An engrossing full featured action RPG in miniature
Battleheart Legacy is a massive, full-featured action RPG with streamlined and accessible controls. However, it manages to let itself down with a slow start that highlights the monotony of its combat.
Build a hero
The world of Battleheart Legacy is diverse and varied. There are tons of non-player characters (NPCs) for you to interact with, each with their own dialog. You have multiple responses to all of these, providing you with choices that will impact your character's moral compass.
I particularly enjoyed helping a rather useless wizard hunt for treasure, before deciding to just hold him up for the reward he offered. But for all of this freedom, it does take time for the game to open up - making the early hours somewhat monotonous.\n
With games becoming increasingly complex it is strange to find an action RPG title as full featured as Battleheart Legacy that manages to limit its interface to just a small selection of taps. It's fortunate that it manages to stay this simple too, because it offers little in the way of a tutorial, quickly pushing you out into its world with only a sword and dreams of success.
While it may not overtly introduce them, it doesn’t take long before you get sucked into the more involved systems. You are able to train in specific disciplines or mix-and-match skills. This means that you can cherry pick abilities - including the stealth of a thief, the righteous strike of a paladin, or the arcane forces of a magician - to suit your play style.
Tap to kill
What Battleheart Legacy does offer in terms of tutorial plays out in a few scenes that teach you how touching anywhere on screen will send your hero towards the desired point and tapping on an enemy will lock on and attack. It's a simple system that, when combined with the slow pace of movement, ensures that you never feel out of your depth in combat.
The downside of this pace is that the combat is far from electrifying. Each location is carved into small arenas and rarely offers enough enemies in isolation to prove a challenge. Add to this the ability to cheat by moving back-and-forth between sections (in order to recharge more powerful attacks in safety - and you have a system with limited challenge.
An engrossing world
Battleheart Legacy is gorgeously detailed. Its range of environments really frame your journey as you pass from village, to forest, to dungeon. Each of these has its own inhabitants - both friendly and otherwise - for you to interact with, ensuring that this is one handheld adventure that can really suck you in.
Accessible for all
With its beautifully crafted world, Battleheart Legacy offers an expansive and complex RPG experience. The slow pace of combat may feel overly simple (at least at first), but the breadth and depth of the world will win over genre newcomers and aficionados nonetheless.
