Welcome one and all to The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot! If the title of this game from Ubisoft sounds familiar you are not alone. A previous version of the game was originally released on the PC in February 2015 and then in January 2017, a re-envisioned free-to-play mobile version was soft-launched into early access. This summer the lands of Opulencia are ready to be looted once again and we wanted to check out all the loot it had to offer for new or returning players. This is our preview of The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot mobile.
My initial impressions of the game were quite good. It has a basic story where you are being guided by a “knight”? “adventurer”? Who knows but you eventually find out that their name is Lord McBucket… while somewhat amusing the humor so far has not really hit its mark with me.
The graphics, on the other hand, are simple, stylized and enjoyable. The gameplay is smooth on a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, with the drag to move being quite responsive. My only real complaint involved the quick drag action for dodging during combat. It didn’t always respond to roll me out of danger and I found my character often at the tender mercy of the various enemy special attacks. The combat animations were quite fluid and special ability effects well done.
Unfortunately, out of the gate your character cannot be customized at all. You are a newly minted adventurer/hero with starter adventuring gear. On the positive side, you start getting loot rather quickly and that changes up your appearance with every new item you equip. You also get to start the game with an imp pet who helps to gather up the coin on your trip through the various castles. Further character customization using portraits and pets are unlocked for purchase with gems as you level up and completed certain goals. The downside is that like many similar games, you have a limited amount of energy within a given time period unless you are willing to top up the pool by spending gems.
Sound effects in the game are OK if rather basic, they do the job and make sense for the animations taking place on the screen. The background music, however, is an area in which this game shines. I found myself reminded of the soundtrack from Pirates of the Caribbean. It does a great job of imparting a feeling of whimsy in between the levels while navigating around the shop, character, quest and forge UI.
The tutorial is straight forward and clear making it easy for new players to quickly get into the game and start killing monsters for their loot. The various menus and UI elements it guides you through are easy enough to navigate but in a few instances can become a touch confusing at first. When trying to accomplish certain tasks, like improving items, there are multiple ways to arrive at the same screen. If you keep drilling down by expending in-game resources, you typically end up finding your way onto the shop page. Character stats are easy to understand, M represents character strength and items that upgrade your character’s M stat will display a green indicator.
Players have many activities to complete within the game: quests, advancement goals, achievements, the main storyline castles, challenge castles, and item improvement. With so much to do, you can easily miss out on newly available activities. Thankfully the game does a good job of notifying you when a new activity is available to complete or if a reward is ready to be claimed.
The gameplay itself is fun and fast-paced with a variety of environments to explore and enemies to kill. While the levels so far in the early parts of the game are small and simple, I can see them becoming more engaging over time as new mechanics such as traps are introduced. I found that the combat became more enjoyable once autorun unlocked at level 5. Typically, I am not a fan of using autorun in mobile games. In this game though with it turned on I was able to focus more on dodging attacks when needed and activating my special abilities. Surprisingly loot was not quite as plentiful as I was initially expecting with only one or two items dropping per castle I explored. Thankfully quite a bit of gold tends to drop as well so it does feel like you are constantly looting something. If you are looking for loot explosions though they seem to be lacking at least in the earlier parts of the game. I did find it nice though when there was a pop-up message to let you know that all the chests on a given level were discovered.
I am not going to say too much about the microtransactions at this time. The game is still in early access and Ubisoft has responded to feedback from players, indicating that the microtransaction balancing is ongoing. At this point in time, however, I have two main takeaways involving the microtransactions in the game. First, I have found the gameplay gem rewards are quite low. Second, I am concerned about rare advancement items mainly being obtained by buying the shop chests. How will this impact the PVP arena when it unlocks for a player at level 8? Will players, for example, who pay for shop chests have an advantage over those who do not?
Overall, I have really enjoyed my initial time with The Mighty Quest For Loot and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good mobile action RPG with one caveat: you’ll need to accept the typical trappings that come with most free to play mobile games. I would like to see some more lootery in the various castle levels though. Hey, I know what you are thinking and lootery is a word, at least it is in the land of Opulencia anyway! I hope you enjoyed this preview of The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot and I look forward to doing a full review when the game officially releases on July 9th, 2019.
