Legacy Quest Review

Have you ever played a video game so much that you wake up sweating in your bed from a persisting nightmarish reality which involved you playing said game over and over? This experience has happened to me on a number of occasions, but after my second night playing Legacy Quest, I found this surreal dream returning because of the game’s dynamic character building and alluring dungeon crawling. Developed by Nexon, Legacy Quest uses a successful Western ARPG formula found most notably in the granddaddy of them all: Diablo, a game where the gameplay was so well-balanced and the dungeon crawling so exciting that players instinctively found themselves addicted. Imagine all of what you loved in Diablo jammed into your phone. I have goosebumps just thinking about it.

Legacy Quest bears many hallmarks of the classic Western ARPG. Per usual, the game allows players the opportunity to play with a few different classes of characters, in this case: a mage, an archer, or a warrior. And, of course, each class has their own unique attributes that can be enhanced with particular pieces of equipment. For instance, mages can only equip hats, robes, staffs, etc. while warriors are donning plate and wielding axes and such in their shiny steel gauntlets. The developers made the right call when they decided that certain items should only be available to their designated classes. This aspect of the game, undoubtedly, makes for a smooth character building experience; better yet, you can view your equipped armor and weapons as you change them around. Wanna look like Gandalf? Don’t worry, Legacy Quest makes that easy for you. Although it’s fun to find new gear as you rip through dungeon after dungeon—and in the process level up your character—the way the game doles out gold is nothing but an exercise in frustration

Legacy Quest requires a player to have enough gold to buy equipment, buy upgrades for characters as they level up, buy jewelry, enchant certain items with gems, unlock new skills and passive abilities, upgrade cubelets so that you can craft better gear, and pretty much anything else. Granted the game gives you a lot of chests and free items as you complete quests. There’s still a problem, however, with how much gold you are receiving. Legacy Quest is an effort limited freemium game (the more you play, the more you are rewarded; or you can buy these rewards with your own money), so the gold you receive still piles in at a consistent basis if you play a lot. Earning an income where you don’t have to pay Legacy Quest money, however, ultimately depends on how much you grind—and that may prove to be too frustrating for some mobile gamers. The developers of course want you to deal out real cash, but the method which they use is not invasive; nor does the approach to freemium involve you spending hundreds of dollars in order to beat the game. Instead you either get stuck with a lot of grinding or a lot of paying, which is only better but definitely less than ideal

Unfortunately, Legacy Quest’s problems don’t end here. There’s a severe lack of story. The only dialogue you’ll ever encounter takes place within Legacy Quest’s first five minutes, which explains that your sole mission is to take back this castle back in the North to reclaim your family’s legacy. Original, I know. Then there’s the level rating system. Sometimes you’ll finish a level saying, “Alright, I just wrecked this dungeon”, and then find that you only received a one-star rating. Apparently the rating system is primarily based on your best combo and finish speed. Sometimes you can bring your combo up to a 20 kill streak (the streak ending after a certain amount of time without killing another enemy), but most of the times the levels are laid out so that it’s almost impossible to achieve a better combo. So you’ll find yourself with a lot of one and two-star ratings, and a very rare three-star rating. This can also get frustrating; realizing that the game is rating you on your speed rather than the quality of your gameplay.

Legacy Quest has its faults, but you’ll come to find that the game is too fun to care about them at the end of the day. Slight frustrations with gold, lack of story, and level rating may tempt you to quit, but the addicting dungeon crawling and the game’s well-rendered retro graphics might just force you to stick around. Although the freemium factor can be annoying at times, I urge you to grind it out; for you will be rewarded with better gear the more you play. Each world has its own musical number and new enemies, so it doesn’t feel wrong playing them all over on the harder difficulties. If you’re a fan of dungeon crawlers or ARPGs, do yourself a favor and download Legacy Quest onto your Android device.