SEGA Heroes Review

It’s been a while since SEGA quit the hardware game to focus on… games… so you’d be forgiven for forgetting that it has quite a number of characters at its disposal. Or not, given the frequent and numerous re-releases of their Mega Drive titles. But now they’ve gathered all of their characters into one place, activated Big Head Mode and shoved them into a fancy match-3 mobile game.

SEGA Heroes has been out for a few weeks, and I’ve been playing since launch. Why’s the review taken so long? I’ve wanted to make sure they weren’t going to pull a fast one, the same way that some other mobile titles do, and nerf the rewards or shove tons of ads down our throats. So far, so good, as there are only in-app purchases, which I didn’t feel the need to purchase.

The plot for SEGA Heroes is that some evildoer called Dremagen is making evil clones of everyone from the worlds of SEGA characters, and using them to take over the multiverse - or something. Your team of characters has to match gems to use attacks, and knock the health of the enemy team to zero. A couple of the characters speak to each other on the first and final stage of each world, but you don’t really get more than that for story.

Speaking of stages - the amount of stages varies per world, but there are around 30 worlds. I’ve put about 20 hours into this game and not yet reached the 11th world, because as you progress the stages get harder. Which means that you have to level up your characters - but they can only reach the same maximum level as you, and get more expensive to level up each time. So to get more money (and of course level yourself up), you need to complete the other game types available.

All of the game modes are functionally the same. First you have Campaign (your story mode), then the Arena for Player vs Player - it’s not live PvP, you just fight other people’s teams to compete for ranks. Next there’s Survival which has you fighting progressively more difficult enemies without the ability to heal between stages, then Beyondering which you can only play with certain characters. Finally, there are rotating Events, which change daily for set rewards - character shards, ability reagents and money, many of which require specific characters or ones above a certain levels. There are Guilds coming soon, but they’re not currently in the game.

As I’ve mentioned, you need to level up the characters that you intend to use, and they need reagents for their abilities. Each character has three abilities and all require a different reagent to level up. The characters can also be “promoted” by collecting character shards (the same things used to unlock characters), which increases them from one stars to two stars and up. This gives them more health points, higher strength, etc, but is also required for some events.

The characters on offer are from the following game series: Sonic the Hedgehog, Shinobi, Super Monkey Ball, Phantasy Star, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Jet Set Radio and inexplicably Crazy Taxi. It’s certainly an interesting selection, especially since you can unlock certain villains such as Golden Axe’s Death Adder.

I have thoroughly enjoyed playing this, it’s a challenging and fun match-3 game. There are coins and premium currency on offer if you complete certain tasks each day, which I do as part of my morning routine. Sure, I could exercise instead, but I’d rather play SEGA Heroes. If that line doesn’t get into a trailer, I’ll be disappointed.

Whilst writing this review, I took no fewer than three breaks to play SEGA Heroes. If that’s not a testament to how much I enjoy it, I don’t know what is. If you’re a fan of match-3 games, then this is certainly one to check out. So long as they don’t nerf the amount of gold you get from levels, which already makes levelling up a bit of a challenge without spending money.