Hero Plus

Hero Plus Classes

Characters:

The Elegant Mystic - She uses Spear, Rod, and Claw weapons.
The Ruthless Blade - He uses Blade, Sword, and Bow weapons.
The Majestic Muse - She uses Duel Blade, Duel Rod, and Pentachord weapons.
Piercing Eyes - She uses Sword, Blade, and Throwing weapons.
Overseer of the Sky - He uses Spear, Rod and Axe weapons.

Classes:

Physician - Supportive class that focuses on healing and status effect spells. Second job classes are: Surgeon and Combat Medic.
Hunter - Specializes in taming monsters and crafting. Pets and crafted items ca be traded. Second job classes are: Tracker and Ranger.
Warrior - Melee specialists with high offensive and defensive skills. Second job classes are: Champion and Musa.
Assassin - Possess life draining and stealth skills along with a fast attack rate. Second job classes are: Shinobi and Slayer.

Hero Plus Review

By Erhan Altay

Released back in July 2006 by Netgame as Hero Online, Hero Plus is inspired by a series of famous Chinese novels. Like 9Dragons and Scions of Fate, Hero Online is set in an oriental fantasy world. Saddly, Hero Online is not the most in depth game but once had a large community with 10 channels, 2 of which are PvP specific. The game is now available on Steam and continues to support a small community. Find out more about Hero Online below.

Character Roulette

Character creation is one of Hero Online’s weakest points, there are five characters to chose from but they cannot be customized in any way. Three of the characters are female while the other two are male. Each is proficient in three weapons and starts with a basic version of each type. The character models are surprisingly well done compared to the rest of the game’s graphics. It’s not made very at the start but the five characters act as races, not classes. You won’t be able to pick a class until level 10, or ’1Dan’ as it’s called. Hero Online takes a strange approach to labeling its levels, just like 9Dragons. Players start out as 1Kyu and level up normally up until 9Kyu. The next time they level up, they advance to ’1Dan.’ My understanding is ‘dan’ counts as ten so 5Dan would be level 50, which is when players make the second job advancement. For more details on all the characters and classes, please see the overview.

Welcome, Young Grasshopper

New players start their adventure in a town called Dragon Castle but there is no tutorial or starting quest to worry about. The game’s controls are standard MMORPG point-and-click where the mouse handles movement, combat, and the interface. Keyboard shortcuts are available but there is no keyboard movement option. The best way to proceed is to head outside town and start killing the local wildlife; wolves and boars. The game has sub standard graphics but most are the character models still look impressive. I did encounter several glitches — as I walked under an arched gate, my character wound up on top of it. Similarly, I fell through the ground several times.

Crazy Kung Fu Moves

As you start hunting, you’ll notice Hero Online has some pretty crazy attack animations. My Majestic Muse (or belly dancer as I call her) was doing back flips and spins as she shred through that poor wolf pup. For some reason the screen seems to shake every time you attack which I found distracting but I couldn’t tell if the game was designed this way or if it was a bug. In any case, grinding gets boring after the first few levels. Maps are filled with huge over spawns of the same 3-4 monster types and since the entire game world is a mere 17 maps, there are very few different enemy models to beat on. I remember working my way up a hill and having my entire screen filled with what looked like hundreds of boars walking around aimlessly.

Training for Battle

Each level, players are rewarded with 4 stat points to distribute among 3 stats; Str, Dex and Int. Skill points are gained independently from levels and players can track their progress in a separate menu. Generally, these are gained slowly which means players won’t have any skills for the first few levels which adds to the monotony of the gameplay. Even the skill points you do gather cannot be put to use until level 10 when the first skill becomes available. Skills are categorized by weapon type and gender so for example ‘male sword’ skills are different than ‘female sword’ skills.

Come into My House

Starting at 4dan (level 40) players can create their own House which is Hero Online’s phrase for guild. Houses are faction specific so a player who belongs to the Zhuang faction won’t be able to join a house created by a Shao players and vice versa. Houses can create special emblems that appear next to member’s names and can earn special titles depending on the activity of its members.

Four Ways to Fight

PvP in Hero Online is multi faceted. Besides challenging each other to duels there are specific PvP maps (all maps on PvP channels.) There are three unique PvP maps; a capture the flag map, a mining map where players fight for the chance to collect rare resources and a special faction war map which is only available twice a week. The game’s level cap is 100 and while there isn’t a requirement to participate in PvP, lower levels players have a much harder time.

Shopping for Pets

All players can open and buy from personal shops starting at level 10 but only Hunters can tame pets. Everyone else must purchase them. Pets come in various forms, some like the large tigers are best used as mounts while others help the player in combat. There are in total 5 types of pets; wolves, horses, bears, hawks and tigers. All pets grow and get stronger but have different level requires ranging from 10-50.
hero-online-scorpian.jpg

Crafting & Upgrading

Equipment drops fairly often from monsters but most if it cannot be used by an individual player, it might be for the wrong gender, class, or wrong weapon type. Luckily, these unwanted items can be dismantled by an NPC. Dismantling in this manner extracts special stones from equipment that can then be used to upgrade useful gear. Both upgrading and extracting don’t have guaranteed success rates so be careful. A simple crafting system is also in place where players gather certain materials and items, bring them to the blacksmith and have special gear forged for you. There are currently around 80 different craftable items including all gear and accessories.

Final Verdict: Fair

Hero Online is a dated game with limited features but its simplicity may be the reason why it has managed to draw so many gamers over the years. If you’ve tried other Asian themed MMORPGs but haven’t liked them, maybe this is the one for you. Those looking for something more original or recent, look elsewhere.

Hero Plus Screenshots

Hero Plus Videos

Hero Plus Links

Hero Plus Official Site
Hero Plus Steam Page
Hero Plus Wikipedia Page

Hero Plus System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
CPU: Intel Pentium 3 800 MHz or AMD equivalent
Video Card: Nvidia TNT2 / ATI Radeon / Matrox Milenium G400
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Disk Space: 5 GB

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 10
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz or AMD equivalent or better
Video Card: Nvidia MX440 | ATI Radeon 9200 or better
RAM: 1 GB or more
Hard Disk Space: 5 GB

Hero Plus Music & Soundtrack

Hero Plus Additional Information

Developer: MGame Corporation
Publisher: Netgame

Release Date: July 31, 2006
Steam Release Date: January 22, 2018

Development Background

Hero Online was among the first wave of Korean developed free to play MMORPGs to release in the West. It is published by Netgame, the same portal that hosts Scions of Fate and Soul Saver Online. Released on July 31, 2006, the game has been in continuous service with steady updates. A major update marked the name change from Hero Online to the current Hero Plus. The game has been available on Steam since January 22, 2018.