As someone who played and loved the first trilogy a few years back, I really wanted to see how it'd end. TL;DR: I'd only buy this if you've played all previous games and really want to know what happens next to every single side character. Otherwise, just play the original trilogy again.

Pro's:
- Characters from the original trilogy
It's great to meet old characters again, and play as your old MC, even though it's not the focus of this story, and doesn't last too long

- The action is fast and the writing style is quick as always

- Choices have clear consequences and are well explained
Some COG have you pick choices that seem arbitrary at the time, but turn out to affect the story in a way you didn't intend at all. This saga never had that problem, as far as I remember, and still doesn't.

Cons:
The biggest problem in this story, narratively, comes from it trying to do two things at once. 1) Be the finale of the series, with a huge, world-threatening villain, many returning characters, sacrifices, twists and turns, all that good stuff.
2) Be a social commentary using superpowers as marginalized groups in which you play a young civil rights activist, in a unique position of influence.
Because of this juggling of stories, the following flaws creep in:

- Preachy
When a bi feminist with a tumblr account tells you a story feels preachy, it probably is. Almost every instance of oppression is told to the reader, not experienced by the MC in anything but a throwaway reference to the past. That makes it hard to really care about her cause.
Furthermore, the first trilogy started out as a cartoony world with wacky, diabolical, theatrical villains with personal vendettas against heroes, and family feuds. And in the end, some allegories to oppressed groups, like any proper superhero world, although those don't really fit perfectly with existing marginalized groups. That's fine.
But when this game suddenly decides to really go in-depth to cover such nuanced topics as intersectional oppression,
the previous one-note villains and characters fall flat on their faces.
This extends to the main character. Unless you're very familiar with oppression yourself, it's hard to really connect to their plight. This is made even harder because they only care about two things: JK and the Cause. But the Cause is the most important thing, since it'll influence most of your choices. If MC would've had a flavor hobby, something not very thematically relevant but rounding her as a person to root for, that would've gone a long way for me.

- Rushed
The Hero Project is finished rather quickly, even though it was the entirety of the last game, without any influence of the player on how it ends or who goes through, as far as I can tell. It certainly doesn't feel that way, and in COG games, how your choices feel overrides how they actually are.
Here's how quickly it felt to me the plot-points followed each other: The story needs you to experience Magnuspiral, so no matter whether you chose to stay there or dont, you end up there anyway. Then they tell you all the politics going on in it, even though you're not involved directly, for hand-wavy reasons. Before you do anything with that information, there's a conspiracy to solve, from the previous game. Oh no, big bad world-ending threat with environmental messages! (I thought this was about oppression?) Ah, the world is saved. Oh, right, what to do about that one city you spent 2 months in? The end.

- Info-dumping
You know how in most COG games, if there's a lot of exposition that the author made if you want to delve deeper into the world, but that isn't vital to the story, they'll put it behind a list of choices like -'tell me about [..]' -'tell me about [..]' etc etc with -'Nevermind get on with the story' at the bottom? Yeah. This doesn't have that. I really didn't need to know about the result of the lawsuit against that one nameless character who threw that one missile that one fight. I just wanted to know about the cool new powers i got after the infinitum fight, what i looked like, how they worked... but that wasn't in there.

In the end, both stories could've been interesting, but right now they're a mess of conflicting ideologies and themes. I'd only buy this if you've played all previous games and really want to know what happens next to every single side character. Otherwise, just play the original trilogy again.

I actually liked the first Heroes Rise spin-off Hero Project: Redemption Season despite few flaws. First because of the story, an unique powered hero going into a superhero reality show to save disabled sister. I liked it very much because even in bigger picture as a superhero, it felt personal.

The sequel, if you played the demo, threw the core of this spin-off Hero Project out the way. Titled as Hero Project and making MC being kicked out of the reality show because ‘plot reasons’ didn't click well for me. With core concept that I liked out the way, main character is thrown into situations I personally chose not to be yet I still was going into it, forcefully. As a CYOA, I should be able to choose how I want to progress my adventure? Atleast same goal through different path/method? Lack of variations with replay value only down to different type of motivations is disappointing also.

