Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic (Xbox One) Review

Everything is randomised; well, everything bar the starting town! Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic has three stories: each begin with hard mode and work their way up from there. At the start of each campaign the player must construct a party out of the three heroes on offer. All of the heroes are randomised in terms of stats, looks, and personality. It may take time to decide which party is best, especially considering each character can be one of thirty available classes!

Being built on randomisation is no bad thing; the writing has a bizarre sense of humour that makes the randomised character traits pretty interesting. It's definitely the only RPG where a hero can be 'mildly aroused by pies'. Each character has unique strengths and weakness that can make building a party difficult, although a fighter, mage, and a healer is usually enough to get through a campaign.

The random elements make for a great little system that introduces the game's zany humour and lets the player tailor their experience to an extent. Speaking of the random character traits, there are lots of interesting references found when chatting to various NPCs, such as nods to various works in pop culture, like Doctor Who, or the Lord of the Rings series. It's all very twee but much appreciated, it's part of the game's lifeblood and it's the biggest reason a lot of people will come back for more.

Gameplay is an interesting one. There are a few facilities to make use of in town, most importantly a church where the party can heal, buy potions, and revive dead heroes which becomes crucial after trying out missions. Missions play out in two phases, the first of which is to travel to a dungeon. During travel the player will have two or three encounters with NPCs which can either be interacted with or ignored. After arriving at each dungeon, there are several rooms one after the other that are either battles or treasure rooms.

Battling is a turn based affair. Each character in the party has two slots for attacks and two for skills. Once picked they use the chosen ability and then the enemy takes their turn. The following turn, the last character who acted will be unavailable to use, meaning another character must be chosen for action. This stops stronger attacks being spammable, but the enemies lack that same restriction, meaning the overall feel can be quite cheap sometimes, although it does keep players on their toes.

Death is permanent for the duration of a dungeon, but it can be undone after a mission is complete, raising the tension during battles. This effect is felt more than usual as there's a very difficult, steep learning curve and many adventurers will be lost while learning how to balance the characters. There is also an archive detailing the defeated teams that has which can be a unique novelty, especially after losing more than one full group.

Supporting all those systems is a glorious soundtrack and some very nice pixel art graphics, setting it apart from the other tired pixel art styles. The overall aesthetic and the atmosphere very much makes the game shine. The style supports the humour, and eradicates all possibilities of it running badly, so technologically it's sound and overall presentation are some of the higher points. It does have some weak points in terms of its replay value, dangerously steep difficulty curve, and repetitive comedic writing, but there's definitely a lot to love about the presentation.