Reissued on Wednesday, July 13, 2022: Following the announcement of the PSPlus Extra and Premium lineups in July, this review will be reinstated from the archive. The original text is:
Robot Entertainment’s dungeon crawl party game, ReadySet Heroes, arrived two weeks ago and doesn’t seem to be as ready as the title suggests. So far, the game hasn’t been completely scratched, and some obvious issues betray the interesting idea.
There are two modes of play. In Crawl n’Brawl, up to 4 players (2v2 or all free) will run through the dungeon within the time limit and collect the best loot found. When the timer expires, the final party game will determine the winner. Tawork Roll is a local-only mode that can be used by up to two players, hacking and slashing through increasingly difficult rooms until life is exhausted. The order of the rooms is somewhat randomized. That is, each run is slightly different. In both modes, you’re collecting stat-boosting gems from barrels and defeated enemies. There are also randomized weapons and armor at the edge of each room, all of which help empower you for the final slowdown.
Both modes can be fun, but the idea of āāthe game is crushed by some poor design. Combat is accessible, but solid. Animations can put you at risk. Some random abilities are clearly superior to others. Shovels can dig up statistical gems. In other words, you can buff yourself as much as you like. Next, there is a small issue with online matchmaking. This is either non-functional or very small in population. Local play works, but it’s a game that’s much harder to play effectively on split screens. If you can update ReadySet Heroes to overcome some of these issues, there is potential. I have imagination here, but I can’t recommend it at this time.