Then, there were given a lot of old and new groups and characters with new motivations and political stances. Characters are 'rebranding' and changing new group regularly, which is tedious for me to keep checking characters stat screen to understand what is happening. In the end I just couldn’t care about anyone else except few core characters especially from main trilogy.

And the political agendas? It was just too much to process with a lot characters jumping around and was felt as forceful, especially after playing as First MC shortly and his agenda still feels closer to the heart than the new one. Shows what quality Heroes Rise trilogy have compared to this spinoff. I respect the author for juggling so many characters, groups, stats etc but it all just didn’t fit together. It felt 'Disembodied'.

Only good thing is short but sweet opportunity to play as original series MC and teamwork towards final villain,that raised more questions than answers. Not the conclusion or 'bonus' epilogue I was expecting, again didn't click well for me. That is my two cents anyway, for anyone still interested, please go ahead and try for yourself. Not recommended for anyone looking to play superhero CYOA. Try something else.

4/10 More to political than superhero.

To start, I played every other Heroes Rise game but this spin-off doesn't hold a candle to the original trilogy. This 'game' reads like a very bad comic, no freedom of choice because the outcome is always the same and even if your ideals are different from the author, you are forced to pick an option that agreees with them.
I'd hoped that the bad parts from Redemption Season would be improved and the story would actually pick up a bit. Sadly, this is not the case. I found the MC to be very boring and whiny in the first game, giving long speeches about the unfairness of their situation and fighting for ' the rights of the underrepresented'. It was fine as a sideplot or a background motivation but it has become the sole focus of the series. You are constantly faced with walls of text discribing one unfairness or another and you barely get to see any action. When something does happen, it is presented in a very passive way. ' You are watching teammate X fight enemy Y' and so on. It kills any sort of immersion, it's like reading a weather forecast instead of fighting a dangerous battle.

As said in the introduction, you are also incredibly rail-roaded in your choices. You want to fight for the things you believe in? That's great just make sure you believe in Anipowered and Underrepresented rights. Also make sure to remind everyone else of this in like every conversation even if you spoke with them five minutes ago.
You are also constatly bombed with advertisements which encourage you to buy every other game from the author and needless upgrades like the Mechip warning system. I am not against some promotion of your works but keep it nice, don't throw an advertisement in my face after almost every chapter.

Pros:
-This sequel finishes the Hero Project story, sort of. (You get a vague bonus ending hinting at another installment)
-Might gain cult status from its own awfulness.

Cons:
-No real choices, plays like a kinetic novel of very low quality.
-MC feels like a self-insert of the author, no real player choice beside gender/sexuality
-Characters feel bland and uninspired. Most of the cast represent a minority and the MC automatically likes them because of this. However, take this aspect of their identity away and you are left with cardboard figures.
-Most of the characters from the original trilogy have gone through 'rebranding'. In my opinion it takes away what made them special in the first place. The focus on white costumes was also a big cliche (white is good, black is evil).
-General bad writing, it is a pain to get through this story and I was glad when I reached the end.

I bought this game and its cash-grabbing DLCs for one reason, straight out of its launch: to support the author.
Zachary had made one of the most powerful Choice of Games titles, Heroes Rise, and successfully created a culture around it. I had not yet read Redemption Season, but I thought I knew it would be good, simply because it was from him.

I was wrong. Open Season and Redemption Season were titles that served more as a political agenda and lecture other than a good story, a game, or an adventure. Zachary showed this kind of attitude in the second installment of his other Choice of Games series, Versus. It was awful then, and just as bad now.

If I were to point all the wrongs in the game as passionately as I wanted to I would end up writing a novel like he did, judging you, the reader of this review, for any action, thought or feeling you have that doesn't coincide with my view of what you should be thinking, doing and feeling.

Instead of making references to specific sections of the story or writing a novel myself, I'm going to make a few fine pointers as to why this game is, unfortunately, saddening disappointing and bad as an adventure that advocates choice and freedom of action.

Before that, a small quote from a character in the story:
"I hit the history holo-books to study past revolutions. And I learned that social change in particular seems to happen in a very specific pattern: awareness of a social issue is usually expressed first in art and writing. This cultural awareness eventually validates and inspires legal action, which, if successful, finally takes concrete shape in the form of laws."

Ultimately, that's what this story was almost all about.

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Cons:

- The game judges you all the time.

