and now and just the simple eroding effects of time, I have to say that this revisit to this MMORPG was nothing like I remember it being.

Or perhaps the game just wasn’t terribly memorable when I first peeked in.

I’m not so sure that it’s memorable now, even if it is early days yet in this journey. But that’s not to suggest that this game is exactly bad either. It just sort of hits different, to borrow the modern parlance. I’m hip with the kids, you see.

I seem to recall the character creation being the same, where the storybook opening of my character’s description filled out as I selected my class, origin, and crafting vocations. I actually really appreciate this part of the game from both an aesthetic and mechanical standpoint, as you can kind of forge a pretty multi-faceted character right from the jump in terms of combat and non-combat activities. Even if the choices are limited compared to other games.

For this column’s purposes I elected to go with a Shaman combat class with Fishing and Cooking as my villager choices. I was pretty intrigued by the Shaman since it looked more like a warrior kind of archetype rather than the totem-using caster copied into so many MMOs, and the ability to either be a healer or a tank depending on what spec I followed had my interest. As for fisher and chef, those ran no deeper than “I like fishing and cooking.”

The very opening beats I almost immediately recognized, with some rather annoying NPC leading me down a path to hear threats about the coming of the Shadow Years by someone I was supposed to feel intimidated by. The very opening moments of this game definitely don’t leave a strong impression. After that, however, the story kind of seemed to change, or at least was delivered differently, as my character arrived in town, apparently caused a very stuck-up actress to disappear, and began some localized doom where townspeople were poofing into the ether unless some demands were met.

Here I’ll pause and note that, while the story beats weren’t really landing for me in the interim, I have to remarks that the actual dialogue and text of the missions were excellent. My character’s responses to NPCs weren’t just silence or blind subservience; I was giving up some sassafrass to these people who wanted me to go out and do kill 10s. Beyond that, questing wasn’t really going to break ground.

Combat wasn’t either, to be fair, but then I guess I shouldn’t be terribly surprised by that considering this game’s presumed age. It’s bog standard tab-target hotbar smashing stuff, with auto-attacks sprinkled in-between my ability cooldowns. The one wrinkle that appeared to me was the fact that weapons determined what skills I would use; I started with an axe that had some water spells (one attack and one healing), but then I got another Shaman axe that had a couple of earth spells. Between that and the earth tree unlocks, I pretty much elected to go with the tank portion of the class.

What’s weird here is the fact that weapons seem to be the literal only way I could get new buttons to press. Unless I’m completely missing something here – and I’d be really surprised if I did considering how in-your-face the tutorials can be – I have only two buttons to press and have gone through nearly 10 levels so far. That seems really anemic if that’s intended design, but I’m willing to presume there’s some progression trick or NPC or something I’m missing.

After a bit of amusing but otherwise humdrum questing, I elected to take a break and see about the “villagers” part of the Villagers and Heroes title of the game, and I found it pretty charming enough, as well as delightfully open. I simply went to an appropriate portal, selected a village to join that had empty lots (I went with Lazy Village because mood), and then find an open parcel of land to plop my free house down. Nice and simple.

I don’t know exactly how much time I’ll be spending in this game’s housing system, but I genuinely do like how open it all appears. I also appreciate how I was given a garden plot to grow things on and a little lamb to care for. These were all nice little touches even if they end up being things I don’t really come back to often. Still, I can never turn down free digital housing. Or gardening, for that matter. I’ve played too many life sim RPGs to let that pass me by.

All in all I had an enjoyable enough time with what I think are the game’s opening beats. I saw the very long opening quest line to its final conclusion, slowly started unlocking what I felt were the most beneficial aspects of my Shaman tree, and even managed to laugh out loud at a couple of the pieces of dialogue that were coming out of the quest I was on. I’m not reviewing this game by any stretch, nor am I writing a full first impression, but these opening hours did leave me feeling like V&H is a polished form of incomplete. Kind of like AdventureQuest 3D: It put in just enough effort to appear worth the time, but also has some genuinely weird and sometimes slapdash feel to its construction.

I think I can get at least one more week out of this one is basically what I’m saying.

That does lead me in to the first poll, which kind of is forcing me to do the usual thing where I ask about buildcraft. This is a themepark MMO, after all, so there’s not too much free will to get lost in or ask you folks about, but I am going to make the best of it, starting off with spec:

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As for the second poll, that’s probably going to be another quick answer, but it’s something I have to ask anyway. Right now I’m in the primary capital city of the game, and I’m being guided to another new region by the main story, but I also have a whole bunch of side quests around me as well as a couple of extra side activities like bounties (monster hunts by any other name) to follow through on. So let’s figure out primary focus once again, shall we?

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Polling will once more close at 1:00 p.m. EST on Friday, January 5th. Here’s hoping that there’s something more beneath the surface I’ve scratched at so far. I’m curious but not really intrigued. Yet, anyway.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.