Legendary Wars does a good job at being a pretty looking and basic RTS, and offering a great deal of content for the small asking price. But some strange writing decisions and a lack of depth inside the game really hurt its long term value.
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| Oooh dragon |
It’s not a full RTS – Legendary Wars is part of the growing genre of RTS games where the action takes place over a number of horizontal rows of movement. In this case, it’s three – units can move back and forth, and swap from one row to another, but they don’t have freedom beyond that. On the other side of the battlefield are enemy units that are moving ever closer to your castle. You need to stop them.
Otherwise the game has all the trappings of a basic RTS – there’s gold to be mined, and a variety of units to be bought. The units can also build up and execute a “super attack” which does substantially more damage. On the other side of the battlefield is a variety of different enemies, with some stronger than other. The big ones can take a lot of damage, but for the most part the differences between enemy types are cosmetic.
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| It’s a big world, with a lot of battles |
The action takes place over a number of traditional fantasy settings – frosty winter lands, scorching deserts and the like, and it’s tied together by a very simple story. In fact, so simple it’s insulting. See, rather than a world of Dwarves, Elves and Knights, we have here knightys, elfys and dwarfys. I’m not sure if the developers thought it was cute, but the overly childish nature of the game is off putting. Even games aimed at children (like, say, Pokémon) doesn’t feel the need to stick ‘y’ on the end of everything – you’re not taking your poke ballys to the poke marty to get the Pokémon healed (and yes, it is that silly).
Thankfully it’s easy to tap your way through the story without paying attention. There are a lot of levels in the game to work through, which is good. What isn’t good is, without an interesting story to play through, the levels don’t have enough variety to inspire you to keep going.
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| Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ on |
There’s the occasional boss battle, which can be taken down in much the same way as normal enemies (hitting him with as many units as possible), and occasionally you’ll need to take down the enemy fortress at the same time as defending your own – meaning you’ll need to tap a “move forward” button a few times to break up the action. It’s not exactly riveting.
There is one gameplay twist that does a good job at breaking up the basic gameplay is the occasional side scrolling action mode. Here, you are in control of one soldier running perpetually from the left side of the screen. You’ll be able to make him jump, and attack, and you’ll need to dodge obstacles while completing an objective, such as killing a certain number of enemies. Though this mode is too simple to be a game in its own right it does do a good job of breaking up the action.
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| Yes. Dwarfys. This takes silliness a bit too far |
There’s incentive to finish the game, as it will unlock a few bonus game modes (such as unlimited time defence) as well as a hard mode for the story game. The developers have put in a lot of effort to make the game worth its asking cost, and it’s a very good looking game, with bright, happy characters and amusing animation.
It’s just a pity that the underlying game is so simple, and the writing is so amateur. It’s not a memorable or must-have game by any means, but if you have a few dollars to spare, the guys at Liv Games have come up with something that will keep you entertained for some time.
