Review of HEROES AND HELLIONS, Comic Book RPG

I've seen several small press RPGs by now and each one has at least one good point. This one is no different, but it carries the unusually high cover price of $17 for one 57 page plastic ring bound book. The art and print are on par with other small press efforts, but the spelling and grammer are not (mid-evil appears throughout the text as do others). I would not normally mention such things in a small press publication but for $17 the world expects more.

The game mechanics lean toward playability rather than reality but are still more complicated than necessary. Each character attribute has a different range for example. Special cases, like criticals or knock-outs, are likewise overly complicated. It does appear however to represent the genre well enough (but not for $17).

Characters can be one of 31 classes of hero (some even have subclasses), which cover every possibility yet represented in the genre. There were occasions where I felt classes overlapped too much to warrant a distinction, but that is just a matter of opinion. Each class is distinguished from the other by the origin of its super-ness and/or the powers it includes.

This is not a bad game, but it is not a great one either, it has its momments. Superhero gamers would do well to pick it up for $5 or less, any others should look for it for less.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)