I played it 30 years ago. Any system where you need to know math order of operations (FOIL) to build a character gets negative points from me. Making a character was painful (and I was taking differential equations at the time). There were 2 or maybe 3 frameworks for point buying (elemental, power pools, maybe more). Soooo many options that had non-obvious interactions. And in play action phases for speedy characters had a "matrix".
I much prefer the later versions of Fuzion with the "supers" add ons (like from the short lived Shards game).
I just need to point out that this is a common point that's made about Hero that's just not true. I have never heard it mentioned in terms of FOIL for math issues, but it's fairly common to hear it uses differential equations. It does not.
There are two kinds of Hero games: Heroic and Superheroic. For heroic games (action movie, pulp adventure, fantasy games like RPGs) the game is generally played with a "pick from a list" for powers/spells/abilities, and this means there's nothing more complex than addition and subtraction. There are spell grimoires with pre made spells, along with prewritten "feats". You just pick from a list.
Things get more complicated when you use the powers rules as a part of Superheroic games, but there are also books with prebuilt powers you can use to just pick things from a list.
The way that powers get complicated is that you buy a base power and then add advantages and limitations to it. This requires you to multiply the cost for advantages, and then divide for limitations. For the math averse, there are actual tables in the rulebook.
The point about frameworks for powers is something you only use in campaigns with powers, but there are three kinds of them:
A multipower, where you have a certain reserve of total points, and then split them between powers. So if you have flight + force field + light blast, you'd have a total number of points available and would split them between the three. That's an advanced option. A wizard who has a lot of spells but can only use a small number at once does this.
A power pool is like a multipower, but you can use it to create new things on the fly. This is the most advanced option in the game, and is used for characters like Green Lantern who can do just about anything. It is exceptionally uncommon in most games.
And finally there is the Elemental Control. This is a way to make characters with a lot of powers that work around a unified theme. So a fire based character or so on. This is another rule that is used only in Superheroic games, and it also was removed in the latest edition of the rules.
Hero is on the crunchier end of gaming. It gives you the option to build just about any character you can imagine. I've run it with the equivalent of low level D&D all the way to cosmic powered games with near godlike power.
The game Mutants and Masterminds is an evolution of Hero that gives you about 80% of what you can get with Hero in a much streamlined package.
Hero is definitely not the game for everyone, but it also isn't a terror. In play, the biggest issue tends to be that you roll a fair number of dice for attack damage, but I always see that as a feature and not a drawback. There is an option to make standard results (i.e. a 3 for a d6) instead of rolling if you like. I've played in games where a 12d6 attack might be 4d6+28 for instance.
So that's my take on Hero. I'd love to discuss in more detail if folks are interested.
Like, "why do you have a 10,000 CON?" &c
I started with the 1st ed of Champions, and explored it very thoroughly, I'm well aware of how rough it could be. It's just it wasn't nearly as... incomplete... as one might expect a 64pg version of a game that eventually topped 600pgs...
