Which Hero Factory Series (Wave) had the Best Sets?

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

As far as sets go, I really liked both waves of Breakout because the heroes got bigger in size and had cooler designs.

 

I really hated the first 2 Waves because the figures just didn't look appealing to buy. I thought they looked rather generic, but they improved in Savage Planet I think.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Cambion]

i voted Breakout for best and Ordeal of Fire for worst. Brain Attack was a close second for best, but Breakout had a few sets with really fantastic colour schemes/pieces. as for Ordeal of Fire, the repetitiveness of the colours in the villain sets just didn't sit well with me.

[Aanchir]

I had a hard time choosing between Breakout and Invasion from Below for "best". I went with Breakout. I might regret it later, but I feel like Breakout had fewer outright "duds". I'm not at all fond of Evo Walker or Stormer Freeze Machine, and some of the beasts like Flyer Beast and Crystal Beast feel a bit "meh" to me.

 

For "worst", "Rise of the Rookies", easily. It had some real personality as far as aesthetics were concerned, but on a building level it brought together more of G1 BIONICLE's worst aspects (overspecialized armor and details, brittle joints, clone sets) than its best. Only its larger sets like Von Nebula, Rotor, Furno Bike, and Drop Ship had particularly elegant builds, and none so elegant that I've wanted to get any of them when the opportunity presents itself.

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

I didn't mind the "overspecialized armor," but the articulation in the heroes for "Rise of the Rookies" really brought the quality down for me. I voted Ordeal of Fire though just because I found the sets, to be rather uninteresting. They are valuable as the first CCBS sets, but like all things, it was far from perfect in its first incarnation. I think Breakout did the best job of making the sets look amazing with the CCBS System and I also heartily agree that Brain Attack was the next best.

[fishers64]

No contest - Rise of the Rookies for worst, Breakout for best. 

 

Invasion from Below gets props for "most innovative idea" but Breakout just was cooler in my opinion. The designs of that wave really brought the characters' personalities and preferences to life in a way that no other wave did. Probably will never happen again, either. Shame. 

[Lenny7092]

Best: Breakout.

Worst: Invasion From Below.

I think Invasion From Below is the worst because of a few reasons:

1. I may not get used to minifigures in constraction sets

2. The stickers would be a bit annoying to stick on certain pieces, and there are too many sticker, too

3. A lot of tiny pieces to lose

4. No Stringer or Nex. They had been absent too long and I feel annoyed by that. It doesn't feel natural that way.

I think Breakout is the best because of a few reasons, too:

1. All nine heroes in one year

2. Their designs match their personalities

3. The villains look epic and awesome.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Lenny7092

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

1. All nine heroes in one year

2. Their designs match their personalities

3. The villains look epic and awesome.

I have to agree with these 3 details and allow me to add a fourth. Some people will shake their heads at this but here goes: I had just accepted that Bionicle would never return when Breakout came out and when I saw the designs for the heroes, namely Rocka, Breeze, and Furno, I thought Hero Factory was creating something special because the way those 3 Heroes were designed reminded me of Bionicle and I liked those sets. The villains actually looked really cool too, but they didn't remind me of Bionicle nearly as much, and that worked out great too.

[dotcom]

Yeah, Breakout is the best, and Rise of the Rookies (though personally my second favorite) is objectively the worst, no question about it.

 

Breakout was great. Kept some uniformity while introducing great varied designs with the heroes that really got accross their themes/motifs/setting, and the villains were also mostly imaginative and fun. I'm far less fond of the second wave than the first, but Breakout's first is my all time favorite.

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

I wasn't the biggest fan of Savage Planet - I think it was the worst designs for the Heroes, and while the bigger sets were nice I didn't really dig the setting and feel they were going for. 

 

Breakout is the best. Lots of variety and awesome designs can be found. It's actually one of the few lines of Hero Factory I actually payed attention to, cause they looked so awesome. Also loved the story for that year.

 

-NotS

[masterchirox580]

I'd have to say breakout, it was the first wave to really start showing what could be done with CCBS and not to mention it had all nine of the heroes in one series. As for worst series that's a tough call but I'd have to go with rise of the rookies, it was clearly rushed out to get HF introduced to the public but there were so many problems with it, the heroes were very bland and the villains were just mediocre at best, although IFB and BA had a lot of problems as well though. 

[Toa Jelarna]

I think that Brain Attack is the best of the series: The villans look treathing, and the heroes look more serius than the previous years

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

yeaaah, ordeal of fire deserves the flak it gets, if they'd waited maybe the remaining half-year to release savage planet, we could've probably had something nice from it?

 

but the voldy-heads, and Drilldozer and Nitro's doubled arms, and the colors everywhere, and the...

