Sacred Legends is the latest in a long line of Action RPGs on mobile that are heavy on the action but low on interaction. There are a few buttons to push, but most of the game is taken out of your …
Sacred Legends is the latest in a long line of Action RPGs on mobile that are heavy on the action but low on interaction. There are a few buttons to push, but most of the game is taken out of your hands. Sure it’s pretty, and when you unleash your super moves, everything flashes and glitters in perfectly pleasant ways — but at this point it all feels a little too generic. Hero archetype wanders through a world beset by monsters hitting things.
There are stats you can watch go up, but this is a game that’s all about numbers and not much else. Get better gear, get more powerful attacks, keep pushing on until you’ve slaughtered everything in a series of linear battles. There’s no real twist, nothing you haven’t seen before; just a light show that’ll keep you entertained long enough to realize that there are better things you could be doing.
The story here is about as generic as they come. You’re a prisoner trapped by some monsters, and once you get out you join a league of warriors out to stop the bad guys and restore peace to the realm. There might be a bit more to it than that, but it’s unlikely that you’re going to pay any attention.
Once you’re free you set out on your quest. This involves walking automatically through linear levels, killing three groups of monsters, and then getting some loot for your troubles. You walk and use your basic attack without any input, but you do have some control over your special moves.
These are on timers, and sit in the bottom left of the screen. You also get a super special move that powers up as you take a beating. Unleashing this does massive damage and creates the biggest fireworks display the game has to offer.
There are three different character classes to pick from at the start of play: Warrior, Archer and Seraphim. The Warrior and the Archer pretty much explain themselves, the Seraphim is basically a paladin; all magic spells and hitting things with a sword.
Sometimes you’re wandering through the levels on your own, other times you can select a couple of companions. These come from other players, and you can take them into fights that are going to be too tough for you to complete on your own.
Everything that happens while you play feels sort of inevitable. You can smash up old bits of equipment to make your powerful stuff even more powerful, grind through finished quests to get more XP, and get slightly baffled about the number of currencies and other gewgaws the game chucks into your face.
Sacred Legends isn’t a bad game. Everything it does, it does perfectly well. It’s pretty when it needs to be, its violence is chunky and entertaining to watch, and it pushes you to get better stuff at almost every opportunity. The problem is you’ve seen everything it’s done before. There are no fresh ideas here, nothing that’ll make you sit up and pay attention. Even the characters feel like they’ve stumbled in from other games to shout generic fantasy nonsense at you while you’re trying your best not to push the Auto Battle button and go to sleep.
Sacred Legends is big and bright, and there’s an awful lot to do here, but it completely fails to capture the attention in any meaningful way. It’s like Christmas lights — fun to look at to begin with, but eventually just another shiny thing indiscernible in a sea of brightness.
