The Lost Heir 3: Demon War

As the conclusion to the Lost Heir trilogy, Demon War contains a mix of positive and troublesome developments. On one hand, it has some of the most interesting and unique narrative segments, and further advances characterization and worldbuilding. On the other hand, the ending has a ridiculous sequence of stat checks that could easily lead to a bad ending if you didn't optimized a number of previously underutilized stats.

The previous game ended with either a pyrrhic victory or a defeat that nevertheless left you, the lost heir, as the last one standing. Your task now is to defeat the evil demon summoner who killed your parents and reclaim your kingdom. This is divided into a number of distinct story sections. It is kind of strange to see a putative monarch do jobs like pretending to be a student at a school. But overall, the new scenes are fun; I thought the ocean voyage and mysterious island chapter was rather memorable. There are also some cool moments when selecting a prestige class, and interesting character-focused scenes with your party. I feel like the quality of the writing has improved with this iteration.

The ending is where things start to come apart. You are forced to rely much more heavily on physical stats, when they were rarely used in the prior two games and even in the earlier parts of this game. Thus, unless you knew about this change, you're basically doomed. All the preparations, all the kingdom-building didn't matter if you don't have enough agility and stamina. I only succeeded when I was using a guide, on my third playthrough or something like that. You basically have to plan for the final scene from the beginning of the first game, which was kind of impossible if you played the games when they were released.

I felt like I enjoyed this game more when playing with a guide (and with a save that used a guide in the previous two games).