 

it had nice pieces though, i need to look for a nitroblast somewhere, he kinda grew on me, even if the actual model is 50% garbage. :u

[Xabla]

I voted Brain Attack, but i'm kind of rethinking it and know I want to pick Breakout.

 

But yeah, I had to go with Savage Planet for worst. The generic Rahi like ripoffs and the kind of strange reason to the Hero's armor, which made no sense why they had those animals in particular. The only set which I liked was Rocka 3.0 XL.

Edited January 5, 2015 by moamahrimatoro

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

The villains from Brain Attack look amazing, but the heroes are only ok in my opinion. The Breakout Wave had a great consistency.

[Wazdakka]

I can't vote because I don't know which is the worst, but I definitely like Invasion from Below the most. It was the only wave of Hero Factory that I was actually quite interested in, as it stopped trying to copy Bionicle and did its own "mech" thing. 

[Rooster Nui]

I think Invasion from Below has the best sets because I feel that the battle machines use the CCBS system in creative ways, an example being the body construction of Furno's Jet Machine. I also think the Invasion from Below sets have the most play value out of all the Hero Factory waves due to the minifig heroes and Jumpers included in the sets.

 

As for worst, I voted Ordeal of Fire because I feel that the villains weren't as cool in appearence as the original ones. That is really the only reason as to why I think it is the worst wave.

[abstractAgamid]

Villain-wise, for me the peaks were the first wave (they actually made me want a yellow set in Meltdown [i haven't, by the way]) and Toxic Reapa.

 

Hero-wise, probably first wave of Breakout as well.

 

(Special mention goes to Frost Beast's upper torso design, although the rest of that set was nothing special.)

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

The villains in Ordeal of Fire were the main thing that brought that wave down in my eyes, but the whole wave severely lacked in my mind. It introduced CCBS, but other than that, it didn't do anything interesting really.

[Ford]

I liked Brain Attack for several reasons. To start, Brain Attack was the first wave of Hero Factory sets I obtained. Second, I felt that the heroes were very well done in presentation and functionality, like they really were who they said they were: Heroes. Third, the colors added to the vast pallet Lego has were stunning to use, and made MOCing with them much more enjoyable.

[Endymion]

For me personally? I liked Invasion from below for being innovative, and fresh. I liked the minifigs and all the beast sets, getting all of them and the 2 big mechs. (The mechas were mostly for parts buuut shhh). I liked Brain Attack's hero design and Dragon Bolt is my favorite looking villain aside from Splitter Beast, buuut IFB wins out just barely. Worst is ALMOST tie between rise of the rookies and ordeal of fire. RoTR because of the stupidly simple, and kinda awful basic hero design, using a tired, and hated build from Bionicle for ALL the heroes as clone sets. Ordeal of Fire overall just looks bad, going all over the place, but its better build, and is still cooler overall then Rise of the rookies, so Rise of The Rookies is by far the worst, for me/

[Xan]

I voted IFB as the best set wise because it was the year Lego finally decided to do something different than just low effort sets with gappy backs.

 

As for worst, well the Ordeal of fire sets didn't put the new system to good use and really weren't exciting. The hero sets all had gappy backs and rather bland builds and the villains were rather poor, especially Drilldozer. However there were a lot very good pieces which is primarily why I purchased them in the first place.

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

Hero Factory definitely introduced CCBS and continued to improve it, but it never quite perfected it in my book. The Breakout Wave definitely fixed the open back issue. I respect Invasion From Below for what it did, but I still really don't like it. I just don't think the mechs that came out with these look as good as the exoforce mechs.

[aldero]

Breakout had some solid sets, and Brain Attack was a close second.

 

Savage Planet wasn't that good. The canisters sets were okay, and nothing really stood out. Rise of the Rookies was still pretty good, as the Titan sets saved the line, in my opinion.

 

Some of my favourite sets include Jet Rocka, Black Phantom, Dragon Bolt, Breakout Stringer, and Rotor.

[kanohi of jello]

Although the heroes were incredibly bad the first wave, the villains were pretty dang awesome. The story line was cliche, but whatever.

 

The sets for IFB just proved to me how terrible CCBS is for making larger creations. The exposed limbs and over-sized heads didnt help. Plus the accompanying videos were just shameless advertising full of vehicle functions and one-liners. It felt like the series knew it was gonna die and was just trying to ensure someone was gonna buy the old sets once they were put on clearance.

In general I think hero factory wanted to be this darker theme full of suspense and drama (like bionicle was), but also wanted to ensure that it kept itself as a kid's toy and didn't sell itself to older audiences too much. As the years went on I think it began to become self aware of this whole 'toy vs story' aspect and began focusing itself on the playability rather than the story.

 

well that turned out more detailed and long-winded than i had originally intended....

