CES: Heroes of Ruin Alchitect Details Emerge

Last year we got an early look at Heroes of Ruin's Vindicator class, a Warrior-type with an emphasis on high HP and high-damage melee attacks. As the n-Space / Square Enix action RPG continues to inch closer to its April release, more details on the game's remaining character roles are finally coming to light.

At CES this week I had the opportunity to go hands-on with the newly-revealed Alchitect class. As its hybrid name implies, Alchitects don't fall directly into any RPG character bucket, but they most closely resemble mages, preferring to nuke enemies from afar with ranged magic attacks. With a much lower health pool than Vindicators, Alchitects aren't intended to be on the front lines of any fight.

The Alchitect skill tree is split into three specializations: Warlock, Sorcerer, and Engineer. As players level-up they will be able to spend skill points to unlock new abilities and strengthen existing ones. Warlock skills focus on pure offensive magic, with several damage-dealing options. The Sorcerer skill tree offers up mostly enemy debuffs and damage-over-time effects. Finally, the Engineer skill tree is made up mostly of party-support options, and more off-the-wall "fun" skills.

My personal favorite Engineer skill also highlights n-Space's strong desire to keep Heroes of Ruin fun and fast-paced. As previously mentioned, players can auto-equip found pieces of loot at any time with a single button. But new in this build, n-Space has also introduced the ability to auto-sell inferior loot, all without leaving the dungeon or entering a menu. Slick. The Engineer skill in question gives players a temporary buff any time they take advantage of this auto-sell option.

Other Alchitect skills include Terror Ward, a crowd control spell that causes melee enemies to flee any time they strike you, as well as a simple buff that increases your MP regeneration any time you kill an enemy, allowing you to continue dishing out damage with minimal downtime.

It's worth noting that as of now the three Alchitect sub-classes didn't seem especially well defined. Warlocks have a Life Leach healing spell that felt like it would have been more at home in the Engineer tree, for example. But it's very possible that that these skills might be tweaked or moved around entirely prior to release, to ensure they each feel more distinct.

Heroes of Ruin's CES demo also highlighted the game's well-known seamless drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, as a Square-Enix employee was able to seamlessly join my game session to tour me around The Nexus, the game's central city hub. Here players will perform all the standard equipment and potable shopping, and also pick up quests to keep their adventure rolling.

Like an MMO, many NPCs are marked with exclamation points above their heads, indicating that they have a quest available for players to undertake. These quests are semi-dynamic, leading players into new environments and new sections of previously-visited dungeons, each populated with enemies generated specifically to match the party's level.

IGN will have more on this promising portable action RPG in the coming weeks.

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Justin Davis is the executive editor of IGN Wireless. You can follow him on Twitter.

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