King has launched their latest game in partnership with Snowprint Studios called Legend of Solgard (Free), and it’s pretty darn good. It also marks quite a departure for the company known for their mega smash hit Candy Crush Saga and their library of other ultra casual fare. Legend of Solgard is still based around matching mechanics, but those mechanics have layers upon layers of depth built atop them, and the rest of the game is fleshed out with all sorts of upgrade mechanics and other more “hardcore" RPG-like elements. Would your Candy Crush-loving grandmother enjoy Legend of Solgard? How about your Fortnite-obsessed nephew? In theory King hopes they’ve helped craft a game to appeal to both of those demographics and everyone in between as well, but only time will tell if that ends up being the case.
One of the things I worried about in our review of Legend of Solgard is that it risks alienating both camps by trying to please everyone at once. More traditional gamers might be turned off by how free to play’d out the game is, and more casual gamers might be overwhelmed by the amount of complexity. I’m in a unique position in that I’ve gamed my entire life and have also covered mobile gaming since the beginning, right from when free to play first appeared up to the dominant game type that it is today. And because of that I actually enjoy all types of games. I enjoy more traditional premium games with a beginning and an ending, and I enjoy getting sucked into a free to play grind-a-thon that I can slowly make progress in over the course of weeks and months… and in some cases even years.
Even in my own case though, being an experienced gamer across the entire spectrum of game types, I often found Legend of Solgard to be overwhelming at times. It almost feels like they explicitly planned that once you felt comfortable with the mechanics you’ve learned up to a certain point that they’d throw something new your way to keep you on your toes. With that being the case, I thought a guide explaining some of the basics of what you can expect in Legend of Solgard might be helpful to potential players out there, and although there aren’t really any “cheats and tips" to exploit to help you past the game’s sometimes strict free to play system, just understanding what the heck is going on can be a big help in a game like this, especially if this “mid-core" offering is new territory for you.
The Basics
Legend of Solgard is a turn-based battler, where you’re given 3 turns to take before your enemy is able to react. Each battle starts with a random assortment of your troop on the battlefield. There are four different colors of troops: Red, yellow, green, and purple. To create an attacking troop, you’ll need to make a vertical match of 3 troops of the same color. You can also create horizontal matches of same-colored troops which will create a defensive wall across those three squares where the match is made. In both cases, once a match is made your troop or wall will move to the very front of the battlefield, right to the edge of where your enemy’s battlefield begins. This is very important to remember as when that troop or wall moves to the front all the troops that were ahead of it will shift backwards, and you can use this as a way to plan and setup the board for future matches.
In addition to those basic matches of 3, you can also create stronger troops by creating matches of various shapes. Matching 4 troops in a square or “L" shape or 5 troops in a “plus" shape will create an attacking troop with a greater attack strength than that of a normal matched troop. You also quickly gain the ability to “withdraw" a troop by double-tapping on it. Normally you can only move a troop that is at the very bottom of a column, with the troops in the middle of a column being inaccessible. Withdrawing lets you remove a troop from the board no matter where they are, and similar to when matched troops move forward to the front of the line you have to keep this technique in mind in order to plan out your matches and make the most of your board layout for a particular level.
Embrace the Randomness
Troops that are matched, defeated, or withdrawn will all teleport back to a holding area that’s controlled by your main character Embla. Anytime there are characters present in this area, you can use one of your turns to disperse them randomly back into the battlefield. Legend of Solgard purposely has a heavy element of randomness in its gameplay and this, according to the developers, is to create moments where it seems like defeat is certain but the random gods smile down upon you and you create a miraculous comeback. The flip side of that is that the random nature of the gameplay can also screw you over when you least expect it. In my experience though, the game is very much built with the randomness in mind and is geared more towards having it reward you than punish you.
With that in mind, embrace the randomness! Throw a Hail Mary pass more often than not. This is most often achieved by recalling your withdrawn players back into the battlefield. Since they’re sent back out in the field in a random way, try to set up as many potential matches with your current troops before recalling them and hope that when the withdrawn troops do reappear on the board you’ll get some automatic matches made. There might be some sort of positive confirmation bias at play, but to my eyes it feels like this works out in my favor more often than not. So try to play in a way that you’re always planning ahead for when that random element is injected into a particular situation, and you might just end up being rewarded. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
Special Abilities are Key
The wide variety of colored troops available in Legend of Solgard each have their own unique abilities. As you unlock and upgrade new troop types, head into your Collection screen using the tab at the bottom of the game’s main menu and check them out more closely. Tapping on any troop will bring up a more detailed screen of that troop showing their various stats and classification, and take note of the two icons in either upper corner of this screen. Those icons are that troop’s Special Abilities. Tapping them will bring up yet another detail screen explaining exactly what that particular Special Ability is, and in one of my favorite features of the game, will also let you try out that ability in a little hands-on practice scenario.
