Little Town Hero

Little Town Hero is a slice of something different. It rewards tactical, considered play in a lovely charming village setting. If you can overlook the randomness of battles, there's a lot to like here.

Little Town Hero is a solid RPG with several unique, ambitious new systems that light up different parts of the brain than you may be used to. However, it also feels like it’s still in the prototype phase. The battle system is fun to figure out, but ultimately combat is so drawn out and confusing that it becomes exhausting. Unfortunately, it’s not as snappy and enjoyable in quick bursts as Pokemon, which may be the thing that doom’s Little Town Hero’s clear potential as a brain-teasing game to play on your commute.

In an era where every RPG - and every genre that’s assimilated roleplay mechanics into their DNA - have used grinding and oversized maps to extend their playtimes into figures only a select few can truly undertake, Little Town Hero has confidently opted for a shorter experience that’s more akin to the pace, style and sedate pace of Animal Crossing than a traditional RPG or JRPG. However, with a battle system that trades XP levelling for a purer sense of tactical planning and experimentation (albeit with an unpredictable spike difficulty), Game Freak proves that a ‘casual’ game can still have plenty of imagination, even on a smaller scale. It's far from essential, but if you love CCG-style combat and can't stomach another 100-hour RPG, there's much to like in Little Town Hero.

Little Town Hero's combat can frustrate at times, but the battle system behind it is still full of charm and creativity.

If Game Freak simply tweaked the battle system to run a little faster and be less rigged, the game could really shine. [Issue #43 – November/December 2019, p. 18SW]

Your enjoyment of Little Town Hero will largely depend on your patience for quirky JRPG systems. The game’s battle mechanics are unique and surprisingly deep, but can be frustratingly random and time consuming. Add in a story and world that have their charms, but are ultimately rather simplistic, and you have a Little Town that will only appeal to select tourists.

Overall, Little Town Hero is a lot of great ideas mashed together with a solid story, but unpredictable combat, average graphics and forgettable music drag down and tend to overwhelm the best parts. Reducing the randomness of the largest battles or otherwise streamlining these encounters would have noticeably improved the game’s overall flow. As it stands, Little Town Hero is neither especially great nor particularly bad but harmlessly average; with ample patience in the face of bad luck, there’s the sparkle of an enjoyable gem hidden under the game’s false starts.

Little Town Hero wastes all of its interesting potential into a tedious story and overlong battles which start exhilarating and quickly become too repetitive to really care about one of the most unique combat system in the fold.

Little Town Hero is an RPG whose main asset is an original and challenging combat system, as well as the added bonus of its high quality soundtrack. Little Town Hero does not stand up to the highest thresholds, however, on account of a rather bare plot, short length and overall lack of ambition, which makes this an experience that feels somewhat half-complete, as it could have gone much further and led to a more enriching experience.

Little Town Hero boasts a unique, strategic battle system that draws heavily on card game mechanics. Despite the fact that the story and art design seems to be aimed at a younger audience, combat is far too slow, strategic, and challenging to keep the attention of most kids. It’s an interesting combination of traditional RPG storytelling with Heartstone-like mechanics and difficulty that’s sure to captivate some, but will likely miss the mark for most.

Bogged down by performance issues and flat characters, Little Town Hero tells a formulaic story set in a beautiful place, strung together by complex, engaging, and gleefully rewarding battles.

Even though its severe issues with optimization and gameplay balance have soured me on it, Little Town Hero is a neat game that I don’t regret checking out. Listening to the amazing tunes of Hitomi Sato and guest composer Toby Fox of Undertale fame throughout my 15-hour playthrough made for an enjoyable experience after all is said and done. There are a plethora of creative ideas inside Little Town Hero and I wish it came together more cohesively. Several performance and quality-of-life enhancements will go a long way for this game if it ever receives those patches.

Little Town Hero is a classic case of “has potential, but woefully executed,” and that really sucks to say when it seems to have so much going for it on the surface. Lovely graphical style and aesthetic, pretty animations from both characters and monsters, and the occasional banger in the soundtrack. And yet, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe next time, Game Freak.