Heads Will Roll: Reforged
Hardcore survival RPG with non-linear story that lets you play as a young medieval soldier who over the course of battles and adventures becomes the most formidable and respected knight of his era. Or, if he’s not lucky enough, perishes in the chaos of the Hundred Years' War.
Heads Will Roll: Reforged is a replay value, war and dark game
developed by 1917 Studios
and published by Valkyrie Initiative.
Released on October 04th 2023 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 2 languages: English and Russian.
It has received 870 reviews of which 766 were positive and 104 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 12.49€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Heads Will Roll: Reforged into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Heads Will Roll: Reforged through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7/8/10
- Processor: Any CPU with SSE2 instruction set support: Intel Pentium 4+, AMD Athlon 64+
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: OpenGL 3.0
- DirectX: Version 8.1
- Storage: 1 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX® Compatible
MacOS
- OS: Any relatively modern version of macOS
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: OpenGL 3.0
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Linux
- Processor: Any CPU with SSE2 instruction set support: Intel Pentium 4+, AMD Athlon 64+
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: OpenGL 3.0
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Heads Will Roll: Reforged This game is buggy, messy, and filled with typos. It also struggles with technical limitations, such as a lack of resolution options and occasional graphical issues. So, why am I giving it a positive review? Because Heads Will Roll: Reforged offers some of the best replayability I’ve ever experienced in a game. The developer is extremely active, constantly improving the experience with new paths, fixes, and updates (wish he did a bit more with some of typo fixes but I prefer progress on DLC over that). This game truly feels like the definition of a diamond in the rough. Keeping it simple I'll break down this review into what I liked and disliked about it. Likes: 1. Replay Value Replayability is the core of this game, and for good reason: there are an astonishing number of paths and decisions, each with meaningful consequences and differences between events and routes. The branching narratives diverge significantly, offering a new experience with every playthrough -though Cambrai can get exhausting doing it over and over again even if enjoy it, kinda like Taris from Kotor in a manner of speaking-. I also highly recommend getting the DLC, which enhances the game and makes it feel even more complete. Would enjoy if some events were acknowledged more later on in the story like killing De Roche or managing to fight Ruffin to a standstill... cause is weird when is discussed as if he beat you even though it took his crony surprise stabbing you in the leg for him to come out on top. 2. Combat System The combat strikes a satisfying balance between simplicity and depth. It allows for a wide array of strategies against groups of enemies, making encounters consistently engaging. Although when start getting OP and fighting mooks it can become basically neck spam. On that note, I do like how hard enemies are placed in a logical fashion rather than some janky level scaling system, which makes the combats feel more immersive. 3. Achievement Hunting If you’re into achievements, this game delivers. The achievements guide you to explore every nook and cranny of the game’s content, making it incredibly rewarding for completionists. 4. Consequences and Flexibility Failure in combat, ability checks, or decision-making doesn’t result in a dead-end. Instead, the game adapts to your choices (and mistakes), providing consequences while keeping the story moving forward. This flexibility makes the experience feel both dynamic and immersive. 5. Developer Dedication The developer’s commitment to the game is remarkable. Frequent updates improve gameplay mechanics and address player feedback. For example, a tweak to soldiers made managing companions in combat significantly better, though it’s inaccessible across some routes such as those outside of Knight and Mercenary. 6. Crafting System The crafting system lets you be extra super prepared thoroughly before combat. Whether it’s stocking up on certain potions, poisons or tailoring your loadout, you’re encouraged to be " extra super duper " prepared often, especially in the tougher routes and parts of the game. Do wish for crafting that they'd let you just automatically craft it instead of needing to look a recipe and then manually drag the item over you're planning to use for crafting. 7. Ironman Mode For those who love a challenge, Ironman Mode lets you push your strategic limits. Success can yield incredibly overpowered characters with the awarding of points based on your success in routes, adding another layer of replayability. Additionally by completing certain tasks, challenges and routes certain items become available for you to select in manual creation. 8. DLC Enhancements Each DLC iteration improves the game’s depth and quality. The added content feels substantial, rather than tacked on. Dislikes: 1. Inventory Management While it has improved compared to earlier versions, inventory management remains clunky. Crafting components are particularly cumbersome, and it’s strange that herbs occupy the same amount of space as full plate armor. Think it might be some limitation with renpy. 2. Typos Despite the engaging, period-appropriate writing, the game has numerous typos scattered across its chapters. This detracts from the otherwise immersive and engaging storytelling. 3. Combat Stats and Mechanics Transparency Understanding the inner workings of combat mechanics can be frustrating. Aside from basic stats like "to hit" and "armor protection," other critical numbers—such as enemy block chance or reach bonus/penalty—are either hard to find or not mentioned at all. The tutorial covers the basics but doesn’t go far enough in explaining these systems. 4. Resolution Lock At the time of writing, there is no way to increase the game’s resolution. This is particularly problematic for ultrawide monitors like my 3440x1440 setup, where there is also a weird bug where fullscreen mode causes brightness issues in other applications and tabs. It is quite bothersome and can only be fixed on a restart to my knowledge. Final Thoughts: Heads Will Roll: Reforged is far from perfect, but its strengths—particularly its replayability and the developer’s ongoing dedication—make it an experience worth diving into. If you can look past its technical flaws and occasional rough edges, you’ll find a uniquely rewarding game that keeps getting better with every update. Oh yeah 1917 Studios, add more maidens (or CGs for current ones) and cool trinkets please.
