Outfit7’s newest title launched globally on iOS and Android barely a week ago and this intriguing mix of RPG mechanics and auto chess arena battlers is aiming to keep the competition short and sharp. We picked a Legend and watched from on high as this new adventure unfolded during our review.
Available now and entering the mobile battleground as a free to play challenger, Mythic Legends is, at first, a lot like other on the go games you might recognize. Taking place in the constrained confines of a desolate arena, the core of this brightly colored hero battler is short form automated tactical encounters. While progressing through the main campaign or brawling in a PvP style ranked mode, anybody engaging with Mythic Legends must build a troop of warriors, band them together into a formidable team, and blow away opposing players. It’s a simple enough idea, one that sounds suspiciously like Clash Royale or Brawl Stars, and it would be disingenuous to say there aren’t plenty of similarities between both titles even when they are mostly skin deep.
Easy Entry
Press play on this experience and you will be welcomed by a host of brightly colored personalities, all tossed into a mix of oversized ruins and stylized environments that make them seem about as threatening as a Saturday morning cartoon strip. The mix of potential champions, each grouped into their own themed decks, is full of unique ideas. Whether it’s Nordic hordes, Egyptian warriors, or the acid green of the undead, there are plenty of faces and inviting ideas to suit your particular taste. While the cartoonish façade might not hit the spot for fans of post apocalyptic epics and sprawling fantasy JRPGs like Nier Reincarnation, this is a decidedly more populist mobile title. The range and reach of these aesthetics, the jovial caricatures, and the big bright buttons that make up the in game UI ensure almost anybody can whip out an iPhone during the morning commute and instantly understand what’s going on. It’s a credit to the team at developer Hyper Dot Studios that Mythic Legends is instantly intuitive and the light tone means it’s accessible to much of the mobile market.
While the core combat in Mythic Legends might be palatable enough to simply sit and passively consume, there are plenty of things to get up to in this new game. Split into several stages over a long and winding trek through an animated overworld, Mythic Legends shoves players into a series of arena based battles. Beginning with just a few Champions, players must pull from a deck of gruff looking individuals and flesh out a team to take into battle. Overcoming that very first encounter isn’t particularly difficult. Stating with a single supporting Legend and a series of more active minions, pre-combat consists of drawing from a limited set of available cards and deploying combatants across a 6 by 5 grid format. Getting these in place is a simple touch screen drag and drop affair, meaning players can pick from a straightforward set of defensive, DPS, and ranged options to fill the void. Once combat kicks off these characters attack of their own accord and you’d best hope that you’ve laid out your plan of attack well. Should you succeed in downing all comers in each mini-tournament then it’s unlikely that things will stay this easy for long.
Always Pick The Dragon
What starts out as a simple set of choices does gradually become deeper. Players progressively unlock character cards, ensuring a steady and ongoing power treadmill that steadily requires more and more character cards to strategically upgrade and expand your roster. A solid selection of daily rewards, achievements, and a battle pass provide a mix of random card drops, gold, and in game gems to keep this power progression moving forward.
While this is all very simplistic in the early stages, putting forward the strongest team to overpower any enemies, these upgrades will allow eager adventurers to pick more and more troops from a steadily expanding roster of characters. This vertical progression means the same direct tank rush might come up against a series of opponents they are not well suited to and other considerations start to become important. Mythic Legends starts to shirk its easy going façade when picking exactly the right combination of allies in the pit. Different Champions track in their own way, with tanks storming straight down the middle while healers hang back and assassins can slip into the back of an enemy line. Understanding how an enemy’s posture will impact your own defensive formations and choosing from a range of mid round bonuses can turn the tide of competition. There’s nothing quite like worrying that you’re about to be trounced and pulling a bonus dragon out of the deck instead, or rolling a surprise zombie horde that distracts the opposing cannon fodder. There are even class and themed synergies to consider, each of which can influence your approach. It’s enough to say that Mythic Legends combat might not take long to play out, with no more than a few minutes of fighting in each tournament round, but it is far more nuanced than the animated aesthetic suggests.
The only regrettable part of this combination of power progression and breadth of choice is that the in game battle pass becomes an incredibly compelling purchase if you’re likely to play more than a couple of rounds at a time. Similarly, the achievement-based rewards are also enhanced in exchange for cash too, giving players access to extra drops. This isn’t helped by the multi tiered gacha system, that is woven into these enhanced rewards. The result leaves some concern that at least some players are either likely to feel they need to spend, or are utterly annihilated by big spenders along the way.
Quick Hitting Fun Times
Still, while Mythic Legends might not quite be on the bleeding edge of action adventure or enlist the most innovative narrative, the combat is interesting and easy going without being a steamrolling exercise. The interesting interplay between deck building systems, the core of the title’s team construction, and the quick hit tournaments is supported by a solid matchmaking system that provides balanced competition. Even among defeat, shifting positions, changing synergies, and rolling for the right bonuses can swing an entire tournament from a slew of desperate attempts to overcome the odds to a slim victory. Mythic Legends is a bite size arena battler that manages quick-hit gameplay with far more depth than your average idle adventure.
Mythic Legends is out now and brings a brilliant arena battler to Android and iOS devices via compatible storefronts. Find out who you are taking into battle over on the official website now.
