I played the demo and now currently playing the full game and the movement of the characters is smooth, gameplay is just incredible, the bosses is well designed. I like how the dev understand how to make enemies annoying and fun in the same time like OMG it has new mechanics I really LOVED it!.

The graphics is a retro like i cant say much about it ,I just LOVE retro graphics.
I really recommend you to play it.

DEV IF YOU READ THIS I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU DID AN EXCELLENT JOB ON MAKING THIS GAME AND ITS GONNA BE ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAME EVER MADE ❤.

finally it's out!! I've been a playtester for this game for a while & I love the game so much, it's so fun to play as aggressive as possible & there are so many possibilities for cool playstyles with combining scrolls & combat arts. The game also has a built in randomizer option (fog gate randomizer) which is so fun to play after finishing the game

False Hero has a dragon fight. To even have a chance at it, you first have to pierce its heart with a comically massive bolt fired from a comically massive ballista from atop a huge temple. This'll ring some bells; it's all very Hawkeye Gough and Kalameet, but it's a nice touch, and more than you'd ever expect, really. The words 'dragon' and 'soulslike' in the same continent is usually cause for concern, the way this particular sky noodle's been idly flying in circles for the past hour is a little worrying, and honestly, the shot was good enough you'd be forgiven for not anticipating a fight at all.

But then one checks on the corpse and the big guy twitches, yanks out the bolt alongside a veil of blood, and bellows to the heavens as a damn church organ booms to life. Begin stabbing and he'll soon launch into the clouds, projectile vomit lightning, and then stall, the music pausing for air before both lizard and operatic strings cascade with renewed gusto. As is tradition, this dragon fight kind of sucks to play, but you already knew that. The point is that a one-person show with a crunchy retro aesthetic took the soulslike equivalent of the absolute worst thing ever, and laced it with enough delicious pageantry to activate all of the neurons. This, more than anything else, is a soulslike that relishes the details.

You'll gather as much from just its introduction. A commanding voice speaks of a prophecy of Death, growing ever more impassioned as she describes the calamity that has already come to pass. The realms of the four goddesses of Life have fallen to fear and chaos, but there remains a hope: a hero bearing a mask of intellect and rationality forged by the premonition's original recipient. You, then, a once humble scholar equipped with such a mask, emerge from your reverie and follow in the Mask Maker's footsteps, opting either to stand with the goddesses against Death or help it put to rest what little still lingers.

Much of this leaves your imagination twiddling its thumbs, I know , but I think the simplicity is why I'm so into it. As much as we all want to follow along with the average soulslike lore, you'd typically expect to find tell of the nefarious Glue Sniffer attached to the pilfered tunic of some impoverished peasant's corpse, only to find chapter two of his tale following your murder of God itself some 35 hours later, and with that naturally comes a limit to how long most of us will keep up. False Hero's world is still very much your favourite interconnected soup of psychological torture, but it's segmented in such a way that everything you find within each realm is always relevant to its particular goddess and people, resulting in a flow of information that feels very curated, and a mythos spun together with genuine storytelling in mind.

Like any good soulslike, seeing is believing. The lands of the gods are overrun by the inverse of the virtues that once defined them (the goddess Wisdom's has fallen to ignorance, Birth's to decay, et cetera et cetera), and they scar the earth irrevocably. The goddesses wield extraordinary power; witnessing first-hand the foul creativity with which it's turned against the subjects they hold dear is so compelling, and gradually unravelling the events for yourself is so much of the allure.

The actual spaces themselves, however, fluctuate wildly. A fantastic mid-game location opens with an arresting view of the whole area, and you'll spend the next several hours picking your way through the lower quarters before ascending higher and higher. The consistent structural variety aside, learning how the region's malady has affected different walks of life makes for a richer world, and comparing that to the opening poison swamp (there's always one) awkwardly oscillating between the same corrosive marshland and dilapidated interiors over and over and over for far too long... there's no comparison, really.

I suspect a big issue is the lack of goods. All of False Hero's weapons are tied to defeating enemies. Its armour sets are all cosmetic. It's unbelievably stingy with consumables. And it culminates in a loot pool loaded with practically nothing but upgrade materials you're already swimming in. Whether it's a pickup on the side of the main path or behind a secret wall you've been prodding at for a while, what you’ll find is rarely a mystery, and when the only real draw is the sights and smells, you're left with exploration that's not always the most rewarding. Granted, you'll gather a few dozen scrolls providing a great range of passive boosts to this and that in combat, but when you can equip no more than three at a time, it's hard to get excited over every one.

No, the exciting finds are your combat arts. Your guy is a learned individual, see, equipped only with a rubbish sword he barely knows how to use; yet, his mask allows him to study his foes, and should he fell enough of one type, their signature move is the spoils. This is a very clever system. Combat arts require focus you'll generate most reliably from your sword which, in turn, requires stamina to swing. Soulslikes are so engaging because they demand you weigh the cost of every action, and it's commonly resource bars that dictate what you can and can't do in any given moment. Having two constantly cycling still sees you playing by those same rules, but it facilitates so much more forward momentum and combo building in a genre that typically relies on the opposite.

Moreover, as easy as it is to anticipate these sorts of skills as flashy, one-off gimmicks divorced from the moment-to-moment, False Hero's combat arts are more akin to a fully modular and fundamental move set. Between the five you can bind at a time, you can fit a gap closer, light and heavy attacks, something that strikes far, something that strikes wide, and they're all designed to chain faster into each other or your sword than back into itself. The more extravagant among you can stride into battle with combat arts that call forth lightning, fire off lasers, and hurl boulders, but as nice as it is to talk about all these, actually using them is a different story.

The catch with many arts is that they're incredibly slow, and enemies are not. Very early on, you'll get a big sweeping greatsword attack, and it's not that you can't use it, but your foes are so quick, frequently introducing your feet to the Y axis long before you finish casting. Bosses especially zip in and out of your effective range in an instant, and in contrast to a combat system that affords so much fluidity and aggression, most of your opposition is designed with vintage soulslike sensibilities, demanding that you watch and wait for openings. It's vintage for a reason, though; meet them on their terms, and False Hero's boss encounters are excellent throughout, but my first few attempts at particularly the early ones were always spent reconciling the gap between how I felt encouraged to fight and what was ultimately required of me.

But I won't remember False Hero for its slightly mismatched combat, nor for its inconsistent pacing. I'll remember it for its surprisingly great voice acting, and the way the ambient soundtrack swells when you pick a fight with something. I'll remember it for the drama of its world, and each boss's intro cutscene and bespoke second phase. I'll remember it for its killer title theme and the unfathomable aura of its final battle (you have NO idea). Sure, these are some of the most FromSoft flourishes to ever FromSoft, but that's the gig, and precious few replicate that care for the little details quite as earnestly and remarkably as False Hero.

A copy of False Hero was provided to Summit Reviews for the purposes of this coverage.