- Your opinions influence your stats, not allowing you to follow the path you really want, or to be successful on it, if you want to take actions based on circumstances, rather than your character's supposed thoughts over one thing or another.

- The game puts you in "tiny little digestible boxes", something that the very second book in the series condemned through an extensive gender discussion.

- The game constantly tells you what you are, what you think, and what you want to strive for, despite your choices.

- The multitude of characters ends up being just noise, since most of them have barely any significance, besides little lore-building, and creating another micro-transaction for the game. You can safely ignore them for the most part, which makes a good portion of the story quite skippable.

- Romance is defined by the previous game, and you have no opportunities to change your feelings, opinions or romantic relationships with the characters, only to progress a previous romance choice, if any.

- Varied, yet shallow romance options, most of them not even able to be classified as such. Better not to have it than to have it as it is.

- Your relationships stats with the characters change based on your current opinion, which, at certain points of the game might be negative, positive or even indifferent because you haven't had a chance to know the characters. But your very thoughts can be used against you, even if you believe you are simply answering the game's questioning of what your own character believes. Sometimes, even the actions that you don't get to take, but that you wanted to and chose to try, affects you as if they had happened. Surprisingly, some actions towards the characters might not really influence your relationship stats with them. If you don't like to be judged by the game, wait until every character starts hating you for doing/thinking what they, themselves, said they would/should do in your place.

- You need to constantly struggle to find the right combinations of stats on your battle actions, because the game won't tell you which action represents which combination, and it's not at all obvious (rather, depends on the author's beliefs).

- Both the DLCs are a waste. The Warning System will tell you to be consistent throughout the game, which is actually no advice given the game's structure, and the character database has no importance or real depth, just like the characters themselves.

- Most character stats are confusing, because the choices that you believe would influence them can have quite an opposite effect. You have no way of knowing what the author believes signify an act of Vision, or Compassion, Anarchy or Authority, Assuredness or Adaptability, and you can't follow a role you set to yourself even if you want to because of that. Unless you have a strategy guide, which defeats the purpose of exploring the game your own way.

- There is little opportunity to genuinely build bridges and relationships with the other characters. Everything seems a bit superficial because they all come and go too quickly, sometimes despite anything you can do, and you may find yourself not caring about the stats in the first place.

- There are a number of holes in the story, about character's reactions, the public opinion, and the weight of your actual thoughts and actions (and not just your own), that can cause the impression that nothing really matters--the story follows its own course, despite what you do. You just choose which color it has.

- Other hero's powers don't seen to come up naturally. Instead, they just do to fulfill a particular plot. It doesn't seem to really contribute to their personality, and can be rather confusing and... irrelevant.

- You don't always get to know what your character is looking like, or what powers you get from his transformations, and mostly they don't matter anyway, because although the physical descriptions will affect your visualization of the character, the powers themselves will always fit with the 4 possible combinations of powers: Defensive or Offensive, with Physical or Intangible. Somethings a few more in between. Either way, there isn't a genuine way you can benefit from the changes, they are there, again, simply to fulfill the plot.

- By the time the story ended, I couldn't stand to hear the word "Underrepresented" anymore. Seems everything was about it. The main character, the Hero Project, the secondary stories, the characters, everything.

- For the supposed "Redemption Season" that the Hero Project went through, and all the inconsistencies and corruption from the main trilogy, nothing has really changed.

- Some situations and descriptions, especially so in battle, are inconsistent with what was described previously.

- Some ending plots aren't really an ending.

- Very little character depth besides a couple of few main characters.

Pros:

- The story moves onto larger topics that go beyond the political agenda of the author. Finally, something about the game itself.

- For a good portion of the game, the story tells you how you feel, but then there is a moment in which that is lifted a bit and you have the opportunity to choose things yourself. Briefly.

- The sections where you play with the original trilogy's main character are the prime example within this very story that it could have been much more. No politics, just a good story, interesting characters, a challenge to overcome, and your choices on how to think, feel and act.

- There are many nods to the previous entries in the series, and especially so to those who romanced Prodigal.

- It has quite a strong super hero comic feel to it, even more so than the previous books.

