Rating: 3/5 stars
I downloaded this game to my phone because I was looking for dungeon crawler games. The game is OK in itself, but it isn't amazing. The graphics are pixelated, which doesn't always have to be a bad thing (games are much more than just their graphics) but it just doesn't look very good. Pixels can look amazing if used right, but this one just didn't look very good. I must say it's probably not the BEST game I've ever played and the turn-based system is unrealistic, but it's still sort of good.
The basic idea is that you play as a character and go into dungeons and graveyards slaying monsters. You have 3 classes you can pick from: warrior, archer and wizard.
Well, I like swords, so I picked Warrior.
I started off in a town and didn't have enough gold to buy any better equipment, so I went into a dungeon (with skeletons, fawns, blobs, snakes etc) and earned some equipment and equipped it. After that, I went back to the town to sell it for gold. Some of that stuff was actually worth a LOT. I found this guy in a building who was selling healing potions.
Of course...
I toss in some gold. Drink the red potion. Instantly, 8 HP restored!
Later on, I go into the town hall and get a quest to defeat 20 skeletons. Into the graveyard...back out...back in...they regenerate. Soon I have 500 gold!
This guy in a farm sells a treasure map and I use it to find 2000 gold and loads of equipment buried.
Actually...that's more or less all I have to say about it...the game itself at least. The good stuff is that it's responsive (no lagging or crashing like loads of other free apps I have) and no IAP...at least no "microtransactions".
There's a main downside to this game that makes it less attractive than others like Pixel Dungeon, though. It's an open-world game that should usually be good, but if you want to do the quests to get better equipment, usually they need a lot of repetitive grinding. After you complete the quest the guy will say you need to be a much higher level to get a new quest. "Come back at level 34". You are level 13 and it takes about 3 hours of grinding per level.
So if you want to level up, you need to go into the same old dungeons grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding over and over and over again. That makes it really repetitive.
To compare it with a similar game, Pixel Dungeon, the main thing this game lacks is challenge and difficulty. Say, for example, the last time I beat the 3rd boss in Pixel Dungeon I had only 2 Potions of Healing. But in Legends of Yore, before you go and fight a dungeon boss, you can easily buy 200 healing potions and still have loads of gold left. You can just keep drinking loads and loads of potions and more or less the only way you can attack is to tap over and over and over. You can't debuff or paralyze your enemy. You can't throw a Potion of Paralytic Gas at them, plant a Seed of Earthroot at a far-away square, or start zapping them with your Wand of Lightning while they're standing in water. This game isn't anywhere near hard enough and it would also be better if there were more different ways to attack than just tapping over and over.
Another downside is that there isn't that much you actually need to do in the game, just a few quests from a guy called the Elder, and buying equipment. Also, there are a lot of level pre reqs before you're allowed to enter an area, like, for example, you need to be level 6 to go into the Wilderness and level 14 to train at a training camp.
And when you complete a really hard quest, sometimes you get an item you can't even USE as a reward. If you're a warrior and you get an item for the wizard, it's just a waste of time and effort.
But this is the worst thing in the entire game:
There's a button saying "Upgrade" on the start screen. It says "if you do not upgrade (for real money) after level 20 your gold and experience gains will be heavily reduced."
So, they're basically just ruining the game for you just when you've put in enough effort to get to level 20. I haven't got that far yet, but if you do get that far, if they completely wreck the game for you, just delete your game and start a new one.
I must say, this model actually isn't bad. It's not wrong to let you "try before you buy" but I'd rather they stop your access to the game at level 20 instead of reducing your gains.