Hoard Review (PS3)

      I got the free demo of Hoard on PSP, and I was very surprised how much I really, really liked it. It reminded me a little of Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman! What Did I Do to Deserve This? although it is totally different. So I soon picked up the PS3 version, and that is what I am reviewing.

It's tough to review Hoard since I have now seen that it seems to be designed for multiplayer and I didn't have anyone to play with. I played with my brother a few times, but in general I played its single player mode. It has a really big single player mode, but as you'll see, some of the magic is missing in this mode.

     In Hoard, you control a dragon who is trying to gather up tons of treasure. As we all know from Tolkien, dragons love treasure (can't wait for The Desolation of Smaug!!!), and as we all know from Trogdor, dragons love burninating stuff. You control your dragon from an overhead view and fly around in two dimensions, although everything is rendered in 3d and looks really nice. The left stick moves the dragon, and the right stick activates your fire breath. While you are breathing fire, you stop moving, and you can only breathe for a limited time before stopping for a few seconds to let it recharge. This is represented as a little meter that quickly fills back up when you stop attacking. R1 activates any power-ups you may have picked up, and triangle brings up your upgrade menu when you level up.

      In the game's main mode which is called treasure mode (I would call it the main mode, I'll tell you about the other modes in a sec) you fly around trying to get as much money as possible in 10 minutes. You are given a bronze, silver, and gold target amount of gold to collect, and you also have the goal of having more treasure than the other dragons in the level if there are any. There can be 1 (meaning just you) to 4 dragons in any given stage, with most having at least 1 opponent for you, although in a few it's just you, but it throws some interesting twists at you, like powerful enemies.

     As time progresses, farms, towns, and castles develop, and a little economy starts to flourish as trade begins between these places in the form of carts full of gold traveling between them. You can swoop in and burninate these towns, farms, castles, and carts, causing them to drop gold. You pick up the gold automatically as you fly over it, but you can only carry a limited amount, represented by another little meter. When you are full, you need to fly back to your titular hoard (“Huh, huh” - Peter Griffin) and drop the gold off. Dumping gold into your hoard fills up a little level-up meter, and when that gets full, you get the option to start upgrading your dragon. You can upgrade your speed, attack strength, carrying capacity, and armor. Each time you level your hoard up, you get a few more points to put into your upgrades.

     As time goes on, all dragons get a score multiplier that multiplies the amount of gold they drop off. It starts at x2 and then goes up to x3 at set intervals that are equal for all dragons. This multiplier is reset back to nothing if you run out of health (which causes you to automatically fly back to your hoard to heal for a few seconds) or if your hoard is stolen from. Towns can produce thieves that steal from your hoard, and other dragons can get a power up that let's them steal from you as well.

     Towns produce archers that shoot at you, and castles produce knights that attack you. You have a small health meter that recharges whenever you are at your hoard, and since having your health depleted means resetting your multiplier, stopping back at the base to heal up is important. Oh, dragons can attack each other too, if I didn't mention that already.

     There are a few other ways to get money. Castles also produce carriages with princesses inside. Burn a carriage, take the princess, and fly her back to your hoard to hold her ransom. The ransom will be paid if you can keep her there for about 15 seconds or so, but kidnapping her causes all the knights around to rush in to try and save her and carry her back to the castle as they attack you. Other dragons can also fly by and steal the princess at any time to hold her for their own ransom, so you have to guard her pretty carefully. They are worth big money though.

     If you attack a town for a bit without totally destroying it in a match with at least one other dragon opponent, a little medallion of your dragon's color will appear above the town, meaning it is now loyal to (read: scared to death of) you. It's archers won't attack you, and it will send carts to dump gold into your hoard at regular intervals to placate your wrath. Turf wars break out a lot as a towns loyalty will change quickly if another dragon attacks it.

      Mage towers can also appear on the map from time to time. They shoot magical energy at you. If you burn one, they leave behind a giant gemstone, which is worth a ton of gold but slows you down a lot while you are carrying it. Giants also occasionally wander into the area and start destroying stuff. They leave a huge pile of gold if killed, but they have tons of hp and attack power. If they are destroying something you want to keep around (like a town that is sending you tribute or a castle that is producing princesses for you to ransom), you can harass them a little and they will wander off to smash something else, like your opponents town.

     There are a few power-ups that pop up on the map, such as super speed, maxed out attack power, and the ability to steal from other dragon hoards. There are a few others too, but I realize that I am spoiling the whole game experience, so I'll leave them out.

      Treasure mode is really fun on single player for awhile, and some of the many maps have a really different feel to them. Some give you your own little corner so you can explore a little without worrying about too much trouble, while others have 4 dragon hoards right next to each other right in the middle, causing all kinds of chaos. One level is just you with no other dragons but tons of mage towers that can gun you down in a flash.

     After awhile, I got bored of this base game though. It's a challenge to win against AI dragons for the first few rounds, but once you understand all the basics I just explained, beating them becomes very easy. Disrupting their multiplier while retaining yours works like a charm, and you will usually beat the AI by a landslide. Trying to get the gold medal amount of gold is very challenging, but I didn't find it very compelling, so I soon quit playing the game.

     The other modes include princess rush, where the first dragon to ransom 15 princesses wins, hoard mode (Gears of War reference?), where you must simply survive against ever increasing hostile forces as you slowly level-up automatically, and co-op mode, where several dragons share 1 hoard and try to get tons of gold together. These are fun alternate modes, but the main meat and complexity of the game for me is in treasure mode.

     This game has many in-game trophies for destroying certain amounts of stuff and completing some interesting tasks, but I got bored before I got too into earning them. Its Playstation Trophies are tied to these in-game trophies. Earning a certain percentage of them will earn you the “real” trophies, the ones that pop and make a noise (although I think the in-game trophies pop too, which is cool). The other Playstation Trophies are earned by increasing your Hoard rank, which I think you increase by getting medals, but I'm not totally sure on that.

     So in summary, I had a ton of fun for a few hours with Hoard, but ultimately got bored since I was only doing single player (I unfortunately do not have the option of online play). My small glimpse of multiplayer against my brother in local play leads me to believe that the multiplayer is probably a ton of fun to play regularly, and probably compelling enough to lead you to try and earn all those trophies. Human players are much, much better at disrupting other player's multipliers while maintaining their own, which is kind of the missing link that makes the single player experience less compelling.

     So as a single player experience, I would say this game is a Tier 2 mediocre game. It was very compelling and fun for a few hours. It looks great and plays great, and has a really well balanced set of mechanics. But once I realized I could beat the AI very consistently, it became boring. Trying to earn the gold medals doesn't make up for it either, because the point of the game is supposed to be fighting other dragons, which you barely have to do once you figure the AI out. But I want to qualify this classification by saying that if I got the chance to play online or with a local group, I would play this game a lot more and probably give it a much higher rating. I'd probably go after those trophies too. I feel like a jerk since I'm judging this game solely on its single player element, and it was designed for multiplayer, but it's all I can do. I don't really recommend it if your not going to be able to play with other people, unless you just want to try it out. But from what I've seen of it and from some of the things I've heard other people say, it is probably a really great multiplayer game. I just don't know yet. Hopefully, I will get the opportunity to find out sometime in the future.