Iro Hero

Iro Hero borrows some ideas from other shoot ‘em ups, but also adds its own flavor. It has a very unique take on design/difficulty, so it might not be for every player, but if you understand it, we think you’ll enjoy it.

Iro Hero takes solid idea and does some fun things with it but falls flat due to poor balance and a punishing difficulty.

If Iro Hero was updated to create a better balance, I would definitely want to play it again. The game has a lot of potential. There are great bosses with different fighting styles, the graphics are fun and non-distracting from the gameplay, and the music and sound effects all add to the overall action. However, throwing endless enemies and obstacles at a player all in the name of creating a difficult game does not inherently produce a rewarding challenge. Unfortunately this title sorely missed that mark.

Iro Hero is a decent game with a poorly thought-out execution. The game is difficult but almost unforgiving, as longer-than-usual levels and a high enemy count mean you'll start at the beginning of stages far more often than you'd like. The mechanics are barely explained in-game due to the ill-conceived layout, and the story suffers the same fate as well. With an inconsistent presentation to boot, Iro Hero is a game that's solely for hardcore genre fans, as everyone else will barely make it out of the first stage before deleting it in favor of other, better-executed shooters.

Iro Hero is certainly a very challenging and tough 2D shoot'em up whose similarities with other old-school classics of the genre will not go unnoticed. It's also a very hardcore experience, tailored mostly to players looking for a challenge of the kind, rather than for the general audience and this is where its biggest weakness lies.