It’s not exactly 10/10 material, but Glory of Heracles did get much better after 15 hours or so. I liked the story and characters to begin with, and the battle system got a lot more interesting once I learned and began to make use of all kinds of interesting skills, spells and passives. In far too many games it doesn’t take long before you settle on one or two good moves per character and just use them over and over again. Here there were a few constants like casting buffs in the first turn and using Focus for massive damage, but there’s still plenty of variety in the moves and specials each characters uses.

Actions change not only depending on the needs of the situation but also on the equipment they’re wearing, the amount of ether available, enemy weaknesses and one or two other factors. I mean, I still auto-battled my way through 90% of the game (the AI is terrible, btw) and battle speed was still a little slow even with animations set to ‘Brief’, but it was an interesting auto-battle fest and the battles I did fight on my own were very enjoyable. I would happily endorse a version of this game which cut encounters by 50%, sped up battles 75% and made boss battles at least 30% harder.

Having said that, it’s still a fact that the battle system is slow and takes a while to get interesting. And you might very well play for 15 hours, past the “it’s supposed to get interesting right about here” point and find out it’s still not your cup of tea. No one can blame you for that either. I finished Glory of Heracles after 25 hours and 40 minutes, so if the first 15 hours are meh then that’s 60% of the game down the drain. My advice is this, therefore: don’t force yourself to keep playing.

But what if you want to know what happens to MC and his team but don’t want to finish the game? Fear not, I’ve got you covered. I’m going to spoil everything I remember about the story and save you the time and effort of going through it yourself. Turn away now or prepare to be spoiled.

Main Character: He was actually a marionette owned by the inventor Daedalus. Daedalus was trying to revive his son who crashed and burned (Icarus-ish) by infusing him with Heracles’ soul. Somehow or another the marionette ended up with parts of both Icarus and Heracles’ souls. Until the very end the game makes it seem like MC is just Icarus’s reanimated dead body, but the gods at the end call him a marionette, so that’s that.

That makes Glory of Heracles yet another game where the MC turns out to be either inhuman/dead all along and yet hardly anyone has a problem with it, least of all him. Last we see MC he’s playing a flute on a cliff and just chilling like he always does. I got the impression all through the game that he was having a really great time, so I’m quite fond of the guy.

Leucos: Her real name is Leucothea and she is the rightful heiress to the throne of Athens. She’s immortal because Prometheus made a deal with the late King of Athens to give a member of the royal family immortality. The king sent Leucothea away to be raised by one of his loyal vassals. That vassal got killed before he could tell Leucos the truth about her origins, prompting her to go around the world in search of answers. Btw, the reason she pretends to be a guy is because her foster father told her to, no other reason. In the end we see her contemplating restarting her foster father’s abandoned theater, but we’re never told what she actually decides to do next.

Axios: Along with Agon and Arnos, he is embodied by 1/3rd of the soul of the eld god Oceanus. Agon is trying to get all three pieces back together, but Axios and Arnos resist him for most of the game. Near the end Axios and Arnos put their souls back into Oceanus to fight the resurrected Typhon. An attempt to reverse the process fries Arnos’ body and puts both souls in Axios’ body, with a nice resulting boost in power. Last we see him he’s just hanging around in the temple of Oceanus doing who knows what.

Heracles/Iphicles: The Heracles you play as for most of the game is actually Iphicles, Heracles’s little brother. The real Iphicles was killed by a monster. Daedalus contacted Heracles and offered to revive Iphicles through an experiment that would infuse the dead body with Heracles’ soul. The experiment worked a little too well and in the end Heracles’ soul was split four ways between the main character, original Heracles, dead Iphicles (whose memory was muddled and thought he was the real Heracles, thus becoming ‘our’ Heracles) and Daedalus, who lost his memory and became General Heracles. Phew, confusing! Once the truth comes out, ‘our’ Heracles who is actually Iphicles fades into the ether and his much stronger and slightly less boisterous big brother joins us instead. I miss you, Iphicles. ;___;

Eris: Not really a loli. She’s actually the wife of Prometheus, sent to gather ether from the various Taphoi to help Prometheus get his revenge on the gods. The power of the ether released by the Corinth Taphus wiped her memory and reverted her body into a kid’s. In that time she hung out with our team and came to like us, so even after regaining her memory she decided not to go through with the revenge plan. In the end Heracles helps her free Prometheus from the rock he is bound to. I guess they live happily ever after.

