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Latest updates
What's new in version 1.4.0
Additional use of telekinetic powers, and some new powers, plus various bugfixes. If you enjoy "Hero or Villain: Genesis", please leave us a written review. It really helps!
Choose from dozens of powers. You can pounce your enemies with the power of your fists, strike them down with hellfire, take control of their minds, dodge their attacks with your super-speed, or rewind time to learn from your mistakes.
Build your own gadgets, improving the quality of your armour or the weapons mounted on it.
Make alliances with other heroes, and attempt to find a side-kick that works with you.
Play as male, female, or non-binary, and romance many of the other characters!
Several illustrations to enhance your experience.
Variety of different game paths, with over two dozen different endings.
Several different difficulty settings. Play as a mighty invincible hero, or just somebody only slightly more powerful than an average human.
Product description
Become the greatest hero or villain that the world has ever known! Balance the challenges of leading a normal life, while attempting to defeat evil... or wreak havoc on the world.
Hero or Villain: Genesis is a 330,000 word interactive novel by Adrao, where your choices control the story. The game is text-based, and while it has some artwork in it, your choices control entirely the outcome of the game. Will you hunt down villains to the last corner of the planet, join a group of fellow heroes (or villains!), defeat New York's criminal mastermind, or even replace him?
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Reviewed in the United States ๐บ๐ธ on October 3, 2019
I had mixed feelings when I read about this game. It's a user-submitted game, a "hosted" game, and most of those put out by this company have ranged from forgettable to terrible. But on the other hand it was a superhero game about character customization and giving lots of options to make the character your own, just like one of my favorite "hosted games" from CoG, Community College Hero. And at the risk of getting crucified, I'll say that this ends up being a lot like Skyrim: you can specialize in whatever you want, prioritize whatever you want, be as good or as bad as you want, resolve fights with whatever you want...if you're okay with an underwritten setting and cast of characters.
But yeah! You're a comic book superhero (or villain, if you want!)! And one thing that really did appeal to me over the various other superhero games from this company I've sampled is it lets you pick your own powers instead of deciding that for you, and there's a lot to choose from! You can have a more or less powerful hero (or villain!) by changing the difficulty at the beginning of the game. Which you might want to do just because your character is stuck with whatever you give them at the very beginning, and if you play the default power level you'll only have enough points for a few gimmicks which means you'll be using those same few powers over and over for all your fights for the whole game. It gets pretty tedious after just a few battles. Playing an obscenely powerful character with every available power and crazy high stats a time or two helped me forget about that, but it would take a real effort for a player trying to challenge themselves to be able to enjoy this.
Seriously, there's no leveling system in this game. Only one powerset has a method for getting new abilities, and that's the inventor. Aside from buying a gun or a flak jacket your arsenal never evolves. All that might change is you increasing some of your stats if you work them out in between cases, which might increase the damage something does by just a bit. I kind of wonder how much that actually impacts actually playing the game though, because I played an inventor and tried to improve my laser gun and had a nearly maxed-out IQ stat and everything, and I still broke my laser gun.
Beyond that there's the stuff you do in your secret identity. Do you prioritize or ignore your normal job? Do you empty your bank account to help when your mom gets cancer or ignore it? Do you do some moonlighting and fight crime that doesn't have to do with the main plot? Do you look for love? The game tries to present those options, but it doesn't present them that well. Your mom only ever talks to you over the phone, so giving her money for meds doesn't do anything but change a stat I never looked at anyway. I decided to ask out an NPC (the girl who works at the army surplus store if it matters), and after two scenes we were in love. I went to ask her out on another date because I figured that's what you're supposed to do and it was just a word-for-word repeat of the one where we already fell in love.
And the main villain you fight is named the Steel Aeronaut. Wow. Memorable.
I applaud the author for attempting such an in-depth game, with a system of character options so big it even outdoes the likes of the Lost Heir series. But if it's not done well, it's still not done well. HOVG is still a cut above the usual "hosted games" mess, but I'm still eagerly waiting for the last Community College Hero game only thinking I MIGHT check out the sequel to this game in a few years.