Heroes Kingdoms

Heroes Kingdoms is a hack and slash and action role-playing video game developed by Omega Force and Round 1 Industries and published by Imaginate, with the association of Koei Tecmo.

After the cancellation of Heroes Justice, Imaginate, along with Round 1 Industries, partners up with Koei Tecmo for another Heroes game that is part of the main canon.

Heroes Kingdoms is truly marked as the first debuts of Liberty and Ultra, despite making their debuts in a spin-off Heroes game, which is Heroes Knockdown.

The game follows Liberty and her friends as they must rescue Princess Rebecca from 7 kingdoms across the world of Imagiplanet. The 7th and final kingdom is ruled by Negaman and Ultra.

The game was released in January 3rd, 2020 worldwide while the Japanese release will be released in January 5th, 2020.

Development
Before the "lackluster" development of Heroes Justice, Imaginate, along with Round 1, partners up with Koei Tecmo and Omega Force to make another Heroes Musou game. They took both the Heroes Warriors and Heroes RPG engines and combines it together into a Action RPG game, like Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers.

After the "lackluster" failure of the development of the Heroes Justice, Imaginate announces that another Heroes game titled "Heroes Kingdoms" was in development. It got fans both amazed and confused. Those who were amazed says that "Heroes Justice may be a waste of time while Heroes Kingdoms is a save of time". Those who were confused says "How come they're trying to make a good game debuting a main character".

The game received a T rating, meaning that it will have Fantasy Violence, Partial Nudity, Suggestive Themes and Mild Language.

The game was released in North America and worldwide on January 3rd, 2020 while the Japanese version of the game will be released in Japan on January 5th, 2020.

Gameplay
Heroes Kingdoms is crossover between Koei Tecmo's hack and slash Dynasty Warriors series, and Imaginate's platformer beat 'em up Heroes series, mostly notably, Heroes RPG. As a result, it features gameplay elements from both, such as the real-time action combat of the former with the role-playing aspect of the latter. For example, once pressing the "CR" button (the right trigger of the Dreamlock controller), you can cast special abilities and magic towards enemies to damage them or infront of a CPU or player, as a taunt. The goal of the game is to capture areas from "Villain" to "Hero" and defeat the Villain's Main Area's boss/mini-boss and defeat almost every hordes of enemies as you can around the battlefield.

The A button is to jump, the B button is to activate Super Attack (which is a Musou Attack), the X button is to perform melee attack and the Y button is to perform strong attacks. While mashing X and Y, you can perform extra attacks known as "Combo Attacks". The D-Pad lets you do commands. Pressing left will command "Escort" by bringing in the army from "Hero" bases, pressing right will command "Defend" by defending the "Hero" bases from enemies (with some of the captains and specialists going out to the battlefield), pressing up will command "Advance" by advancing up the troops with extra power and pressing down will command "Taunt" by taunting towards enemies, CPUs or players.

Once pressing the CR button (Core Right or right-trigger), a menu will pop up on the screen while playing the game. The menu is filled with RPG skills that were taken from Heroes RPG such as Fireball, Waterball, Slashes, Earth Spike, Fire Blasts, Poisonball, Snowball, Lightningball, Lightning Strike, Poison Mist, Speed, Spirit Advance, Extra Defense, Extra Strength, Extra Armor, Healcast, Enemy Possesser (magical characters only), Dynamites, Somersaults (made in this game (not featured in Heroes RPG)), Extra Jump, Fill Up SP and Fill Up SA (Super Attack). These can be activated once pressing up on the D-Pad.

During some stages, the player gets interrupted by main and mini bosses.

Modes
There are 7 modes in Heroes Kingdoms. Those being Singleplayer, Multiplayer, Edit Mode, Gallery, Encyclopedia, Help & Options and Exit. In Singleplayer, it lets you in a menu where you can play story mode (or Kingdom Mode), where you can play the story by yourself as Liberty and friends, Free Mode, where you can set up your own rules in a free "basic" battle in different kinds of characters, bosses (or not), stages, teams (or not, if wanting to play against each other or together in Multiplayer) and more than the regular story mode (both offline or online) and Online, where you can play online with people by yourself. Multiplayer is the same as Singleplayer. Edit Mode lets you customize your own made-up characters, stories, soldiers, banners and riders (horse, tiger). Gallery lets you look at things that are in the game such as character models, weapons, posters, music, cutscenes (editable by switching characters with original and custom ones) and facial expressions of characters. Encyclopedia lets you read about the history of events happening throughout the Heroes series such as eras like Roy's, Jason's and Liberty's and battles such as the "Battle of Darkens". Help & Options lets you look up help that you need in the game and switch up options such as subtitles, music adjuster and difficulty of the game. Exit lets you exit out the game to the dashboard of the console you are playing.

Plot
The game is set 1 month after the final events of Heroes United. With Liberty being in the battlefield for the first time, slashing her way through enemies with role-playing elements, a princess named Rebecca has been kidnapped by Big Green, Bubblegum (enemy, then hero/friend), Keigo, Ice King, Adminator & Rachael, Lavalord and Negaman & Ultra. Liberty and her friends Nia, Justin (male), and Riley, along with her former teacher Jason, Sonic, Knight and many others, starts making a army of waiters, maids, butlers, waitresses, servants and securities and heads out to rescue the princess and defeat kingdoms. Some of those kingdoms can be good after making differences with the kingdom's leaders.

Editions
There are 2 editions of Heroes Kingdoms. The first one is the Kingdom Console Edition DX. In the edition, it comes with 3 controllers DX, gamepad DX, console DX (all themed red, white and blue with a shiny red Liberty silhouette spraypaint on it), Liberty and Ultra Action FiGUREs and the game. The second and final edition is Special Collector's Edition. In the collector's edition, it comes with Liberty and Ultra Action FiGUREs, a Heroes Kingdoms poster, a Heroes Kingdoms Legend Book, a red, white and blue Dreamlock DX controller and the game.

Characters
Liberty - The main protagonist of the game. She is funny, admirable, heroic, brave, silly, cute and nerdy (sometimes). She collected Jason's powers so that she can show and prove everyone around her that she is not a wimp, a loser and/or a powerless hero. Although she can cast powers such as fireballs, armlance, waterballs and legwheels, she wields a sword with a hook attached to it dubbed the "Havocker".

Ultra - The secondary main antagonist of the game. He is Negaman's sidekick and general and known for kidnapping Princess Rebecca. Ultra has the ability to teleport from high, low and far places, shoot out laser vision, shoot out galactic beams out his magical hands, punch and kick fast, defend and counter, fly and runs fast.

Stages
There are over 30 stages/levels in Heroes Kingdoms across all 7 kingdoms.

Trivia

 * Heroes Kingdoms is marked as the overall 13th Heroes game and the 8th 3D Heroes game.
 * The game is truly marked as the first debuts of Liberty and Ultra, despite their debuts in a spin-off Heroes game, which is Heroes Knockdown.
 * Liberty and Ultra are considered as "Ruby Characters" in Heroes Kingdoms due to being powerful, magical, strong, defendful and perfectly skilled.
 * Heroes Kingdoms is marked as the 3rd Imaginate Musou game up to date. The 1st being Heroes Warriors while the 2nd is Jack & Jessica IV.
 * The game is the 2nd Heroes Musou game.