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Overall Experience: A Truly Unique and Great Hidden Gem Played for 20+ hours so far. About Description Pros [*]Immersive flash-style RPG game with multiple endings. [*]High replayability roguelite mode. [*]Passionate Dev, you can tell this game contains this man’s heart and soul. Definitely expect more to come from this team. Cons [*] Unless you’re 30+ years old and played a bunch of flash games when you were a child, I think the flash UI is too inconvenient for modern gamers and thus deters many people from trying this game. The initial difficulty curve is also quite brutal and not very rewarding because you’ll most likely fail 60% of the prompts as a randomly generated character. [*]There is minimal handholding and the game even tells you that this is for “survival”. The game doesn’t really give you any breathing room if you plan on doing some of the quests as a randomly generated peasant. The power fantasy part of the game comes after you die many, many times. [*]Some of the trinkets don't explain what they do (e.g., Fair Maiden Medallion) and I couldn’t find any information online either. [*]Need translation to multiple languages at some point. I bet this thing does well if it has a Chinese version. [*]The font style takes a long time to get used to; maybe add an option to change it to a less harsh font. Conclusion I’m glad that I accidentally stumbled upon this gem. It brought back a lot of memories of playing old flash games. If you’re bored with all the similarly looking AAA games, this is a great change of scene, and you can really slow down and enjoy the vision that the dev wanted you to see. The best thing about this game is the dev team because you know they read these reviews, and they’ll definitely improve the experience somewhere down the line.
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EDIT 1: After writing this review I went and played it for another three hours, so... Maybe I was a little harsh. The good parts are so good. And not ALL the writing is terrible. Just... some of it. EDIT 2: Ok here I am post-Not A Hero DLC, 50 hours in, to say that a lot of the QoL issues with this game have been fixed, and while it is pretty simplistic... yeah, it's fun. I enjoyed it. I may have been slightly harsh in this review. But also, the latest DLC fixed a lot of annoying stuff and expanded the game in small but meaningful ways, like civic talents. Free visits to the Brothel, anyone? I'll leave the review as is, because the issues are the issues. But it's a fun time. I wish there was a sideways thumb for this game. At its core it is awesome, a fantastic evolution of the Legionary's Life concept. But it is written and presented like a fan-made visual novel. And not in a good way. If you see this game as a VN with gameplay, it's the best VN ever made. But it could be so much more than that and it left me disappointed. See below. Pros: - Some very fun gameplay. Combat is easy to learn, hard to master. Fights are tough, and winning one feels great. - Lots of possible directions for your story to go in, and roguelike scaling + permadeath mechanics, encourage replayability and careful decision-making. Some real "damned if you do, damned if you don't" story moments that make you stop and think. - The story and setting are immersive (mostly - see Cons) and unafraid to throw curveballs at you if you don't get your shit together. Shades of Darkest Dungeon in the sense of "if you're not ready for this fight/event, it's your fault for not preparing." Also, many waifus to assist and eventually seduce, an essential element of any good RPG. (Shame about the lack of male waifus, but, that's feudal Europe for you I suppose). - Hard enough on roguelike/permadeath difficulty that you can easily die, but quick enough (thanks to the classic VN Skip Text feature) to start a new run. The game doesn't hold your hand but it does explain itself well enough. Good at making you feel strong for one Act, then weak again in the next. Great diversity of weapons, armor, and items without being needlessly complicated. Cons: - The story outline, characters and decisions in this game are great. The line-by-line writing itself, however, is absolutely atrocious. It's hard to explain how bad it is. It's just really bad. Every single sentence is overlong, flowery prose, using ten words where two would do, while somehow describing the situation in the least artful way possible. There are also constant changes in tone and character behaviour. Characters will veer between formal, historically appropriate lingo and colloquial, quippy emotional outbursts, usually within the same conversation. This game, except for the combat, is almost entirely description and dialogue. About half of it is written to the approximate literary standard of fanfiction. I'm unsure what the developer's first language is, and thus unsure if this is just poor translation or lack of writing talent, but either way, it is poor quality for a game that cost me twenty