I just can’t overstate how important it is to keep your troops’ Special Abilities in mind. There is such a wide variety of abilities across all troop types and they all do pretty specific things that, if utilized correctly, can entirely change the tide of a battle. The matching mechanics themselves in Legend of Solgard are pretty deep, but I really think it’s smart troop usage that is the most tactical part of the game. The troops and their Special Abilities can all be leveled up and ranked up and in general improved and strengthened as you see fit, and with such a variety this is the type of game you can really gear towards your own specific play styles or towards very specific instances in the game.
Yes, the randomness comes into play often, but in general if you feel like you’ve hit a particularly nasty difficulty spike often the solution is to just tweak your troop lineups to better reflect their various abilities to help you with the challenge you’re up against. The major problem with all this is that unlocking and especially upgrading new troops and new Special Abilities is an absolute slog, so you’ll certainly be playing and grinding for quite some time before you have a full arsenal under your belt. Unless you want to drop a bunch of cash and hope for the best from loot boxes, that is. But it’s unnecessary to do so. Legend of Solgard is a long-haul type of game, and should take you quite a long time just to work your way through the campaign. Once you finish that you should be pretty well-equipped and can further level up and upgrade your lineup through the game’s many other modes. Just never forget the power of the troops and their Special Abilities, they’re absolutely essential to the strategy in this game.
Play the Tutorial!
This is probably the stupidest “tip" I’ve ever offered in my life, but gosh is it true. Legend of Solgard doesn’t have a traditional tutorial mode like most games where they teach you a bunch of stuff in the very beginning and then send you on your way. Rather the tutorial is weaved throughout the game and new mechanics and elements are introduced constantly. It’s actually done perfectly in my opinion. This is a game that’s too complex to try and pile everything on you all at once, so instead you’re eased into the basics of the game early on and every so often something new is introduced. You’re then sent off to utilize that new skill or game mechanic over another handful of levels and then yet another thing is introduced, and on and on.
Legend of Solgard at present is comprised of 4 worlds with 40 levels in each world. Every 10 levels is a mid-boss battle with the final level in a world reserved for a dramatic final boss battle. It might sound like a lot, but I didn’t feel completely comfortable with all the mechanics in this game until I was finished with the entire first world. Yes, that means there’s sort of a 40 level tutorial in this game. Yikes!
Don’t worry though as like I said there isn’t a traditional tutorial here and everything the game teaches you is weaved into the story in a very natural way. Playing through that entire first world was a ton of fun and didn’t feel like playing a tutorial or anything. However, I don’t feel like this is a situation like Candy Crush where you can pop in and play a level or two and then not play the game for a few days. I’d suggest really setting aside some time to play and actually focus on what’s happening in the game, so that you absorb everything and aren’t left confused if you put the game down for a day or two before at least completing that first world.
In my experience this won’t be a problem, as I have basically been reaching for Legend of Solgard every chance I get since getting early access to the game a week prior to its global launch. It’s just fun and you want to play it anyway. But I did have an experience the first day I got it where I played through the first handful of levels where a lot of introductory stuff is taught, and then didn’t pick up the game for a couple of days due to being busy with a bunch of real life stuff, so when I did finally return I felt a little lost. Don’t be me! Pay attention to what’s going on and play consistently at least through the first world in the game, and what feels like an overwhelmingly complex game in the beginning will eventually become a piece of cake to understand.
There really is SO much more to Legend of Solgard than just the tiny slice I’ve talked about here, with advanced tactics and upgrade trees and of course the numerous other modes in the game. Perhaps we will revisit doing another guide to help people get into some of this advanced stuff, but hopefully for now this guide has given you an understanding of the very basics to get you off and running, and the game itself does such an excellent job of teaching you as you go so that you’ll be kicking ice in no time.
