You know one of those games you see and you're aware that this kind of game is not your thing, but you're just curious about how it is? Yeah, same here. Every once in a while, I come across a few games that fall under this category for me and one of them is a game called Them's Fightin' Herds.
At first, I was slightly reluctant to try it out since the art style reminds me of a certain... ahem show that I always avoid. But I was willing to look past that aspect and give it a shot.
Them's Fighting Herds is a fighting game that initially started as a fan-made fighting game based on the show My Little Pony. But Hasbro - the company that owns that IP - decided to nuke that project into oblivion. But through crowdfunding, it re-emerged as the game it is known as now.
As expected, I went to the tutorial first since I don't play fighting games frequently, or understand how things work in the game.
The tutorial was pretty good, even pretty funny actually.
Of course, I learned the basic stuff like attacking, blocking, combos, and special moves. I also learned what I believe are fighting game core mechanics like hitboxes, frame data, and other complicated-sounding things. I got worried that I would need to jot things down in a notebook because I couldn't keep track of all the information I was getting.
The game has a story mode available which I figured would be nice to try.
The story, at least what I could get out of it, takes place in Foenum, a land populated by Ungulates (which are hooved animals basically). The peace of the land is being threatened by shadowy predator creatures looking for an item called the Prophet's key, which is also the same item needed to banish the shadow predators.
Normally in the story, there were supposed to be multiple chapters in the game, each centered on a different character from the roster. But there is only one chapter available. I'll explain later why it's this way.
The free roam of the story uses a style like that of classic RPG games until it gets to a part where you have to fight, and then it switches back to its original style, which is nice.
You can get collectible items in story mode which serve as costumes for the character you're using...
...only to get looted in the end...
I find the cast of characters in the game to be pretty interesting. There are not a lot of characters to use in this game, but I would say that the roster in this game is an example of "quality beats quantity".
Each of them is pretty unique and has different playstyles. For instance, every character has a 'magic' meter in the game which is used for stronger attacks as expected. Each character uses and recharges their magic meter differently. Some may start with a full bar of magic or empty.
For example, the alpaca that I was fond of using starts with a full bar of magic and uses it by tossing food items at the opponent. The character only recharges magic if the opponent consumes one of these food items.
Even though what I'm about to mention is minor, I really love the detail where you can hear a bit of the character's themes blend in with the character select theme when you highlight a character.
Now to explain why I said this game only has a single chapter available for the story. The publishers behind the game fired most of the development team that worked on it. Of course, this meant that not many people were left to complete the game. I even heard that there was only one person from that development team left now.
On top of all this, the publisher of the game decided that it would be a good idea to release an unfinished DLC for the game which introduced 2 new characters. One has a bit of problems while the other has A LOT of problems.
Fortunately, a patch was released recently to fix the issues from the DLC. It did help a bit, but there's still a good amount of fixing needed.
PLUS I WANT TO FINISH THE STORY!!!
Overall, this game is pretty neat. It has a lot of potential to be even better. But honestly, I don't think I can recommend getting the game due to its current situation which could leave the game in an abandoned state. But if you're willing to look past that and give it a go, go for it. It is a pretty good game to try if you're a fan of fighting games.