Knowing the truth, you, the reader, now feels:

( ) Angry
( ) Overwhelmed
( ) Frustrated
( ) Relieved it's over. Kind of over.
( ) Devastated
( ) Hurt
( ) Disappointed
( ) Bittersweet
(x) All of the above

[ THE END ]

And I loved the series. I really did, even with many reservations. Now, not so much anymore.

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Is this good? That's what you come here for right?

(an edit? Already?)

(A second edit? The day after?)

Short answer, It's bad, but read it if you've read the others and want an ending, albeit a dissapointing one.

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I've finished thew first chapter and it's a bit fo a dumpster fire. I genuinely loved the original trilogy and because i like the writing style of the author, i liked redemption season. This however, in one chapter has just magnified everything wrong with the first spin-off novel.

Gone are the days of creating your identity, now we're slapped with gender alegories and proto-social justice, everything is a slight against your character apparently, not you. ou don't get much of a chance to relate to the character you make ehre because likely, you're not int he demographic that the character is an allegory for. You could handle it in the first trilogy, but now? It's practically shoving ti down your throat.

When asked to identify how you wish to proceed, you're given six options and all of them are about pursuing rights for your character's identity. One wasn't, because it was about helping your sister. Hell the first three chocies you get are about how best to be an SJW, which would be fine, if i actually got to chose where i sat on the issue. The flaws show, and they hurt the story because the beauty of these novels, is the ability to create your character, fromt he look, to the pwoers. here you have no control and you and the next personr eading this will have the same experience, aside from the few extremely similar choices.

I don't even get the choice about whether some thigns insult me, one character said something, a slip of the tongue and my choices are all "♥♥♥♥ you", "ill educate you later", "She's ignorant", "♥♥♥♥ you" or chew her out then and there. Where's the option for, i dont care?

I'm a bit harsh on it right now and hopefully as i go through this, it'll get better and i love it, but for now. It's a no from me.

(Edit)

After reading the next three chapters though, it gets better and worse. The twists are good, the writer still has his skill, but his political agenda reers its ugly head too often to not be an issue. Stick through this to chapter 3 and it gets better, but those first two chapters, it doesn't change their overall lackluster quality.

(Edit numero dos)

Okay, so this book is a fluctuation. It starts horrid, too much political pandering. Then it gets good, really leading into a sense of mystery. "what's next? Who's doing this?" Then it goes downt he drain again. The politics is agonizing, but the moments of being the original MC is fantastic, though painfully short. You could wish for much mroe from this, but we'll never get it, as this story is agonizingly short compared to the rest(don't let my 10 hours fool you. I had this open for about four hours that i watched the overwatchleague for). I came out of this dissapointed ultimately.

I expected more from the author, because he's good. And when he kidna sets back into his original trilogy steps, he's good. I wish he slipped into that stream more, but unfortunately he didnt and what we were left with was an ultimately dissapointing story with a thoroughly lackluster ending, especially considering the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ending epilogue (there's two). It sets up another story that we're never getting. End a story, don't write a new one instead.

A lot of my issues come from a background of being a writer myself. Hence my distaste for the ending. It's an epilogue at the end of the fifth book in a world, but it sets up another story in the world? It doesn't make sense from a story-driven perspective, it only adds to a sense of dissapointment that this is the end.

Ultimately, i hope we get more of this world, allbeit under another name. I see that he wants to write more ehre, but his public announcements say somethign else entirely.

Even as a diehard fan of the Heroes Rise series, I found it somewhat hard to enjoy this as much as the others. The political spiels that made Redemption Season as controversial as it was are still present, along with a good amount of railroading, confusing stats, disappointing romance options, and a rushed plot- the whole final apocalypse arc felt somewhat shoehorned in.

I did enjoy seeing the original trilogy characters though, having the old Heroes Rise MC back was almost like catching up with an old friend, even if their character is pretty much the same no matter what choices you made in the original trilogy. Still, I'll take what I can get.

Overall, you should probably stay away from this if you didn't like Redemption Season, unless you really love Heroes Rise and want to see the conclusion, as much of a trainwreck said conclusion is, especially after that damned bonus scene. But personally, if I wanted a good ending, I would pretend HeroFall was the final book.

I really, really wanted to like this one. The first Trilogy was awesome, like unable to put it down fun to read. It was always a bit tell-don't-show-y, but I really felt like I was driving that ship and that my character was mine. So, despite bad reviews, I wanted to get Redemption and Open Season to see where all of my favourite characters ended up!

