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Making Bionicle Heroes fun - No Upgrades


aidenpons
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While playing Bonkle Heroes and being unimpressed with the difficulty (or lack thereof), I thought it'd be fun to try and play the game with absolutely no upgrades.


Normally, as you play, you go off to Balta and spend all your Technic bits on armor, weapon upgrades, and interactable abilities. The result is a game that is extremely boring as you can float through most enemies with Nuparu's nuclear missile launcher and gun down bosses with Hahli, taking minimal damage - and if you do happen to lose a mask, well, they respawn if it's a mask you don't have so you can just pick it up again (and they even show up on the radar!)

 

In addition to the no-upgrade rule, I also didn't allow myself to use the Piraka after you unlock them except for required interactions and in Hero Mode. Furthermore, I wasn't allowed to be scummy with picking up masks to heal (although completing all the levels with 'one-mask-only' would be obnoxiously un-fun, so I didn't try).

 

This made the game extremely interesting for a number of reasons.

 

The biggest change was the result of no interactable abilities. This massively cuts down on your income, as the areas typically locked behind these areas are floating with studs (and canisters). The result of this is that Hero Mode (which, for those who haven't played, is invincibility until you interact with a Gold Construction (usually neccessary for progress, especially boss battles) triggers much later. When I played it through with upgrades I'd get Hero Mode much earlier than I needed it, and now not only did I nuke things with Nuparu, I was also invincible.

I wasn't expecting this to have the biggest impact, but... it did.

 

The second biggest change was that I had to learn about the enemy AI. In normal BH you can just charge in, throw a nuke, take a heart of damage or so, and everything just blows up around you. Not anymore! Now I need to be wary of the Bohrok's rolling attack during which they're invincible, the jumping and spitting of the Visorak and how to dodge it, Vakhi shockwave attacks, and so on. This was really interesting to see the actual AI - it's surprisingly in depth - and learn how to dodge. You never do this in a normal game, as if something somehow survived the first nuke from Nuparu's hand, well it doesn't survive the second! This was the result of....

 

... the third biggest change, massively decreased damage output. Jaller's fire spitter deals absolutely trash damage, Hewkii's (slow and lumbering) rocket can't OHKO things even if it does hit, Nuparu is now just bad, Kongu's crossbow won't do anything unless they're right in front of you (in which case they're shooting you). I'll talk about this a little later.

 

The fourth biggest change, and the least changing, was the lack of survivability. It seems to me that when you get armor, it doesn't just reduce the amount of damage you take: instead when you get a hit that first hit does no damage. If a second hit lands in a brief period of time, you'd take reduced damage.

Now, of course.... well, both hits deal full damage!

However the game is too friendly with its mask placement & that masks respawn when you lose them (likely to prevent softlocks from losing a critical mask) that you can't lose.

 

 

This didn't really change how many of the levels played out, especially the 'story' ones - the masks are so frequent and the enemies so sparse that, while it is more challenging (especially the enemy-rich Jungle stages), it's now 'fun' as opposed to 'boring.' However the biggest change were the boss battles.

 

The Piraka have a zamor attack that creates an insanely huge shockwave. However, as pointed out above, if you have the armor upgrades two zamors need to hit for you to take one damage. WIth no armor... well.. you'll take two damage :P I had to learn to see this coming and learn how to dodge it. Similarily the enemy spams they summon were now actually challenging to kill, as opposed to 'bring on the next lot please.'

 

 

Levels of note include:

 

- Zaktan's boss battle: the enemies are tough and numerous, not to mention Zaktan has always been one of the more difficult bosses. Also, because you can't use abilities to open up access to vast stacks of Technic pieces, you have to fight a lot of them for Gold Mode. This was a lot of fun.

- Rakshi levels, especially later ones (Desert and Jungle) - the 'shield down' gap is so small it's very easy to miss.

- Reidak's boss battle: a mess even with full upgrades, with none you will be scurrying from mask to mask just to stay alive sometimes

- Avak's boss battle: his minion summoning now cannot be cleared out with a click of the button with Nuparu, and attacks arrive from all directions.

 

- Any post-Piraka Vezon fight. Vezon is one of the few enemies with a sizeable HP pool (other bosses just need to be hit when their shield is down). Due to a lack of damage output, this can be quite slow and hard - and Vezon's attacks here are nearly undodgeable and a decent amount of luck (you can still avoid most hits, just not all). Kongu can't deal any damage as his damage drops with range and Fenrakk's head is quite high up, Nuparu is good at spread damage and miserable against a single target, Hewki's rocket always misses, Matoro takes ages to reload but is still a solid choice, Jaller just sucks - the best choice is Hahli. I'm not sure why Hahli does so much damage, but my theory is her piercing missiles hit Fenrakk's hitbox twice or even more, resulting in massive damage (boot up BH on your full upgrade save file and try shooting Fenrakk with Halhi, then with Jaller. Jaller is so much slower as his missiles don't pierce).

Particular mention must go to Vezon's post-Thok fight. There is no space to manouver and the only two respawning masks are Hewkii and Nuparu, of all things - the absolute worst at dealing with Vezon!
 

 

Levels that were less fun include:

 

- Roodaka boss battle: this level always was a pain and continue to be so, as you're on a small platform there's no room to manouver whatsoever

- Sidorak's Visorak spam is just a spam and not fun to fight

- Vezok is still a joke

- This didn't affect the final Vezon fight almost at all aside from having to dodge more attacks than otherwise

 

 

My ranking of characters:

- Matoro. The only person who can one-shot a Vahki when zoomed in. You get pretty used to aiming at something, right-clicking to zoom in, left-click to fire, right click to zoom out again :P I did get a couple of 360 noscopes!

- Halhi. Solid DPS and good speed.

- Jaller. Not because he can shoot for damage (he can't) but because he's the fastest of the bunch.

Everybody else is pretty mediocre

- Nuparu is still solid for spread damage but can't deal high single-target damage

- Hewkii's rocket has high damage but  really low area of effect and because it's so slow it nearly always misses

- Kongu only does high damage when the enemy is right in front of him, which always results in you taking damage

 

 

 

So yeah! One wall of text later, I managed to make Bionicle Heroes fun. I can reccomend! :D

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