bucks, and is otherwise so compelling. Whoever wrote the text in this game, quite frankly, should have paid someone else to do it. - The above is not helped by extremely poor text editing and proof-reading. Repeated misuse of pretty basic English (like "cease" and "seize" being confused in a key story moment). *Constant* misspellings and formatting mistakes, including regular changes in tense within the same sentence. I'm talking nearly every sentence has something obvious wrong with it. Even running the script through spellcheck a few times would have made some serious improvements. It's really distracting. - The obvious lack of professional-grade quality and attention is pretty much evident throughout the rest of the game. There is no voice acting whatsoever. There is not much sound design at all. The menus are a pain in the ass to navigate. The quest tracker is very. VERY basic and doesn't even track your progress through the quests... a lot of basic QoL stuff missing. I know that this is clearly a shoestring budget game, but literally zero voice acting at all makes it harder to get invested in the story. (some of this was fixed in the DLC) - While the story branches off a lot (like, a lot) in later chapters based on your successes, failures and decisions, the order of events within each Act is pretty much exactly the same every time, and this becomes frustrating when you're learning and playing the same Act 1 story beats 15-20 times. This game is only half a roguelike - you get upgrades for repeated runs, but very little RNG within the game itself besides passing/failing the same 10 narrative skill checks. (edit: if you get far enough into the game to breeze through the early fights with your metaprogression upgrades this becomes less of an issue. But the Act 1 and 2 grind is still lame.) In conclusion, a compelling labour of love in many ways with a lot of highlight moments, and a lot of genuinely tough fights and agonising story decisions. But almost everything about the design, writing and presentation feels amateur and careless and seriously detracts from an otherwise addictive, engrossing experience. A cathedral built out of cardboard and pipe cleaners. I understand that if the developer(s) see themselves as making VNs, not "proper" video games, then this might be acceptable. But they could and should have set themselves a higher standard for this game. It is one of the roughest diamonds you will ever see.
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>Be longswordman >Struggle against the filthy french >Steal from friendly FRENCHIES at Dunkirk >Fight a knight 1(2)v1 >Lose best friend against a blob of shields >Enraged, I poke at them and win the battle 1 turn after he bleeds out >Promoted to Sergeant >Killing squires and experienced soldiers occasionally >Somehow survive one of the many wars in the hundred years war. >Starve during winter and get sick of it, so I go to some place called Brittany Spears to be hired as a mercenary captain >Start slaughtering mercenaries left right and center, while dealing with a thirsty THOT countess, and a bunch of angsty old men >Some stupid guy with puffy pants and a really big longsword started swinging at me and my bros, killed one of us, but I got him in the end >Some alchemist lady asked me to go grab something from an ancient ruined church for information >Agree, and go to spooky scary church >Some eldritch abomination of a knight of nature stands up and says things about being judged or whatever, and let's me stab him in the neck full force. >Gods above he's alive >Jesus Christ he just cut me in half in one swing
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An outstanding RPG that completely delivers on its promise. Your choices really do matter, and experiencing the game as it opens up is a thrill. The story is remarkably well written, full of sharply realised characters, exciting encounters and confounding moral dilemmas. The combat system is surprisingly deep and thanks to the ever present risk of death, is full of tension. The rogue like mechanics are excellent, generating a 'one more run' mentality, you should absolutely play on the roguelike difficulty setting, while hard initially it is by far the most rewarding. The loot and progression is well balanced and remains stimulating, money is always too scarce, power too fleeting, survival unsure, victory evasive. The game is huge, expansive, varied, and offers outstanding value for money. This is an overlooked gem, easily worth the asking price. I strongly recommend Heads Will Roll. P.S. Do not forget to download the free 'Mature content' DLC to enable some tasteful, but not too tasteful, nudity.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 07 January 2025 00:31 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 January 2025 22:14 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:49 |
| Steam reviews | 21 January 2025 06:08 |
Online players
44
Developer
1917 Studios
Publisher
Valkyrie Initiative
Release
04 Oct 2023
Platforms