Do not do this. Redemption was a struggle to get through, with its forced political stances and illusions of choice, but at least some of the characters were fun! I couldn't finish Open season. I did everything in my power to not make a certain choice, but was forced to make a choice anyway because of the author's clear ideologies making their way into the story and constantly trying to force their political agenda on my character. If I wanted to be preached at I'd read twitter for five minutes, not pay $5 for a game that isn't interesting or clever enough in its politics to keep me interested in the weak story.

Have Herofall be your ending, and skip this one. Really disappointing. :(

TL;DR "Where is the mixed review option?"

I enjoyed the battles and relationships/friendships, and possibly due to the nature of some of the characters in this one and the ending; would very much enjoy seeing these characters become big members of Versus.

However, because of the initial introduction of all of these new characters, groups and different powers did feel very jarring and disconnected, as well as all of the new political or anti-political agendas that almost seem to force additional choices and consquences in just to increase the story/game that little bit further.

Current feelings after my first playthrough are very mixed. Maybe, after another playthrough or two I will come to enjoy this final "book" of The Hero series after getting used to what I found to be jarring on the first playthrough, or maybe I won't, it's hard to say at this point.

This was an incredible story. I have read these all the way from the beginning, and I'm thrilled to have finished them. I can't wait to see how this connects to the Versus series. I'm most definitely going to be reading every single title that comes from this author. The characters and the story were just brilliant. I do have a few questions that were left unanswered, but I hope that they'll come to a close in the Versus series. I am more than happy to give this a 10/10. And yes, you should read them all.

I was a fan of the original trilogy that this game came out of; and playing it now in it's current iteration, and scouring the code, I have to say I'm not a fan of how or where the direction of this game is going.

When you look at the Original 'Hero Project' in the initial trilogy you had people like Black Magic acting extraordinarily rude, and some dilemnas forming. And at times the games did seem inconsistent at times. You would have the opening of 'The Prodigy' tell you about how debates on things akin to race, or sexuality seemed to have been overcome in lieu for debates regarding powers, but outside of a debatical of how your character got bullied, the 'Gene Hazard' slurs, and disdain for Powered individuals at large and not 'in regards to their individual power sets' save for the Infini powered, you don't really get a taste for any sort of 'systematic' prejudice. And that was more so out of fear of how the Infini-powered could be extraordinarily dangerous to the planet, so it has some precedence, a reasonable font of fear. If someone could nuke a city like Prodigal could, you'd be wary!

And it felt like, only in the 'Hero Project' in this one odd aside between Stage Show, GG, Null, The Bear, and yourself, did any societial issues seem to come up. Monk and Fistfull always came in the plot to serve as a discussion piece, there were Ani-gangs earlier on, and I won't deny Smyther and Culic provide an interesting light on the Animalistic powered individuals.

But the zany, almost cartoony antics of the first three hit a very sour nearly preachy note in this duology continuation. Which was initially going to be three books, I believe. Might have done better longer, or would've been worse!

But let's poke at Redemption Season. Redemption Season is extraordinarily 'tell and not show'. Outside of perhaps a few moments of harsh looks from say Miss Boss or the like (And Miss Boss for all flaws, does tell you it's more 'I'm adjusting to how you look, rather than eugh!'), Griffin being well Griffin, and a süber/süper car avoiding you due to thinking you're a 'thug' there's very little in regards to 'discrimation' being something the player goes through.

You hear they have trouble finding a job, and other nuances like that, but we don't go through experiences or choices. And while normally it's alright to 'tell' some things, when the major crux of your character is 'discrimination' you definitely need a moment, or a few, where your character is faced with adversity. The aforementioned taxi-ride where they ride of on you, isn't explored. Miss Boss gets seen in a very positive light, so on.

Now I'm going to explore two facets of both these books before I continue on. In the original trilogy, you could fail. You'd take a heavy 'legend' loss, but you could fail. Especially in combat matters. When you look at this duology, you can lose in Redemption Season to votes if your stats aren't high enough or you screw around, but otherwise combat stats have no meaning outside of a few meager rewards. You can literally go into combat and flounder like a fish and nothing of consequence will happen.

