Elise Avery reviews Ruined King: A League of Legends Story developed by Airship Syndicate.
Ruined King on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1276790/Ruined_King_A_League_of_Legends_Story/
Join YouTube Memberships and support our content for Early Access to new videos, exclusive Discord perks & more for just $2 per month ►► https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqg5FCR7NrpvlBWMXdt-5Vg/join
Subscribe to Escapist Magazine! ►► http://bit.ly/Sub2Escapist
Want to see the next episode a week early? Check out http://www.escapistmagazine.com for the latest episodes of your favorite shows.
—
—
Zero Punctuation Merch Store ►►https://teespring.com/stores/the-escapist-store
Join us on Twitch ►► https://www.twitch.tv/the_escapist_official
Like us on Facebook ►► http://www.facebook.com/EscapistMag
Follow us on Twitter ►► https://twitter.com/EscapistMag
Source
Honestly I'm about half way through the story and the writing's seemed fine to me. The review felt harsh on that point. Maybe it'll all fall apart later I dunno. I do agree with the point about party composition feeling kind of locked in place though. Without a tank and healer, your DPS characters drop like flies to any tougher enemies. I feel like it should be mentioned too that a lot of people on their official discord, myself included, are experiencing several bugs and crashes seemingly across all platforms. So this game didn't ship in great condition either…
This review seems heavily biased but I guess thats par for the course for reviews I guess? Idk just seemed a little on the harsher side of things all things considered. I think the game is plenty fine. As for story I mean its fine? If you boil everything down to its roots like "Bad guy at island go get them" then Arcane is just "People are fighting about stuff" or "Go get the blue orb" its needlessly reductive.
As for criticizing the having to do a dungeon bit…would you not like a game? if you have to do a dungeon then congratulations youve played the game. I do think the game can be easy at times and i agree you can cheese with Braum Taunt/Block Turns but you can still make interesting plays. Im only pointing out what i think are nitpicks rather than subjective things like if you like the gameplay or not or movespeed though i do agree, I wish it were a touch faster.
Personally I didnt really get into league lore but i did play when they "killed" gangplank so thats kinda cool for me but ive long since stopped playing LoL, however I think this is a fine game to play and consume some lore. Theres alot and most of it is text and not present really in the moba itself and scattered around to boot.
One last note I wish it was touched upon but they've done a really nice job on taking alot of LoL into the game, again which ive played so maybe thats why im a tad sweeter on it, the dungeon bits kinda feels like moving in a lane with a skillshot and theyve incorporated builds into the game not like just armor and stuff but the runes system. It just kinda feels like League but without the sweat. I want to make it clear though im not a fan of League as ive quit and the only reason i think about it is Ekko.
I feel like this was overly harsh. I won’t say that Ruined King is my GOTY, but it was actually pretty fun to play. I can see a lot of things reused from Battle Chasers, but since I really enjoyed that game I don’t consider that a mark against it. The character interactions were interesting, and even though I feel like the story repeats itself on certain points, that was because the points were made in the optional conversations at the rest points.
For the plot being just ‘there’s a guy on an island, go get him’, one could argue that most game plots go in two directions. Either you have an objective that keeps being drawn out by contrived reasons to pad things out, or you have a basic goal that gets hijacked by much bigger things, like the end of the world. God of War 4 is an example of the former, since your goal is to deliver your wife’s ashes to the highest mountain. Then you have to go to another realm to get the light to disperse a black mist, find out the tallest mountain is in a different realm, find a chisel to carve the rune, find the rune itself… basically spreading the same plot over 10 – 20 hours of gameplay.
The only real complaints I would have about Ruined King are about a bug where a hard hitting foe called an executioner would hit a different character than the game said he was targeting (often one-shotting them), and there’s not a reliable way to farm black marks aside from fishing. Which can take forever, and has it that you need between 5 to 20 chunks to get a single mark. And since they have skins for each character and they’re 100 marks each, makes it torturous. If they could’ve included a new game plus like Battle Chasers did, it could at least made the grinding more bearable.
They really don't know what to do with the Ruined King.
I really really enjoyed the game, especially the story ironically
You know, you almost convinced me (a LoL player) not to bother getting this game after all despite the anticipation, until I saw that Braum can wear a poro on his head. Now I need to get it ASAP.
I didn't say it in the review but I wanted to love this game, and saw a tonne of potential early on for the story to be something amazing. I was willing to write a review that said the story was thrilling and well-written, but that just wasn't my experience. Over and over, the story disappointed me until I thought it wasn't good.
I don't know why the story is like this but game development is complicated, and it's working within the LoL IP, which probably limited what they could do. If you enjoy the story or the game, good for you, and I wish I felt the same.
This seems overly harsh to me.
Great game and only cost $30 new. The story is pretty average, but I think the characters are interesting and likeable enough to carry the story, and the art and music are just fantastic. The combat is enjoyable, but the dungeons can drag a little bit. Still, I havent finished it yet but I'm having a great time. Highly recommend.
The whole ruined king story was average at best. As for this game, it would have been nice if there were more teleporters and the move speed was faster since it has a lot of backtracking.
Hello. I have turned on all notifications for your reviews. I'm also a long time league of legends player. I play the main game for completion purposes and based on your review and my own opinions, will not be getting this game.
Yes, I said I'm a disgusting individual that is playing league of legends to 100% it. Just not ranked, because I would rather swallow Yahtzee's thesaurus whole then play competitively.
If someone's not interested in the LoL part of this game, I feel that BattleChasers: Nightwar woud possibly scratch the same itch
Is there a physical copy of the game?
Joe Madureira artstyle is an evergreen enjoyment and the combat is a great tribute to the classic jrpg. The story itself is average but the characters are fun enough to justify sticking oth them for the duration of the game.
a comment to please our almighty overlord with engagement to feed the algorithm!
i've been playing it on the hardest difficulty since the start and never once thought you NEEDED a healer or NEEDED a tank. you get enough potions to heal up between fights in dungeons and with smart enchanting and runes/abilities you won't HAVE to have certain party members. the game very obviously wants you to tinker and experiment with builds so you aren't forced to rely on certain champions. unless you want to play it in the most boring way possible.
I completely agree with this review, except I played it on Switch, where it was also plagued with a bunch of bad bugs and load times. If you HAVE to play this game, don't play it on Switch unless Airship releases some patches.
Steam sale fodder.
Kind of feels like the old final fantasy games
You sound like you have a moustache. Do you have a moustache?