RATING:
Pros: Plenty of features, cards and decent strategy.
Cons: PvE content is a little easy, at least in the early days.
Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 8
Performance: 10
Overall: 8.5
Recently we checked out R2Games' free to play trading card game MMO Summoner's Legion, a more Asian style TCG (at least that's what we calling it; it's in a very different style to the more common Magic the Gathering, Hex and Hearthstone style TCG that most people are used to) playable directly through your web browser. As with other TCGs there are a few familiar core elements such as acquiring and building up your deck of cards, managing your resource pool during battle and competing to drop the enemy Hero's health points to 0 in order to win the fight. There are a few key differences that we should explain as to how this differs to the TCGs we mentioned above.
First of all the main difference is the battleground layout, players find their Heroes at opposite ends of a battlefield which consists of usually two or more rows, each row broken down into 8 open squares that unit cards can be placed on. Each card has its own hit points, attack value and damage type as well as a variety of different traits such as counter-attacking, Alert allowing units to attack any adjacent units (on other rows, behind them, diagonal, etc.), resurrection, building up rage, armor to mitigate damage and more. The key difference is that at the end of each opponent’s turn all of their units will make an attack on any enemy unit that is directly in front of them, or the enemy Hero if there are no defending units blocking access, and then they will automatically move forward their full movement if possible. This movement creates an interesting strategy as often as not your units may move into a less than desirable position leaving them exposed for an attack you can see coming but can do little about, similarly as your units can only typically attack in front of them if they do not have the Alert trait and so any units that managed to push to your Heroes adjacent square can be extremely dangerous and hard to get rid of.
There's a number of different factions available, though players are not locked by these factions, instead they are more defined by their chosen Class, with four different classes to choose from (Mage, Ranger, Warrior and Rogue) this not only determines some of the spell and ability cards that you have access to but also the types of weapon that you can use, which gives your Hero different Hero abilities.
The game has quite a few different features, from a single player PVE campaigns, multiplayer PVE Dungeon Co-op’s, PvP Arenas and elements of crafting; all the kind of stuff we would hope to see in a modern TCG and so thankfully we were not disappointed. Graphically the game looks good, the sprites and animations are basic but for the type of game it is we feel that it is more than adequate of what is expected, similarly the sound effects and music aren’t too bad; at least it didn’t get to the point where we were reaching for the mute button.
We played the game for a few hours and in this time explored the different PvE options the most, trying out the single player Campaign was both an easy step into the game with a tutorial (not that you have much of an option as all the other features are level locked when you first start playing), but also allows you to unlock specific cards by completing the different map stages as well as acquiring resources for the other game features (see below). The Dungeon PvE was a really interesting take on multiplayer Co-op, though for our first run through we ended up doing it solo with the AI Heroes filling the two party spots, but after that we had a few run throughs with other random players where we had to take on different Boss type hero champions in a three on one battle. Whilst the game is Co-op there was definitely a distinct lack of communication, hardly surprising as you are on a turn timer for all three player heroes and we all had to act at the same time, quickly placing our cards and inevitably with such a lack of coordination occasionally placing them in a spot that somebody else would have been able to place something better. There is a feature for creating your own Guild and for those players that are going to engage in competitive group PVP then coordinating over voip with your group would definitely be fun and help out strategically.
The PVE wasn't all that demanding, in neither the solo content nor Co-op Dungeons, though we were still only playing the earlier tier levels so it’s hard to judge how difficult it gets further down the line. The only time we had a potentially game ending moment was when in a Dungeon match the enemy had managed to push a unit next to our Hero, with no units having the Alert trait at this stage (presumably the other players in the same position) and our spell card able to deal six damage to a target being unwilling to appear in our drawn cards we simply had to watch as our Hero took damage each turn. Fortunately going all out aggressive against the enemy meant we were able to win the game with probably around three turns before our Hero would have been killed.
PVP is obviously a lot more strategic and competitive, using the same bull rush techniques to simply dominate the enemy doesn't quite work the same, leaving a row open and trying to focus your attacks on a single row leaves you vulnerable, something players are all too quick to take advantage of. From the shop players are able to buy booster packs with random cards, purchase gold using real-world cash to open Deluxe packs (though gold is earned from time to time in game) or purchase the VIP account to open a Deluxe pack each day. So whilst there are a means of getting better cards more quickly there is no way to get a specific card that, in our opinion, may lead to disadvantages in PVP and so were pretty happy with how the cash shop has been handled.
As well as gold and silver (acquired more frequently and used to buy standard booster packs) players also acquire ingots which they can boost their Hero weapon, which will typically increase their hit points though other weapons can be unlocked to change a Heroes unique ability. Similarly players can acquire Magic Dust, either through battle rewards or by recycling their unwanted cards, which they can then use to upgrade other cards in their collection. Upgrades will increase a units attack, hit points or both, depending on the card and the amount of Magic Dust that is consumed with an upgrade; it is also determined by the individual card and its level.
With the various ways to upgrade your cards and balance out your deck it does add another level of strategy to the game, with plenty of available cards we have to say that from what we can tell there is no major shortfall in the game and it is probably one of the better titles that R2 Games have published. We could suggest graphical improvements, improved quality of sound, the desire for more cards (as ever, more cards are always better), but in all honesty as it stands the game seems to be pretty solid and well worth checking out.
You may also be interested in having a watch of our first look gameplay commentary video to see the game in action.
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