Saving Miss Boss in Redemption Season? Hope you were very Societal or else she died, being private gets you punished! No combat stat!

Casualities in the Warehouse Mission in Open Season? Based on your relationship status with said characters, over picking the right options.

Then the next thing I find off in the Duology is the 'Legend' points. Don't get me wrong, it's a sort of 'achievement' but it sorta sets a precedent for a 'right' way to play. But they held such a better meaning in the first series where the protagonist was very enamored with the idea of being a 'hero'. And that the games offered you ways to reach perfect Legend whether you were 'bad' or 'good'.

In the Duology sometimes this can be a bit hard or unintuitive. Don't get me wrong; Legend is STUPID at times, like 'The Prodigy' requiring you to doubt your sidekick at all times, or how in Open Season you need to guess the plot's final antagonists ahead of time or you lose out on 10 legend.

But it felt at times you'd be rewarded Legend for such esoteric choices, or how if you were a 'Private' person in Redemption Season, you'd HAVE to sell out StarSoar, or HAVE to let Miss Boss fall to earn these points. Railroading you a bit. And Legend didn't have any weight to it in the duology, was just an archaeic carry-over that held no meaning.

And if you chose to sell out StarSoar, vote out Transfer, or let Miss Boss die, you would be confronted constantly with messages of 'you're contributing to social injustice' blurbs, instead of delivering that message through chrarcter dialogue like JK, or just not actively trying to make you feel bad for your options. You could Depower Black Magic in 'HeroFall' and you didn't receive so much flack about it as you do voting out Transfer, multiple times in the game.

But let's get to Open Season.

The critical flaw of this game is; Magnuspiral. Why?

You spend the first trilogy fighting these city-leaders for the most part. 4/6ths of them are known terrorist, gang-leaders, doomsday weapon creators, so on. Murderers, prostitution ring leaders, so on. Instead of employing these individuals as perhaps custodians for the Spiral, defenses, or funding it (initially, perhaps something the MC could alter later), your choices for leadership fall to either the MC who is more than likely SORELY underequipped for a leadership role of an entire new sovereign entity, Culic who literally blew up bridges and trains and killed people to drain their lifeforce to fuel a superweapon that would turn everyone into Ani-powered individuals, or Smyther the guy who led the Splice Circle and all their illicit activities, fueled Ani-Gang wars, and recruited lost Powered individuals to said corrupt institutions.

Are these characters in question skilled and resourceful? Absolutely.
Are they already in charge of the Magnuspiral? Sure.

Do you think it feels right to be campaigning for the rights of a city ran by either a terrorist, a crime boss, or a hero who has never ran any type of 'order' or 'group' excluding brief moments on the Hero Project and a mission in a Warehouse?

That the best representation for the 'Underpowered' leadership were the worst names possible?

And there were other moments in the narrative too. Things like the ending being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cash-grab for a sequel in Versus 3, when it was implied this game be an ending for this story/universe. Your closure with the world-ending bad guy is 'They're teleported to Versus 3, not defeated.'

Or things like Prodigal resurrecting themselves, after dying twice, to reveal someone like the Menagerie had kids with Miss Artillery in a very underexplained and half-ass method. Thematically it was an amazing place to have this reveal; but it feels so underutilized and not fleshed out. For example; you can make the Menagerie the owner of the Assassin Academy that Miss Artillery owned. But in prior stories, once that Academy got shot down, she ran up to her old flame, Mr. Victon and begged to be useful for him. It beggars belief. Or the idea of the Menagerie being a hero, a provider, all that. It's good for the MC to reflect, and it's an excuse for them to have 'Infini' powers, but I was sorely disappointed that there wasn't more of an explaination for each 'Menagerie'. Just Miss Artillery humped this Ani-powered guy too, probably when she was still drooling over the one-day President. Sure sure.

And the romantic power of the duology feels a bit weak.
Transfer is a good romance. Black Magic/Null/Lucky are pretty much exchangable. The MC romance is tacked on, literally 'let's go out for coffee', Griffin hates you, Miss Boss is in a coma, StarSoar is referred to more in 'passing' than he actually makes an appearance in both books, Crystalline was a dead end, and Verdict? Lol, Verdict was complete garbage.

Author needs more feedback tbh