Heroes of Ruin E3 2011 Hands-on

If you found yourself lacking of a proper action RPG on Nintendo’s newest handheld, Square Enix has you covered.

I had a chance to check out Heroes of Ruin, the upcoming hack ‘n slasher. Only two character classes were shown off: the hulking warrior class and the ranged shooter class. I played through parts of the demo as both classes, and they both controlled quite diversely.

I wasn’t able to see every one of the warrior’s skills, but as expected, the bigger stature made him move a bit slower than the rest, but his attacks were quite powerful. The more agile gunner had a burst shot skill that peppered the enemies with a barrage of bullets and charged up his shot to unleash a much more devastating single round.

The level that was shown was both a forest/ruins hybrid, with the initial area serving as a place to pick up quests, from which I was able to select three. That means the game will function like many ARPGs, most likely providing loads of side quests to enjoy.

The 3D looked great and worked surprisingly well. Presented from an isometric view, such as in Diablo or Torchlight, the depth of field provided by the 3D was quite immersive, though it didn’t seem to have any sort of gameplay advantage over regular 2D.

I was also told that the game will have both offline and online gameplay, which is sure to please a lot of 3DS fans looking to take their characters online. The game will also support DLC of some kind.

Players can look forward to getting their loot-hungry hands on this game in early 2012