No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either is a title that was released last month for PlayStation Vita. While the title has been out for awhile in Japan, it was only just released in other territories. You can tell in the game that it was originally Japanese – all the voices, at least what you can make out of them, definitely don’t sound English.
As the title implies, No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either is a puzzle game. You play as the evil side and you need to make matches to defeat the heroes who are trying to capture someone. Each level you need to defeat three heroes and each has a “time limit” until they game over you. To defeat them, you have your own monsters that, as I mentioned, you need to match in the puzzle to summon.
Monsters are a massive undertaking to get a good team going. You’ll start out with a basic one of each level – 5 in total. You can upgrade them by either using materials you can get in the mine (I’ll touch on this in a moment) or by merging heroes into them. To get the heroes you have to clear levels.
Now this is all sounding pretty basic, right? Clear levels, upgrade monsters, proceed. Well, that IS the basic idea of the game. Once you really start getting into it though – especially for later levels – you’ll find there is a complex system back there. As I said there is a massive undertaking when you start getting into the monsters.
Now, within the mine you can send the heroes you get to work to start digging for you. In here, they can find materials, usable items, and more monsters. The further you get into the mine, the better the creatures you can find are. Initially you start out with four slots to send heroes to work,
This is where my complaint with this game comes in. While the title is free to start playing, if you want to make any kind of decent progress in the game you should definitely buy the unlimited pickaxe for around $7 US. The reason I suggest this is because to play completely free you only get three digs per day (one every eight hours). Let me provide you a screenshot of my game where I’ve beat the last main level of the game…
As you can see, I’ve basically played 280 puzzles in here. Now, imagine trying to do that at 3 plays per day… I also barely even cleared the last level. I got a bit lucky with how the pieces came in. Yeah, trying to do this at 3/day would be an absolute nightmare.
I mentioned that I got a bit lucky with how my pieces came in. One thing I didn’t mention is that how your board initially starts is random (minus on the later levels them starting with preset “blocking” pieces). This adds a bit of strategy in as sometimes you’ll be able to clear a level really fast depending on how things fall, other times you might find yourself sitting there trying to find a match.
Before I ramble on too long here, I’ll just get to the point. No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either is an interesting little puzzle game for the Vita. However, if you want to get into it in any capacity, invest in at least the unlimited pickaxe so you can play for as long as you want. Unfortunately the game, at least as you are starting and looking at tutorials and such, likes to really shove it in your face that you can pay for all these little features. Something that, in this world of free-to-play titles, is getting fairly frustrating.
No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either
4/5
