Here Be Dragons

Overall, this was a fun, short dice strategy game with some interesting ideas. The story is funny and the scenarios are challenging. My main gripes were being railroaded into specific strategies to solve a scenario (if you take each scenario as a puzzle to solve then I think the game is more enjoyable) and the dice glitches/bugs. Several times I would be one or two hit points away from winning and the game would crash or glitch out and I'd have to start again. This was especially annoying on the long battles where I was whittling down many monsters. In another instance, I ended up in a case where there were no dice that the AI could assign so got stuck without being able to move on or forfeit the turn -- a case that wasn't coded in as a possible scenario so I had to start the scenario again. Luckily, this game is quite short and absorbing enough to make it to the end without feeling like a grind.

Excelente juego de estrategia, con una estética muy cuidada, y buenos toques de humor! Te dejo mi video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjeXdnjx8EI

Polowanie na potwory nigdy nie było tak ekscytujące jak z Here Be Dragons a zwłaszcza, że pochodzi od polskiego Dev Teamu Red Zero Games idealna gra na słoneczne lato i warta tych pieniędzy, polecam :)

Finally, where are the dragons?

The game is OK, but gets tedious quickly. The battles are unbalanced and depend on randomness way too much. The AI is likewise random. The story tries to be cute and funny, but it too becomes tedious very quickly. I bought it when it was about $2.50 and frankly that is about its worth.

Nie jestem wyjadaczem tego typu gier, jednak spodobała się mi i wciągnęła na te 8h do ukończenia. Rozgrywka i mechanika ciekawa, choć mocno musiałem polegać na RNG kości w niektórych przypadkach. Fabuła pomijalna, a dialogi nie w moim typie poczucia humoru. Mimo wszystko na plus!

You won't find dragons nor the Americas, but a ton of dice and bad translations are waiting for you! This is a strategy game where you place dice to cast your ships' (fighters by another name) skills, or to improve their stats for the fight. The whole combat is rather interesting, what with a initiative system that favors using lower rolls (which often but not always can only be used on weaker or more defensive abilities), sharing the pool of dice with your enemies, having special modifiers for some fights, and ink, a special mana-like resource that can be used for roll tweaks, healing, free skills and ultimately reviving your ships. It's all well and good that Here be dragons can stand on the premise of its combat system, because everything else ranges from mediocre to plain bad. Randomness is a major factor, to the point that by the end of the game I would routinely restart a mission if the starting roll wasn't good -- the luck of the draw is somewhat manageable after a couple of rounds, but it is not at the beginning of the scuffle. The AI is bad at playing the game (which is just as well, because it serves to mitigate the effects of randomness) and there are bugs (which is just as well, because it serves to mitigate the effects of randomness). The missions are structured around episodes of (mostly) three battles, with some minor stat improvement between missions -- with no information that would do for proper strategizing, though. There is zero build-up between episodes and you begin each new expedition with a new set of ships (which is kinda nice, as you have to adapt your strategies, but making do with the new set for the episode sometimes feels like a pain). Despite having a wide variety of enemies and the nonexistence of persistent upgrades between episodes, the game cannot escape the power creep, both on your fresh new ships for each episode and on the enemies. Expect to see some of the earlier enemies in at least three different power levels, differentiated only by the size of the sprite. The story (something barely comprehensible about an alchemist with a strong liking for explosives manipulating the chancellor of a fictional court of Europe (Europe as a country, apparently) to eliminate the many mythological menaces of the Atlantic and then the beast slayers themselves so that [spoiler]his son Christopher Columbus can discover the Americas without competition or being unalived by monsters[/spoiler]) is poor and very poorly translated, with very bad humor that translates poorly from Polish and/or to the written word (plenty of references to popular songs, apparently; I was only able to recognize one). You start caring little for each character and by the end you will care even less, as the poor dialogues and narrative texts give zero development, and as you will meet most of them in only one or two episodes. During the tutorial there is some "comedy" done at the expense of tribal natives (nothing particularly racist, mind you) that won't appear again, which I ended up missing for some drama or whatever. The graphics are nice, with bold lines that are used both to enhance the game's comic feel and to evoke the maps and drawings of the past. The sound is alright but completely forgettable. The interface is serviceable but a bit wonky when selecting skills and targets. Expect very few options in the settings panel, mostly geared to skip the most annoying stuff like having to roll the die by "blowing" a cherub, and activating "easy" mode (which doesn't seem so different, as apparently only doubles your ink/mana available). The achievements are mostly unlocked by playing the campaign, except for two that you will accidentally unlock just by normal play anyway. There's zero replayability. All in all, a pretty poor game saved by the fresh combat system. Verdict: C

I just loved the artwork and gameplay. Funny and a bit challenging too. Took me around 12 hrs to beat the game. Dreadful sea monsters are my thing. I wish to see more games like this one.