Given the love (even adoration) I have for A Legionary’s Life, and also given that Never Second in Rome is still in Early Access, after the temporary end of my involvement with the latter I felt the need to scour the market to find a game of similar philosophy. All clues pointed towards a game that was originally released in 2021, received an enhanced and optimized "reforged" re-release in 2023, and which was already on my radar and wishlists but for various reason I never ended up dabbling with it... until now. I'm talking about Heads Will Roll, the Reforged version of which managed to take up almost 100% of my gaming time in the last few days.
I would almost describe Heads Will Roll as... Hollywood-made Legionary's Life. The core gameplay is almost identical to Legionary's Life, sometimes a little more simplified and sometimes deeper in terms of mechanics, a little more visually optimized, a lot lighter in terms of writing, and a lot HORNIER (more on that below).
Chronologically, the game takes place somewhere between the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. This historical placement is quite loose, mainly because it ends up depicting events that happened "somewhere in between" these years, such as the Hundred Years' War, the skirmishes between the English and the Scots, and the crusades that started after 1220, centred on Egypt. It is therefore clear that this is not a purely historical narrative like Legionary's Life and Never Second in Rome, which are based on actual historical sources and re-enact real events exactly as they happened.
The protagonist of HWR is an English peasant who joins the army that the nobles raised under their king and sent to the French coast. The game's opening Chapters deal with the siege of the city of Cambrais, but things get a little off track along the way. The game features 4 difficulty levels, the highest of which is essentially a roguelike experience identical to Legionary's Life: permadeath, meta-progression by accumulating points on each run, and using the accumulated points to increase stats and buy better equipment for the next run.
s in Legionary's Life, so in HWR the story chapters consist of an initial preparation stage that we go through in our camp, and the roaming/battles that take place afterwards. In camp we can train our character's skills, buy, repair or craft equipment and consumables, talk to NPCs (who are actually depicted in-game during dialogues, so we're not talking about a purely text-based game) and undertake sidequests of various kinds.
You can already notice that some of the options offered in the camp are deeper compared to those offered in Legionary's Life. The crafting system in particular is a major novelty that involves gathering raw materials and/or combining items, and which, in direct correlation to the protagonist's Craftsmanship skill, is capable of producing powerful items that are not available for sale in a store or as loot.
More or less simplified compared to ALL are the turn-based battles. Mainly because there are fewer attack modes (there is of course a stance option, armor, and other such parameters) and because there's an absence of that detailed listing of stats and percentages that used to accompany each character move in ALL. In HWR you simply pick the attack you want, see its success rate, and act accordingly. Another important aspect is that the ability to use consumables during battles is also offered, which can be the difference between life and death many times.
As for the story narrative in the base game, I would say it is... Y-shaped. At the end of the initial Cambrais chapter we must make a decision, and depending on our choice the rest of the game changes completely. One branch leads to England and Scotland in the service of the king, and in the other we become mercenaries in France and then in Crusader Egypt. What's even more remarkable is that the game's developer releases frequent DLC that adds even more paths to the narrative. For example, one of them offers another branch in the English path in which we help the villain of the "normal" path, while another one offers 2 different branches after Cambrais that are completely new and separate stories. Cheers to the man for constantly enriching his game with new content, ideas and mechanics.
he greatest DLC though is the one that allows us to marry our waifu at the end of each run, which leads me to the game's most important feature. As part of the story we meet various ladies, with whom we gain or lose reputation depending on the quests we complete for them and depending on our stats. For example, there is a Virtue meter in the game that fluctuates depending on our actions, and if this meter is too high then we can't do some dirty deeds that a certain maid in England desires, and as a result we can't max out the rep with her.
And, what happens if we max out the rep and carry out the "final" quest offered by each damsel? Well, of course, sex with the protagonist, and 2 images are unlocked for each damsel, similar in philosophy to the sex cards in the first Witcher game. Also, after purchasing the DLC mentioned above, if the protagonist survives to the story's finale then he can choose which queen with a maxed rep he wants to marry, receiving a special ending to his story.
It's also worth noting that at this stage the available endings of the game are... 31 in number, depending on our decisions, the DLC we've bought, the girls we've courted and the one we finally choose to wed (we can of course ditch them all and choose to continue on the adventurer's path, which offers a different ending).
It becomes clear that Heads Will Roll is a game quite similar but also radically different from Legionary's Life from which it obviously drew inspiration. However, ALL fans will certainly find in HWR some or even much of the magic of the former, especially playing on the higher difficulty level and utilizing meta-progression to make increasingly powerful characters capable of facing challenges that the noob will be simply avoiding in the first few runs.
The game's most recent DLC was released just last December. The pricing of the base game and its DLC is quite low (from 5 to 12 euros), and they are often on discounts of up to 50% or even as part of bundles that include all available DLC. Fans of Legionary's Life, Visual Novels, and Sex Cards, give it a shot and you won't be disappointed.
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