iPhone/iPad Game Review: Legendary Wars

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I have a long-standing love of ‘tower defense’ (TD) games, so when there was an opportunity to check out Legendary Wars from Liv Games, there was only one possible answer: YES! Let’s see how they did!

The Hype:
Welcome to Legendary Wars. Take command of your heroes. Build up massive armies to destroy the undead forces of the Netherworld! It’s time to fight back!

Legendary Wars Features:
-Huge world to Explore
-Unique Gameplay: Action-RTS-RPG
-Gorgeous Retina graphics and animation
-ZOMG Monsters!
-New gear and attacks
-Epic Soundtrack

The Reality:
Legendary Wars isn’t strictly a TD game – but most games in the genre seldom stick purely to the original form anymore. What you get here is a mix of TD, real-time strategy, and role-playing elements. The tower defense and strategy elements are the most strongly emphasized, and where the game plays best.

First things first – you aren’t here for the story. I can barely remember what the introduction told me, but basically there is evil in the world and you need to collect nuggets of sunlight to drive away that evil. And for a TD game, that sort of story is about all you’ll ever get.

The other thing you aren’t here for are the graphics. This isn’t a universal release, so when I started it up on my iPad it has the dreaded 1x/2x button to resize for the larger screen. Worse still, when I played on my 4th Gen iPod Touch the graphics were decidedly ‘low tech’. They are not terrible, but we have gotten spoiled with Retina graphics in games, so these feel decidedly blurry and rudimentary.

I get those out of the way first because everything else in Legendary Wars is solid. The gameplay is straightforward: Legendary Wars is a side-scrolling game where enemies enter from the left or right. But there are also three ‘lanes’ of possible activity, and switching lanes is as easy as swiping up or down on the selected unit.

Did I just say ‘selected unit’? Absolutely – that is where the RTS elements come in! As each battle starts, you have a miner sent to the mine to get you gems to help recruit and train new units of various types. When you collect enough resources you simply tap the icon for the unit type and another one is made. You can then manually take control of them and guide them all the way through or simply head them in the direction of enemies.

Strategy in how to approach battles is also important. As I said, you can simply send your units to battle to the death, but that is neither fun nor efficient. If a melee enemy is in the same lane as your melee knight, you will win but take significant damage – and after a few such conflicts your knight will fall. But if you can maneuver around and attack an enemy from the side or back you will have significant advantage.

Aside from wave after wave of standard battles there are special challenges that come along such as keeping a large hero alive through an entire wave. These help to break things up and keep them interesting.

Overall, Legendary Wars is a solid game that offers loads of gameplay variety within a tower defense genre, along with enough strategy and role-playing elements to differentiate it nicely from the loads of other TD genre games. The minor niggles are just that – minor. If you are a fan of strategy and tower defense games, Legendary Wars is well worth the $3 price (and is on sale for free for iPhone and $0.99 for iPad as I write this).

Where to Get: iTunes App Store

Price: $2.99 (Currently free for iPhone, $0.99 for iPad)

What I Like: Excellent gameplay options; Perfectly balanced units in terms of strengths and weaknesses; Perfect blend of strategy and tower defense genres

What Needs Improvement: Graphics are still lacking even after Retina update

Source: Personal Download

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About the Author

Michael Anderson
I have loved technology for as long as I can remember - and have been a computer gamer since the PDP-10! Mobile Technology has played a major role in my life - I have used an electronic companion since the HP95LX more than 20 years ago, and have been a 'Laptop First' person since my Compaq LTE Lite 3/20 and Powerbook 170 back in 1991! As an avid gamer and gadget-junkie I was constantly asked for my opinions on new technology, which led to writing small blurbs ... and eventually becoming a reviewer many years ago. My family is my biggest priority in life, and they alternate between loving and tolerating my gaming and gadget hobbies ... but ultimately benefits from the addition of technology to our lives!