Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

The burden of leadership falls to you in Legends of Kingdom Rush, where the dice seem to be the true kingmaker.

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

It takes the bravery of a fool to try to solve the problems of an entire kingdom. The weight of leadership is not one to bear alone, because with reliable allies by your side there’s no challenge too great.

Legend of kingdom Rush by Ironhide Game Studio is a turn based rouge-lite full of fantasy role playing combat. Players will assemble a team of heroes to challenge perilous trials of survival fighting against the dark army that has thrown the kingdom of Liniria into chaos. The story follows a noble paladin named Gerald as he escapes imprisonment to set right the evils that have corrupted the land. As he escapes he is aided by a ranger and a wizard, the first of eventually many friends who assist in the battle against evil.

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

Gameplay digs into its role playing roots by organizing its stages into different adventure maps of moderate length. The themed locations of each adventure split into multiple paths with a variety of encounters and random events that take place along the path you choose. Moving on the map triggers events like the combat encounters where the adventuring party of three or four characters faces off against an opposing party of enemies. There’s a variety of other randomized events that can occur like geographic obstacles, encounters with NPCs, and other challenges that require certain items or character abilities to overcome safely without severe consequences for the party. 

Each character has layers of skills and progression attributes that fit them uniquely into group combat. 3 characters are chosen to embark, leaving room for a 4th party member to join along the way. Characters will learn new skills the more you use them, but each hero starts with basic abilities at the beginning of each adventure. As the adventure unfolds the party accumulates blue experience orbs that can be used to promote a single character and open up a choice of unlocked skills with each rank. Choosing different skills will highlight each character’s strengths and produce a wide variety of effects like bleeding, knockback, and other magical side effects. Some abilities and objects within the combat environment can affect multiple tiles on the Hexagonal movement grid and each skill has the opportunity to deal epic damage when combined with the right conditions on the battlefield. 

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

While there is a casual difficulty option, the normal difficulty presents an intriguing challenge. After the tutorial, adventures and combat are tailored to feel almost overwhelming for the party. Load screen tips will even echo that players are not expected to reach the end of an adventure on the first try. With party skills to unlock and lots to explore on each adventure map, having your team wiped out by the equally matched enemies is a rewarding experience as you familiarize with each character in combat. Even when playing the same stage with the same characters and choosing the same path, the party will have to challenge uncertain events with dice rolls as the story takes unique turns.

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

The action and environments are drawn in a delightful cartoon style. The stylish reduction of facial features on each character is charming as fanciful illustrations decorate each animation. Cutscenes take the shape of comic book styled storyboards that accompany the beginning of each adventure and expose recent events in each area. The soundtrack is also well composed of medieval instrument melodies that add tension and suspense to the fantasy world. 

While progression and variety make each playthrough feel different, there are some areas where the turn based combat can be shallow. It’s difficult to find a point of reference for using skills and movement in a single turn. For example, faster heroes can move multiple times in a turn before or after attacking while certain skills for spellcasters and heavily armored characters require a whole turn and cant be used in the same turn as movement. This creates unnecessary trial and error that gets in the way of building an effective party and learning how to survive longer. It’s also difficult to discern how status effects come into play on the adventuring map, such as how influential the party’s positive or negative mood is after events take place. Information on enemies movement and attack rage is accessible, but isn’t displayed visually on the Hexagonal grid.

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

The journey plays within a delicate balance of being difficult to clear yet fun to come back and play. The adventures begin to take a toll on characters because when they fall in battle they lose a point of maximum health until finally the whole team is wiped out at once. Since encounters are randomized at the start of every adventure it’s hard to tell when success is based on skill or chance, but the solid formula of looping attempts at survival while experimenting with party members adds a lot of replayability. Also included is an arena mode with a host of single combat encounters and include daily challenges.

Altogether, Legends of Kingdom Rush is a single player role playing campaign where combat takes center stage. Because no map plays the same twice, returning to face the randomly generated hordes of monsters is satisfying, even when the odds become overwhelming. The charming storytelling and appealing art style place the fierce combat in an adorable package. While there are some missing quality of life features when compared to other turn based titles, Legends of Kingdom Rush guarantees hours of fun for fans of rougelites and RPG combat. 

Legends of Kingdom Rush Review

Pros

Fierce turn based RPG combat

Charming character designs and art style

Lots of party members to unlock and upgrade

Randomized adventure maps

Cons

No measurement for moving and attacking in the same turn

 Enemy attack ranges aren’t displayed on the battlefield 

Status effects on the adventure map are not explained 

3 out of 5

Review code provided by PR. Legends of Kingdom Rush is out now!

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