What’s Fun: Legendary Wars

In Legendary Wars, you have to recruit, train, and deploy a variety of units in order to attack your enemies and defend your castle. Each stage sees you gathering resources from a nearby mine, building units, and sending those units out to accomplish a required goal. The playfield has three lanes where the majority of the action will take place. In some stages, you need to defend against an enemy horde that will spawn in waves and attempt to destroy your castle. Other stages see you go on the offensive, trying to reach the enemy’s castle and reduce it to rubble. Sometimes, you’ll have to deal with special conditions like needing to keep a particular hero character safe. There are also occasional stages that see you controlling a single unit as it makes its way across the field, attacking enemies and picking up allies.

Regardless of the type of stage, the battlefield itself consists of three lanes where units can travel. If any of them are left unguarded, enemies will be able to break through your defenses with ease. You can use the lanes to your advantage, switching between them to avoid arrows and other attacks. Lanes can also be used to flank larger enemies who may take a stronger effort to bring down. This multi-lane battlefield is one of the key features of Legendary Wars, adding both figurative and literal depth to battles. Battles play out in real-time, so you need to think quickly and cover any holes in your defense before the enemies punch through.

In most normal stages, you’ll begin by creating a miner. He stays in the background of the battle and will dig up gems at a regular rate. You can tap on them to collect them immediately, or leave the miner to his own devices and have him bring them into the castle himself. Those gems are in turn used to create units. Each unit type has its own cost, with more powerful units requiring more resources to create. A major part of the game’s strategy comes from deciding which units to create and when to bring them into the battle. For example, Elfys are great for taking out enemies from a distance, but if an enemy reaches them they won’t survive very long. It may be better to create some Knightys first to act as a defense for the Elfys. 

Clearing a stage will reward you with gems and other rewards. You can use these gems at the Armory between levels to train your units, making them stronger, able to take more damage, attack more quickly, and so on. Gems can also be used to upgrade your castle’s defenses or increase the efficiency of miners. You’ll rarely earn some special moonstones that can be used for particularly useful upgrades like extra miners or legendary equipment. You can repeat stages to earn extra gems, but the rewards you receive will be diminished after the first time. It may be necessary at times to return to earlier stages in order to strengthen your units before heading into the next battle. 

As you play through the story campaign, you’ll recruit new units, learn powerful magic spells, and get amazing attack skills. Eventually you will have so many different types of units that you won’t be able to bring all of them with you into a single stage. Each unit has their own talents to offer, so you’ll need to choose carefully according to the goals of the stage and your own personal playing style. There are no penalties for failing a stage, so it’s easy to jump back in with a new plan once you know what you’re dealing with. The deeper you venture into the story, the more unit types, magic spells, and skills will be open to you. It’s likely that no two players will approach levels in quite the same way thanks to the wide variety of options.

In addition to the lengthy story campaign, Legendary Wars includes a number of extra modes that you can play to earn extra gems and moonstones. Playing these modes can give you resources to move forward in the campaign, which in turn will open up more options when tackling these extras. These include a mode where you face up against an endless number of enemy waves, a mode where you play the side-scrolling mini-game for as long as you can, and more. There is also a massive list of challenges to tackle, each one tasking you with completing a specific goal such as defeating a certain number of enemies within a time limit. You’ll have to play through the story campaign to unlock all of these additional modes, but they’re well-worth spending time with once you have access to them. All of them will earn you rewards that you can use in the story campaign. They’re also a nice change of pace if you need a break from the usual stages.