The Cruel King and the Great Hero Critic Reviews

The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a cute story-side-scroller with great music, a fantastic storyline and lovely art-style. Voicelines are only available in Japanese, but you will have English subtitles to enjoy the storyline. Its a great game for kids, but also for adults and a real feel-good-comfort-zone to escape this cruel world for a bit.

It may not be the deepest RPG but The Cruel King and the Great Hero is certainly one of the most heartwarming. In fact, I adored its story and cast of characters so much that I highly recommend it to anyone with a soft spot for unconventional lighthearted tales.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a wonderful adventure suitable for adults and children: a hand-drawn fairy tale.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a sincere production, which does not aim to overturn the canons of turn-based role-playing games, or to amaze with who knows what technical innovation. Quite the contrary: precisely to the extent of this moderate simplicity Nippon Ichi Software inscribes a winning design idea, which - even without some structural ingenuity - manages to convey first of all the message of a light-hearted but also intimate and profound story. The most relevant stylistic figure then remains the art direction, which with such a graceful hand drawing style makes the game world a real videogame fairy tale.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero combines an excellent storyline and an exceptional art-style with a significantly simplified gameplay, which wouldn’t be an issue if not for the tons of very repetitive fights that end up constantly interrupting the narrative flow. Perhaps more exploration and less combat would have served the game better, but unfortunately that’s not the case.

The Cruel King and The Great Hero could have been the right evolution of its predecessor, but for every step forward there's one back. It remains, however, a nice fairy tail to play with the youngest.

The Cruel King and The Great Hero is a heartwarming story that surprisingly has some depth to it. The visual and sound design brings the world to life with its attention to detail that remains pleasing through the entire fifteen-hour playtime. The depth and detail however doesn’t make its way into the battle system and gameplay. The encounter rate and slow pace can be frustrating while battles don’t require much thought until the end. However, the short playtime means it doesn’t take long to get there and ultimately the positives win out. Simply put, The Cruel King and The Great Hero is a charming tale and world that is worth visiting.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero shines with its captivating art direction, but lacks deepness in gameplay mechanics and would have enjoyed a far better pace.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero‘s storybook narrative and great designs are a classic that arguably never should have left the page. With too many shallow gameplay and world elements, it’s hard to feel invested in anything but the main story cutscenes, but that said, as the game is aimed at a far younger age group, if you are in the market for an RPG for kids, you could do far worse.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a game with interesting ideas, a unique visual style and a lot of potential, but it ends up failing in key points that take it away from its best and force the player to deal with its most negative points, spoiling quite an experience that could have been so much more.

The Cruel King and the Great Hero is a cute RPG, I can’t deny that, but it, unfortunately, doesn’t fully invest in any of its features. The combat is tacted on, the story is predictable, and missions feel like unnecessary padding. Still, the charm is there with a more laid-back narrative than your thrilling style RPG. If you’re someone that just wants to wind off and take a break from stories that make you grip your head in fear and confusion, then perhaps this game is for you.

Just like the previous chapter, The Cruel King and the Great Hero tells an enchanting story with a beautiful hand-drawn graphic style, but fails to bring an evolution to the repetitive and unbalanced gameplay.

I did genuinely find a lot to love in some of the disparate aspects of The Cruel King and the Great Hero, but games can only ever be a sum of their parts. While there have absolutely been games in the past where I was able to overlook poor gameplay due to the strength of everything else in the package, it feels at least a little bit different when said gameplay is an active detriment to everything around it. Likewise, while plenty of games have had localization issues in the past, this feels like a game whose identity is so closely tied to being a fairy tale – to the point that NIS America sent us a literal “Storybook Edition” for the game – probably could have, and indeed should have had another editing pass done. At least the soundtrack is worthy of praise without any stipulations, but it’s hard to recommend the full package with all of its flaws.

The character designs are charming and the different locations are nicely presented with some pretty music for each different type of area. There are a few characters who can fight alongside Yuu, but, as useful as they are, they don’t bring a huge amount to the two-person party in the way of substance or uniqueness. The visuals really are the bulk of the game’s appeal and it’s hard to think of another RPG where even the enemies are so darn adorable. If you’re looking for something light and sweet, The Cruel King And The Great Hero certainly fits the brief. But so does a nice pavlova.