Griefhelm vs Shop Heroes
Griefhelm
Griefhelm is a realistic 2D medieval sword-fighting game with a Slay the Spire-like progression and a pretty brutal difficulty level in the sense that if you let your opponent get in a couple of hits, you’re dead. Offering several game modes and perks, the game focuses a lot on timing your actions to best your opponent on the battlefield.Since timing is crucial in this game, you’d best be vigilant of the several combat cues your enemies may make a split second before the animation starts. If you do it precisely right, then you might just survive the attacks and even find a few openings of your own to strike. This game is definitely not the mindless hack-and-slash that many other games seem to offer. Every action you take in this game is deliberate and this makes every successful kill so much more satisfying.
Now, all of these fights are scattered across nodes in a progression map that’s somewhat similar to Slay the Spire. What this means is that you’ve got a choice as to which path you want to take and, in this game, you’ll usually have at least 2. Different paths offer different levels and types of challenges, and hence, different rewards so it’s important for you to decide which reward is most worthwhile for you.
To sum up, Griefhelm is truly in a class of its own. I’ve seen many players compare the game disfavorably against Nidhogg and that may be true, but for someone who has only played For Honor before, Griefhelm really brings swordplay to a different dimension… literally (Hint: 2D as opposed to 3D)!
Shop Heroes
Shop Heroes is an incredibly fun and addictive, medieval/fantasy shop simulation that has some RPG elements. In this game, you play as a shopkeeper with a newly established shop that provides various types of RPG adventurers with their weapons, armor, and accessories. As opposed to only selling them, you will also need to hire crafters to craft the said items, and each crafter has their own sets of skills while each item will require certain sets of skills to craft. Thankfully, you can hire more than one crafter (eventually) and hence, you will be able to produce more than a few selected categories of items later down the road.These items can then be sold to the RPG adventurers who approach you at your shop. Selling to them, however, usually means that you'll be selling at market price, though you are given the option to lower your prices to earn Hearts or use Hearts to inflate your prices. Since most adventurers would want a very specific item to buy, which you may not have available, you can also use Hearts to change their minds. Naturally, trying to suggest a closer alternative to buy would cost you fewer Hearts.
The game also has RPG elements where you can recruit and send adventurers into various dungeons to earn special crafting materials that these dungeons only provide. There's PvP as well, where you can assemble a team of 5 to battle a randomly selected player's team of your bracket. Not to mention, you can even group up with other shopkeepers via guilds and work together on weekly challenges to win freebies, in addition to cooperatively building up the guild facilities so as to obtain a better guild-wide buff.
Shop Heroes is a game that is one of its kind because it not only managed to flawlessly merge both shop simulation and RPG into a fun and exciting package, but also to provide its game completely free. You can advance, albeit at a slower pace, in this game without spending a single cent if you like, but of course, if you enjoyed playing the game, you might want to spend some cash just to show your support.