Pros: Exceptional graphics for the genre, strong core gameplay, lots of heroes to recruit
Cons: Grindy content, poor translations at times, poor performance when loading up areas
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GTArcade have just launched League of Angels 2, a free to play browser strategy RPG where players battle through a fantasy world recruiting into their group of adventurers, you guessed it, Angels. Following very much the same style of gameplay as its predecessor and many other RPGs that fall into the genre, LoA2 does come equipped with some pretty stunning 3D visuals when compared to other games that it stands alongside; the animations are so much more fluid than the jerky low-framerate animations we’ve seen before and overall the extra polish on the game really does make it stand out.
Is it any different though? Not really.
Whilst the publisher/developer is publicly touting the game in their teaser trailer as “2016 Most Anticipated Game” and it being a title that will “usher in a new age for MMORPGs” we have to say that we think that might be quite a stretch. Stepping away from the nuances and details of the game, the upgrade systems, relics and other features, the actual core of the game is pretty much the same as all the others and follows the same rote gameplay: complete a linear chain of instanced battles, gain resources to upgrade your characters, train up your team and put them into your formation so that you can compete against other players and take on PVE content.
Whilst these core features may be the pillars of this type of RPG (and we really don’t throw them in the same lot as MMORPGs ala World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, WildStar, etc. because they’re not even on the same wavelength) the gameplay is so similar between them, the features so paralleled that the unique elements will go unnoticed for all but the diehard fans of the genre.
Combat is still the same automated feature as it has near always been; the strategy lies in assembling your team, training them up and positioning them in your formation and whilst the two sides duke it out they build up rage allowing you to personally trigger their individual ultimate skills (this is the only involvement in battle the player will have). Against the PVE... you can pretty much get away with anything in the linear solo quests and you don’t need to put that much thought into any tactics early on as you are so overpowered in comparison to the enemy as you battle through the rather thin story-line interjected with poor English translations.
The story being fairly uninteresting it does generally come down to the PVP, and for most that is the ultimate end-game bragging rights element that they’ll focus on. Again, it’s not really PVP, you’re not going up against another player per se but instead fight their team that they have assembled, not that this affects much as you have zero control over your team anyway (even the ultimate skills trigger automatically). Stepping into the Arena you can choose which players you challenge, you have a selection to choose from that shows their rank and their current BR; their Battle Rating score which is calculated from their level, the level of their team’s Angels, their gear, etc. It’s an element of the game we don’t really get, at least not this early on, as a higher BR almost guarantees that player will win any duel. Almost.
We thought we’d put it to the test and challenged a player who has about 3000 BR higher than us (we were around 65,500, he was 68,000) so at such an early level they’d obviously just upgraded a few Angels or something more than us. The fight began and, as we were in the lower levels, their group composition was exactly the same as ours; they hadn’t moved any of the Angels around in the formation and simply placed them where they were initially told during the tutorial phase, as we had; so it was a complete mirror match. Both teams made the same attacks in the same order, only the opponents hits were a little harder due to their upgrades and it became a battle of attrition that won them the fight as we had expected. At this we did get curious as to whether strategy could play out better and so moved our team around in their formations so that our melee DPS who was initially on the front line wasn’t taking so much damage and getting dropped from the fight as early; surprisingly this worked out and we managed to kill off two of their heroes before the battle became a stalemate of both our healer Angels constantly replenishing the characters taking damage back up to full health so it was impossible for a complete victory, but after 25 rounds we were declared the victor due to having killed more of the enemy.
This has, in fairness, made us reassess the level of strategy that can actually be employed in these types of games and whilst the process is extremely tedious to level up your heroes, acquiring relics and resources grinding the same content all the time; there are over 60 heroes to collect and use to build up your own strategy. That said, trying to aim even slightly higher against higher BR players was just pointless no matter how we shifted our characters around; no amount of strategy was going to overcome pure power earned from upgrading.
Whilst the journey to reaching rank 1 in the PVP Arena might be interesting, we’re not so sure on the rest of the content given the automated combat, or what there is to achieve once you reach those high levels using (presumably) a well-designed team; changing up your team is likely to result in losing rank and so what else is there to do other than grind PVE to keep enhancing the same team?
Whilst the graphics definitely are a great improvement, the core gameplay hasn’t been touched at all from what we can see and so the game lacks the revolutionary component that it might be advertising itself as. However, the graphics alone are a big pro to the point where we’d say that if you’re going to play an RPG of this style then League of Angels 2 isn’t a bad choice.
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