[Voltex]

Breakout narrowly beats Ordeal of Fire for best in my mind; I really liked all of the OoF sets versus disliking some of the Breakout sets, but the character's personalities really shone through in their Breakout designs and we got some very unique villains (versus the really cool but admittedly not unique fire villains).

 

Brain Attack was my least favorite - I don't think there's a single set from that year that I can honestly say that I liked at all. The whole thing was just a mess.

[Trijhak]

Breakout is very easily the best wave. It has all nine heroes, nine villains, a consistent theme, and pretty much would have been the perfect final year for HF if it hadn't gone on for another two years. Kind of makes you wonder if Breakout was originally going to be the last year (don't most themes last one and a half years or three years?) but it sold well enough to warrant two more years of HF.

 

Coming close behind is Brain Attack, which I love since once again the consistent theme was there although this was the first year without a Nex or a Stringer. Plus I really love Pyrox. Pyrox did well at what it was meant to do, which was 'be a threatening minotaur thing' and it gives off that vibe (it's fun to pose too, more than you can say for the 2.0 or 3.0 heroes). There's also Dragon Bolt, who has a fairly nice application of CCBS and while it could be better, it again does what it does well. 

 

Then there's Invasion From Below. I honestly found this wave pretty meh, all things considered. The machine concept was nice, but it really did feel like it was the final year of HF in retrospect, you could kind of tell by looking at the similarity of the beasts.

 

Below that is Savage Planet, which was the first time CCBS was used for non-humanoids - if Ordeal of Fire was establishing humanoids with CCBS, then SP was establishing the creature part of CCBS. It did it fairly well. Much better than...

 

Ordeal of Fire, the introduction of CCBS. Looking back, it isn't anything special, but of course it isn't: it's the introduction of CCBS. Back then, it was special and it really amazed everyone that it had so many new pieces, an entire overhaul of the building system. I remember people being fairly impressed with it, wondering how it'd be used in the future.

 

Rise of the Rookies was HF's... first wave. To be honest, when you look back, due the disparity between this wave and all of the waves after it, it doesn't even feel like HF to me. CCBS was so successful it defined what HF was after the introductory wave (the wave probably meant to define HF) and that really makes these sets feel almost alien. They're sort of a weird and odd... you had six of what were basically av-Matoran, containing pieces that would never be used again (barring Breakout with the helmets and Furno's... things). This was basically BIONICLE's building system on its way out, in a theme that wasn't even BIONICLE. The sets pretty much also felt much more like BIONICLE sets than later HF sets at the time, although they sort of had  that weird upper leg that's kind of the middle ground between CCBS shell and BIONICLE double-ended y-joint. It would have probably been better if this wave was used to send out BIONICLE in 2010, then having HF introduced with CCBS from the beginning. Then this wave, and its huge disparity with later HF sets, wouldn't exist. 

[Toaman25]

For me I liked the first cuz Corroder and Xplode. Nuff said. The worst was IFB for me cuz Jo stringer or nex.

[Petersheikah]

Best: Breakout. The heroes had very cool and unique appearence, I loved Breez and Furno.

Worst: Voted for IFB. If I wanted minfigures using mechs I would have bought Exo-Force, not Hero Factory. Also Brain Attack was a good candidate because of these weird aliens, bht the Heroes and the pieces were so good.

[CaT in Rogue]

Yeah, I tend to agree with the majority vote. Breakout best, first wave worst.

[Lenny7092]

Yeah, I tend to agree with the majority vote. Breakout best, first wave worst.

I agree with you, too. Breakout is the best because we got all nine Heroes in that year. Their armor and weapons match their elements very well. It's epic that they get to chase and fight their respective villains who escaped in a breakout. The villains are awesome, too. I loved the new CCBS pieces in that time, also.

I would consider Invasion From Below the worst wave because it's annoying that in the sets, there are so many tiny pieces to lose and there are too many stickers to place. Other annoying things about IFB are that Stinger and Nex still did not appear and the fact that this is the last year of Hero Factory. How very sad and annoying this was. I was expecting to get a Stinger and Nex minifigures because the other Heroes did that, but that never happened. It would have cool if Stringer and Nex came out.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Lenny7092

[Akuna Toa of Sonics]

I absolutely loved Breakout's sets. It seemed as if every character finally became truly unique due to the more extreme differences (size, weapons, etc.). Most of my HF parts are from 2012. However, I still like some of the original HF villains from 2010, especially Rotor. All that orange made me drool when I got him.

Last year was definitely the worst.

[J46 Nui]

Breakout, though the subsequent waves after it are close second and thirds. I love that we got all the characters, and a few of the villains that year, such as Core Hunter, are really memorable designs.

