A charming RPG, city builder, and hero collector | Full Review - Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG

Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG is a part adventure RPG, part city builder mobile game set in a medieval fantasy world filled with goblins, dragons, and elemental beings.

🟩Pros

+charming game mechanics in exploration and city building

+combat system is somewhat engaging and appealing

🟥Cons

-Rudimentary visuals and graphics

-sluggish performances, both local and server-based

In Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG, you are a legendary hero who is the son of the former king, destined to rebuild your kingdom and vanish the enemies that threaten the land.

The graphics aren't its strongest point

First of all, the graphics of this game might look very unimpressive and at first sight seem ugly with its Adobe Flash-like 2D aesthetic and literal hexagonal characters. In combat, there aren’t even character sprites, instead only game pieces for a supposed hexagonal grid board game, but don’t get turned off. After a while there is a sort of an acquired taste that improves after a while.

Gameplay Analysis

Starting out Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG, I was immediately introduced to the grand exploration / dungeon crawling gameplay set in a hexagonal grid based map, populated by monsters, loot, and resources to conquer. Navigation is easy, just touch what tile to move to and it will immediately interact with it either by gathering the resource or loot, or entering combat with hostile units in that area, if any.

Despite the pretty rudimentary visual design of the world, the map is so immense, at the start, you can already see the huge stretch of the world that will be available for you to explore.

The whole system feels very primitive to look at, the whole map reminds me not of Civilization 4, not even 3 and 2, but of Civilization 1 with its bird’s eye 2D view of the land represented by hexagonal grids, and early 2000s Adobe Flash Player visuals.

Even in the real-time combat, they’re really doubling down on the tile grid layout. With all the character and enemy units being now square tile portraits just bobbing around throwing projectiles and slash effects to signify ranged and melee attacks. And for all intent and purposes, the whole setup is still somehow visually appealing and absorbing to play in its own way.

Elemental-based combat system

In Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG, You battle all sorts of creatures from goblins and orcs to elemental slimes that are subject to different elemental weaknesses. Then comes the city building aspect which is another decent element on its own.

The main special ability of the player character is the ability to summon ancestral heroes to use them for battle in what seems like a pokemon or card-game like approach to collecting heroes, complete with a tier system. Similar to the elemental-based enemies, heroes will also align to one or two elements with matching abilities that can be used to your advantage.

The whole combat system is pretty well done and despite the shortcomings in the visual department, it's still engaging to play. The different ancestral heroes will have two main abilities usable in combat, a normal ability with a simple effect and short cooldown, and a special ability with a higher cooldown and a more grandiose effect.

City Building elements

Pretty early in the game, the city building aspect is introduced which adds another engaging core gameplay element. Players can seamlessly travel between the “exploration” world map and the city building aspect. Resources looted from the world map  — that are replenished every few real world days —  are used to build structures and these structures can upgrade certain aspects of your hero, like melee and ranged damage.

To reach higher tier buildings, you may need to craft and build higher tiered mats and resources. The gameplay loop is just as engaging as its ancestral hero summoning-combat and exploration system, and while the two systems aren’t really that interconnected, they both synergized very well because of the aside resource gathering aspect. Of course, since this game is a free-to-play offering, expect a lot of grinding and real world days of waiting for progression in the mid to later stages. Spending money is encouraged, but not absolutely required.

There is a questing system in place and players can either follow the two main quests for the exploration and city building, and also take on side-quests and daily quests that will give off more additional loot and resources, adding both narrative and gameplay stimulation to the player and the character.

Performance woes

As for the main deal breaker, for me it is the sluggish performance. The game struggles to perform satisfactorily in my experience, compared to other more good looking games in which I’ve had little to no problems. Touch commands are also unresponsive and the game overall is frustrating to control.

Movement commands not being recognized instantly, sudden fade to blacks that will make you second guess if the game crashes, and the game is plagued with constant “waiting for server response” messages for every thing that you do; defeating enemies, picking up loot, or switching to another map. It heavily messes up the flow of the game to the point that it’s game breaking.

Conclusion:

What Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG lacks in visual fidelity and graphics, it makes up for a charming adventure RPG experience with an equally charming city building mechanics. Ultimately, Hero Legacy: Adventure RPG’s poor performance and unresponsive controls massively hinders what could have been a decent city building RPG game.