Arcane Legends (Android) Review
Formats: Android
We liked?
Simple and fun combat
Intuitive controls and solid camera
Not so much?
Screen can get too busy with highly populated areas.
Lacks the epic scale typical of its genre
I certainly felt compelled to revisit the world of Arcane Legends again and again before reaching the end. To this extent the title serves not only as a worthwhile time killer, but also an enjoyable slice of MMO on the go gaming. It’s just a shame that the playing world isn’t as epic as you would expect from the RPG genre.
The mobile gaming market certainly isn’t short of classy pieces of gaming fun to help you while away those frustrating moments. Waiting for a bus, riding on the bus or waiting in a waiting room. Snack sized delights such as Angry Birds or Devil’s Attorney can take the misery out of such occasions.
But my existing mobile games library is certainly lacking titles that err towards the epic scale of gaming, such as MMOs. You could argue that titles such as World Of Warcraft have no place in the smart phone market. With their small screens, often inadequate battery life, patchy 3G/4G coverage and the extortionate data tariffs charged by service providers, you wouldn’t hold out much hope of having an enjoyable MMO gaming experience whilst on the move.
Developers Spacetime Studios however, feel differently. Very differently.
Arcane Legends is their fourth MMORPG title, this one takes place in a traditional fantasy world filled with Goblins, Sorcerers, and all manner of mystical and magical trappings. You can role one of three characters (Warrior, Rouge and Sorcerer) and choose a pet that will help you out in combat as well as collect dropped loot along the way.
From that moment on you are dropped into a small village where you can begin your journey. Talking to local NPCs will yield numerous missions, including ones that you can go back to on a daily basis. In order to travel through to any of the other locations you will initially have a linear path through which you’ll follow. Gradually unlocking all of the locations until you are able to then fast travel to anywhere that you had previously visited.
Character customisation is on the small scale, with a few options to try and keep your character unique whilst you purchase/loot other items in-game to enhance your character loadout. New armour, weapons and other apparel can be found during quests or purchased for in game coins. Being a free to download mobile title, there is the opportunity to exchange real world cash for in-game currency should you wish to speed up the rate at which you can acquire more powerful items. These can either be sold off for a small amount of money or, if the loot is reasonably rare, then you could put it up for auction and have another player purchase it for more money.
The controls are well implemented, with movement taking place on the left hand side of your touchscreen whilst the combat is done on the right hand side. I did find some of the combat buttons to be a little unresponsive at times, especially when it came to powering up the main attack for extra HP damage. My other concern was that when you are surrounded by enemies, you simply end up swiping madly across the bottom right hand corner of your screen in order to activate the other attacks that you have at your disposal.
When you stack up all of the above, it seems fairly mundane and run of the mill for an MMORPG. But Arcane Legends was my first multi-player experience on the smart phone and it was certainly enjoyable running around populated environments and teaming up with other players during some of the more difficult levels. Adding a bit more depth to this is the ability to form guilds with other players or friends. Chat windows remind you that this is a shared experience on a grand scale and it’s nice to see developers trying big things out on small devices that many of the more prominent game developers would write off.
That all said, it’s not just the screen you’re playing on that’s small. My biggest issue comes from just how small the world of Arcane Legends is. With a good few hours under your belt, you will comfortably make your way through all of the levels and would have seen most of what the world has to offer. I never found myself struggling too much with any of the levels, and even if you do then it’s more sensible to wait for other players to enter the arena and team up with them.
Quests will be made available to you on a daily basis. Add to that the obvious addiction of levelling up both your main character the pets that you own to help dole out some reply value. But otherwise the world feels hemmed in and quick to tire of. It would be excellent if Spacetime Studios were to spend future development efforts on building extensions onto the Arcane Legends world. Eventually giving you a truly expansive universe in which to live an alternative life in.
Graphically the title is crisp and clean, bearing an uncanny resemblance to PSOne era titles, albeit with a higher definition. The 3D isometric view works really well and the camera is nicely fixed and static, meaning that you’re never losing vital viewing angles during exploration or combat. There are a wealth of options to help optimise the amount of information that is thrown at you on screen, which can get a little busy sometimes when you are surrounded by many other players, as well as improving the battery performance.
I certainly felt compelled to revisit the world of Arcane Legends again and again before reaching the end. To this extent the title serves not only as a worthwhile time killer, but also an enjoyable slice of MMO on the go gaming. It’s just a shame that the playing world isn’t as epic as you would expect from the RPG genre.
has anyone played the game?