Checking out Goodgame Studios newest Castle Building RTS Legends of Honor we spent a few hours getting to grips with the game and checking out this browser based free to play MMO. Set in a medieval world of three rivalling factions (that had rather obvious similarities to Game of Thrones if you ask us) we found ourselves as the ruler of our own Castle, tasked with training up an army and unleashing the dogs of war and making our enemies and rivals flee with terror… in theory. In reality we just harassed a few players and killed them for no reason because we could. The game is yet another Castle building MMO from the studio, following the footsteps of Goodgame Empire and Shadow Kings: Dark Ages, both offering a lot of the same mechanics and game principles, but a completely different vibe with Legends of Honor taking a step away from the cartoony and colourful graphics of the previous titles.

The game is pretty solid at its core from what we experienced, the mechanics and features are a staple of what we’ve come to expect of Castle RTS games (for better or worse). Whilst they are popular and few want to try and break a seemingly winning formula, unfortunately Legends of Honor and others lack a lot of innovation and trying to create anything particularly new. Our experience felt all too familiar of the dozens of other games we’ve played that came before it, including Goodgame Studios previous titles.

So what can you expect if you’ve never played? Well it’s a classic resource-gathering , building constructing, army training rivalry between other players, a continuous battle to be the best and destroy your enemies through PVP. Whilst there are PVE elements with attacking nearby Marauders and other AI challenges, which come with their own share of resources and loot, the game primarily focuses on the PVP conflict and players trying to grind each other into the ground as solo players or by forming and joining Alliances with others.

Resource acquisition is the first priority, gaining them through the buildings you construct in your castle walls, or completing quests or through combat, they are spent at practically every turn from constructing buildings and training up your army. An interesting feature that we hadn’t seen before was that from your Castle screen we had a forest and a mountain making up our background scenery, but by mouse clicking on the mountain we would add 1 stone to our resource stores and 1 wood by clicking on the forest. For anyone with the time they can essentially click as fast as possible to build up their resources as opposed to waiting for your buildings to tick over meaning players always have the chance to build resources back up and construct whatever they need (albeit recruiting units costs Coin, which isn’t available through mouse clicks). What we’re not sure on is whether there is a cap as to how much you can get, but from our efforts we didn’t hit one, so whether sneaky players could set up a macro to mouse click and give them free resources whilst they are AFK would be interesting to see!

Resources secured, buildings constructed and upgraded, next up we got found the beginnings of our army, heading into the Recruitment area we were met with a handful of units, 4 that were initially unlocked out of a possible 10 units in the game, which we felt was quite a small number considering we already nearly half of them open to us. As well as training up units, such as Axemen or Archers, we could also upgrade them to make them more powerful, upgrading your Axemen’s rank means that all subsequently recruited units will be of that level. Finally players can craft their own boosters, giving a boost to attack or defense that can be assigned to an assembled group led by a Hero.

Heroes are something we liked a lot, essentially what happens is that once you have recruited your units and produces your unit boosters, you assign them to a Hero, a character with their own equipment, attributes and stats that act as the generals of your army (and you get to name them yourself!). On the World Map your Heroes have their own icon and can move around the map, taking their units with them they are pretty much a mobile army allowing you to hunt down AI threats or seek our rival players, battling their Heroes in the field or taking the attack to their Castle.

The reason we love this so much is that unlike other Castle RTS games where you have to garrison your units in towns you control or have an Alliance with, in Legends of Honor your Heroes can literally be moved to anywhere, with multiple Heroes available you can keep your entire army stationed out in the field as a threat or a deterrent to other players. In our experience we made two attacks on players, one against a rival Hero of another faction, the other a different players City. When making attacks you can go for an Assault, which will do a small skirmish style attack to test their defenses without committing to a full blown battle, or a Destruction attack which is a “them or us” where you battle to the last man and either you or your opponent will be the only one left standing. Attacking the Castle we overcommitted (knowingly) to see how it would turn out, we lost the battle but did a lot of damage, however, the next time we logged in our rivals castle was no longer there so presumably someone else picked at the carcass. Another battle against a hero ended with a victory and as we had our second Hero coming to finish them off they fled quickly into their castle!

Although there are some enjoyable elements to the game there are unfortunately a lot of drawbacks; the performance isn’t that great and switching between Castle and World Mode was sometimes quite buggy, there’s no sound or music, and the early game building phase is so long and repetitive and completely unnecessary. The game also feels a bit bare bones, lacking a lot of features that other RTS games have such as a more involved social community network to talk to other players outside the forum and have an idea of what’s going on in the world. Legends of Honor isn’t a bad game, it’s just not as good as it could have been and the early gameplay could put off a lot of players.

CONCLUSION:

• Graphics: 6


• Gameplay: 7


• Performance: 7

• Pros: Hero system is great fun with mobile armies, simple and casual gameplay, decent quality graphics.


• Cons: Lacking music or sounds, not much innovation, early Castle building phase is boring.

Rating: 6.5

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.