To be fair, it's somewhere between a reskin and a whole new game. Spacetime isn't reinventing anything here. They are using a lot of stuff they have already developed up to this point, so this will definitely seem very similar to their other games. I think the best way to describe Arcane Legends is that it is the culmination of Spacetime's work, being the best overall offering of their concept of a mobile MMORPG to date. Each game they release improves on the previous ones, and this one is no exception. If you had even a little fun playing any of their previous games, then give this one a go. It's free, so the worst thing that can happen is you don't like it and delete it.
Bah, posting from TA app and I keep tapping outside of the typing field and losing my posts, lol. Not the best setup for posting when holding a sleeping baby Will repost my review later. EDIT: Bah, I thought I would be able to delete this post after making my new one. :/
Game Impressions After hitting the current level cap (16) on my warrior, I must say this is by far the best of Spacetime's games. Their previous games never really succeeded in hooking me past the first couple of hours of play, but I simply cannot put this one down. It is very similar to their previous Legends games, but so much better. They took the best elements of their previous games, dropped the not-so-good elements, and gave this just the right balance of "coolness" and light-heartedness. The polish on this is pretty high. Arcane Legends has a more action RPG feel than Pocket Legends does, due to the devs going with the manual attack setup they had in Dark Legends. And it works great. I had previously complained about the charge mechanic in this thread, but after spending more time playing I have actually grown to appreciate it. It simply adds a little more feeling of involvement to the combat process, which keeps combat interesting. Everything in the game works great. The controls are responsive, load times are quick, and I haven't experienced any lag (playing on the iPad 1 over wifi). I've noticed some people in this thread complain about unresponsive controls, but I haven't experienced that at all, and i've put in quite a few hours on this so far (maybe 30-40?). It's cross-platform, so people playing on iOS, android, and google chrome can all play together. This makes the game world highly populated, which is great when you want to jump in and group up to run a dungeon quickly. I will say that the IAP in the game is daunting. The premium currency is called platinum, and the amount of things you can spend platinum on is pretty wild. A person could literally spend hundreds of dollars on all the various premium stuff in the game. I, personally, find the price of platinum a little high for my tastes, so I haven't purchased any yet. I am hoping for an iTunes card or two for Christmas, which I will probably sink a good chunk of into this game. You cannot earn platinum in the game, unfortunately, but there are "free" ways to get some from the offers section. Some offers give you platinum for buying stuff from various companies, while others reward you platinum for downloading and running apps or signing up for free services. If you don't mind that kind of thing, you can actually get a fair amount of platinum for free. I was able to get enough free platinum to unlock two extra character slots, respec twice, and buy a few elixirs (premium limited boosters) by only doing a few of the free offers. While the IAP sounds off-putting, don't let that turn you away. The good news is that you can do everything the game has to offer without paying a dime. You'll be limited in some ways, such as how many auctions you can have at one time, inventory size, and how many characters you can make. But none of those things will keep you from playing any aspect of the game. So while the IAP is pretty big, the trade off is being able to actually play completely for free without having to worry about ever hitting a pay wall. Other than the cost of platinum being a bit steep for my tastes, the only other complaint I really have is that I wish we could choose between male and female for each class. The warrior and sorcerer are male and the rogue is female. I think for online games such as this, being able to choose your gender is a pretty important aspect. I had my wife pretty interested in this game, but she wants to play as a girl, which limits her to the rogue. So she kind of lost a decent chunk of enthusiasm to play during the character creation process. I know it's not the hugest deal and that most people probably don't care, but I still feel this kind of option should be standard for MMORPGs. I've tried lots of MMORPGs on the app market, and this one is the only one that I've really fallen in love with. Even Order & Chaos got the boot from me, and I really, really tried to love that one since it was so close to the style of WoW. Yes, Arcane Legends is cartoony, and yes each section is instanced rather than one huge persistent world, but neither of those things prevent it from being the most enjoyable MMORPG I've played on iOS so far. And apparently Spacetime is pretty good with updates and content, from what I've read. They already plan an increase in level cap, new areas, new weapon types, passive abilities (currently all your skill points go to active spells/abilities and their upgrades), and other stuff... All before the month is over, apparently. I'm looking forward to seeing how this game develops. So there ya go, my own personal review of the game. If you've tried Spacetime's previous games and think this is more of the same, rest assured it's not. They really have succeeded in taking the good stuff from their previous games and marry them into a new experience that I'm finding much more enjoyable. I never got past level 8 or so in Pocket Legends and barely made it passed the tutorials of both Star and Dark Legends. But they must have learned a lot from those, because they really have a winner on their hands with this one.
The number of replies here and the hole impressions are saying that it is not as popular as Pocket Legends. I mean when PL was launched. I've played PL to 25lvl and then stopped it for some reason. I didn't give that one a try but after reading this review I will.
Best Mobile MMO of 2012! Arcane Legends is up for best mobile MMO of 2012. Vote now! http://www.bestappever.com/v/mmgm/1/543335870
Pocket legends was one of the first true mmo experiances on iOS and well, it was a great game for it's time, I played through that for months. Never really stuck with their future mmo version, could just be that I was too busy with other things. But I only just realized that they have made this version and after playing it for a day they hit the right nails on the head for me, it's got that pocket legends feel, the way the maps string together feels more like a big world then instance dungeons now, multiple towns, it also helps that today I found out you can play their legends games in your browser. I love the games that spacetime studios make and I really like how this one is going so far. Just noticed there is a vampire game too (?) not really my thing but I guess it's more of the same, maybe another time for that version.
Seems TA has very few members who are into STS games. You will probably get a nearly instant answer if you ask on the AL forum: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/forum.php