 

I think Savage Planet and Ordeal of Fire are tied for worst for me. It wasn't bad, and I do enjoy CCBS, but a lot of the sets looked the same and the head pieces used that year were easily the worst in both HF's and Bionicle's run.

[Logan McOwen]

Breakout is the best, hands down. The diversity in design was incredible, and the sheer amount of new pieces just for that line was amazing.

I'd personally see RotR as the worst, honestly. It just felt like late-Bionicle G1 with a fancy badge on its chest, complete with big, over-greebled, pre-fab parts. I mean sure, it was like a bag of peas on the bruise which was G1 Bionicle's cancellation, but looking back, it just seemed very uninspired aesthetically. I feel Hero Factory really came into its own with the introduction of the CCBS.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Logan McOwen

[Mocmaker]

I was never a fan of hero factory in general but when I saw Savage Planet O_O I was hooked.  I can't decide between Brain Attack, Rise of the Rookies, and Savage Planet as my favorite.

 

The worst in my opinion was ordeal of fire.  In my opinion breakout was not the best and not the worst and invasion from below was a good strike at creativity but not the best.

[Evergrey: Toa of Music]

I was never a fan of hero factory in general but when I saw Savage Planet O_O I was hooked.  I can't decide between Brain Attack, Rise of the Rookies, and Savage Planet as my favorite.

 

The worst in my opinion was ordeal of fire.  In my opinion breakout was not the best and not the worst and invasion from below was a good strike at creativity but not the best.

I liked Savage Planet the most for MoCing. I will admit that. Breakout supplied me with a lot of the bone pieces for the MoCs though

[FallenCor]

Rise of the Rookies, to be perfectly honest. The villains were actually pretty good for a series that had only just begun (Meltdown is my favorite), and I actually enjoyed the simplicity and uniformity of the Heroes' designs. The latter would definitely be a good "starter" for introducing my kids to Technic. Invasion from Below can claim second place, because the minifigs were adorable awesome, and the idea of fighting kaiju godzilla monsters was pretty cool. The monsters themselves were lacking -- though that shouldn't stop people from bulking them up with additional pieces -- and the mech suits were pretty neat.

The worst wave, for me, was Breakout. Nothing in that wave interested me except Core Hunter. Maybe it's just me, but I saw the character designs (and names) and started to wonder if the design team was running out of ideas ("Speeda Demon"??). I just never felt inclined to buy anything from that wave at all.

Although, a close second for worst is Savage Planet. I never understood why the Heroes needed animal armor for that whole thing, but at least they were uniform; there was technically only one villain and three glorified attack dogs; and the animal theme felt redundant with Chima around.

[Aanchir]

Although, a close second for worst is Savage Planet. I never understood why the Heroes needed animal armor for that whole thing, but at least they were uniform; there was technically only one villain and three glorified attack dogs; and the animal theme felt redundant with Chima around.

 

Not sure what you mean... Savage Planet was in summer 2011, and Legends of Chima didn't begin until 2013...

 

Shame the Breakout series didn't grab your attention, because it had some MAGNIFICENTLY creative designs, especially for the smaller villains (Toxic Reapa, Thornraxx, Jawblade, and XT4). Not to mention some incredibly creative new designs for Bulk, Stringer, Nex, and Evo.

[FallenCor]

 

Although, a close second for worst is Savage Planet. I never understood why the Heroes needed animal armor for that whole thing, but at least they were uniform; there was technically only one villain and three glorified attack dogs; and the animal theme felt redundant with Chima around.

 

Not sure what you mean... Savage Planet was in summer 2011, and Legends of Chima didn't begin until 2013...

 

Really? Good lord, I know my internal clock is off but I didn't know it was that bad, ha ha.

[Aanchir]

 

 

Although, a close second for worst is Savage Planet. I never understood why the Heroes needed animal armor for that whole thing, but at least they were uniform; there was technically only one villain and three glorified attack dogs; and the animal theme felt redundant with Chima around.

 

Not sure what you mean... Savage Planet was in summer 2011, and Legends of Chima didn't begin until 2013...

 

Really? Good lord, I know my internal clock is off but I didn't know it was that bad, ha ha.

 

Ha, don't worry about it! There are some people who think I'm crazy for being able to remember when different sets came out like I do! But they'll see! They'll ALL see!

 

erm, maybe disregard that last bit.

[Naota Takizawa]

I love Rise of the Rookies, it started off hero factory and I love all the extra detailing on the pieces. Rotor and Von Nebula are the coolest sets because they use tons of bionicle pieces.  

I'm gonna be unoriginal and say Breakout is the best hero factory series, simply because all 9 heroes are together, each villain stands out and with some characters like Voltix or Thornraxx, they offer some pieces that are in new colors.

Edited June 20, 2015 by Liuth