Princess Piazza: After all the trouble we went through to free her from Nestor’s tower, she actually goes and marries the guy in the end. Ick. We find out that she’s the king of Athens’ illegitimate daughter and that Leucos is the true heir, but Leucos has no interest in the throne so we let Piazza have it.

Daedalus: Genius inventor who created the Taphoi at the prompting of the eld gods. Lost his son to a flight accident and attempted to resurrect him by inventing the Crasis and using it to split Heracles’ soul. Read MC and Heracles’ entries for how well that turned out. In the end he saves MC’s ‘life’ from molten lava and dies in the process. I felt slightly sorry for him, but he caused a LOT of trouble so good riddance, I guess.

Arnos: See Axios’ entry.

Agon: Bad guy for most of the game. Possesses 1/3rd of Oceanus’s soul, which he eventually uses to help resurrect Typhon. His motivations are 1. Helping Oceanus get revenge on the new gods. 2. Bitterness at being defeated by Achilles 3. Bitterness at being defeated again by General Heracles. 4. Just being pissed off at the world in general.

Captain Gazuth: Ship captain and ex-apprentice of Daedalus’s. He helps our party for a while but is later blackmailed by Agon into changing sides. Is killed when he tries to resist Agon. Poor Flora.

Achilles: Agon kills him by striking at his heel. The way Princess Piazza changed his destiny was by blabbing to Agon about this weakness of his. Some destiny. Eudorus and Patroclus find gainful employment under Piazza and presumably live happily ever after, so that’s good at least.

Hero: One of Daedalus’s apprentices. Travels with Eris for a while. Later killed by mooks on Agon’s orders. The writers just like to kill NPCs, that’s all.

Useful terms to know:

Taphus: When people/immortals use magic, dark ether is created. Taphoi were created to absorb this dark ether and use it to revive a super-weapon named Typhon, which was created to fight the gods. The gods aren’t too big on this idea, so you’ll spend a large portion of the game trying to destroy the Taphoi.

Crasis: Devices for splitting souls and putting them into dead bodies, creating a zombie army.

Eld gods: Oceanus, Prometheus, Eris, etc. Got into a fight with the newer gods like Zeus and Astraea and lost. Their super-weapon Typhon was sealed within the earth. They prompted Daedalus to build the Taphoi so they could resurrect Typhon and get their revenge. Their plan may have failed, but they’re still lurking around somewhere. Probably waiting for the sequel.

END SPOILERS

That’s all the spoilers I can think of for now. I thought it was a pretty good game, but one which wasted a little too much time on unnecessary trips early on and only got good when there was no one around to care. The characters were great, the music was very good, the battle system was fun once it really got going (I love games that let you dish out 5 digits in damage).

The mythological Greek setting was definitely wasted though, as I mentioned last time. You hardly ever interact with any of the gods, legendary creatures like Pegasus, centaurs, satyrs and nymphs only show up briefly or as enemies and while I’m all for adding twists to a legend, many of them were completely half-assed and might as well not have been added. I also understand that they were trying to be ‘unique’, but adding castles you never get to enter and promising-looking treasure chests you never get to open is just torture in disguise. Stop that.

Long story short, the characters and the story are both interesting and the rest of the game is not bad. If that’s good enough for you, play Glory of Heracles. If it’s not, scroll up and read the spoilers. I’d say you should at least try a little bit if you can get the game for cheap, but it’s not really something to force yourself to continue.