Heads Will Roll: Reforged from Valkyrie Initiative and 1917 Studios is an interesting RPG with branching story paths and challenging battles. Learn more in our Heads Will Roll: Reforged review!

 

Heads Will Roll: Reforged from Valkyrie Initiative and 1917 Studios is an interesting RPG with branching story paths and challenging battles. You’ll be taking on the role of a medieval soldier who finds himself smack in the middle of the Hundred Years War between the Kings of England and France. You’ll sorta be trying to make your way to the top, even if your main focus is really on surviving long enough to see a new day. Starting as a footman, your efforts could end up with you becoming one of the best knights the land has ever seen.

You can play the game in one of four different difficulty settings: Story Mode, Normal, Hard, and Heads Will Roll. When playing in Story Mode, you’ll be able to enjoy the game’s story since enemies will be weakened, combat is simplified, gold is plentiful, and you’ll be able to save at any time, but your profile does not level up. Normal offers the standard experience, balanced to challenge without feeling overwhelming. Stamina and fatigue recovery is simplified, you’ll be able to obtain gold more easily, and you’ll have extra time between battles but your profile nos level up.

If you jump up to the Hard difficulty, then you’ll get an experience that is closer to how the developers expect you to play the game. Fights will be fair, but also a bit more challenging, gold rewards will be standard, you won’t get any bonus time between fights, crafting will require you to have a recipe, the game can be saved between battles… but your profile won’t level up. And then, there’s the Heads Will Roll difficulty setting. For this one, you get almost everything from the Hard difficulty setting, but death is permanent, the game saves automatically, and each death levels up your profile.

 

What this means is that the more you play and the better you do, the easier subsequent runs will be. You’ll unlock additional weapons, armor, trinkets, ranged weapons, pouches, and even consumables. A stronger melee weapon can certainly make a big difference for a new run, but so is having better armor or a sturdier shield. And taking some antidote to nullify light poison or some strong ale to massively relieve some of your fatigue can change how long your current run is going to be. Be sure to mix and match as needed and find the right combination for you!

Once that’s been taken care of, you’ll be offered a chance to create a character randomly or manually configure the character you’ll be playing as. You can set your character’s virtue, which affects how virtuous you are in the eyes of those around you, which will enable or remove some potential interactions for your run. Strength will affect inventory size, damage dealt by strength-based attacks, resistance to being stunned or being bashed by a shield, damage done to armor, your chances to stun enemies, and the heaviness of inflicted injuries.

Agility influences dodge chance, chance to hit, throw accuracy, as well as additional effects on special strikes. Endurance influences your available stamina, dodge chance, and fatigue recovery. Coordination influences stamina recovery and chances to recover successfully. Vitality will boost your maximum hit points. Craftsmanship influences the number of available recipes, quality of crafted armor, and chances of crafting two items instead of one. Melee weapons will represent your proficiency with melee weapons for damage, chance to hit, dodge chance, chance to bypass shields, and additional effects on special strikes. Crossbows will represent your proficiency level for hitting with crossbows and bypassing shields.

Combat is turn-based, and you’ll need to always be on high alert to try and find the best way to overcome even the worst of odds. You can choose to fight with, say, a sword and a shield or go with a more powerful two-handed weapon that can deal considerable damage. One allows you to protect yourself as you find the right time to counterattack your opponent. The other forces you to go on an all-out offensive path that will probably be a bit too aggressive, considering the starting difficulty spike you’ll experience. Learn from your mistakes, give it another go, and adjust as needed.

This one places an equal focus on its story and the combat sections. For the story side of things, the choices you make and the actions you take will have an impact on how things unravel. All of the actions that your character takes will have in-game consequences. Maybe some NPCs will think differently of you based on how you treat them or the choices you’ve made at key points. You won’t be able to see everything that Heads Will Roll: Reforged has to offer if you always make the same choices and act the same way. Your character’s virtue stat value will also play a part in this, opening different interactions as you progress further and further.

There are tons of items for you to find during your journey, from weapons to armor to more peculiarly specific items such as poisons that could be very useful depending on what choices you’re considering or medical supplies that can provide some healing during the worst of items. You must always pay attention to what you can loot because you never know when danger and death will try to sneak into your path. Equipment is accurate to the medieval period. You’ll even be able to craft some items with your supplies to help you along the way.

Heads Will Roll: Reforged is an interesting RPG with branching story paths and challenging battles. You’ll start as a footman and will be making the most of your equipment to try and become a mighty knight. Combat will be turn-based, and you’ll need to make each action count so that you can have a chance to overcome even the worst of odds. With four different difficulty settings, players of all skill levels will be able to take this one for a spin. Heads Will Roll: Reforged is out on Nintendo Switch with a $19.99 price tag.

Disclaimer
This Heads Will Roll: Reforged review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Valkyrie Initiative.