Take on the role of a ruler and command your knights toward victory with the mobile RPG Lord of Heroes. As the monarch of the nation of Avillion, you must travel throughout the land to conquer nations, recruit allies, and create your ideal world.
Lord of Heroes was developed by CloverGames and is available on both iOS and Android devices. It was released in North America(NA) on September 7, 2020.
Lord of Heroes is an RPG game where you recruit powerful knights into your army and have them duke it out against enemies in a turn-based battle system. As the ruler of Avillion you don’t take an active role in the battle, but command your knights instead.
At the start of the game, you jump right away into battle as you lead your group of knights against a rebelling knight looking to overthrow you. You have already obtained the role of monarch, which is an improvement from other types of RPG adventure games where you start off with nothing.
From there, your character journeys throughout the land with your army to form alliances with other countries or wage war against them. As you progress throughout the story, you obtain more characters that will join your cause and fight for you in battle. Many of the characters can be unlocked throughout the story, but there are some special characters that have other unlock conditions. The characters you are able to freely obtain are already great to use, so there is no big divide between paying and free to play characters.
Each of the knights has different attacks, passive skills, weapon types, and elements that will greatly affect the outcome of your battles. I found the battle system to be simple, yet rewarding. Every turn, a character will move a move and perform one of their skills. All the characters have a basic attack and an active skill that requires a cool down after use. Each time a hero uses a skill, they are fill up their burst gauge, which unleashes a devastating attack on the enemies. You are also able to level up each character, equip them with artifacts, and eventually promote them into a stronger form. Although each character has their uses, ultimately you find yourself struggling to decide which character you want to use in battle. I found it particularly difficult when I did all the work to power up my characters, then I will have to start leveling up a more powerful character when I later obtain them within the story. Gold, the currency within the game, also becomes a major issue as you continue to level up your artifacts and promote your knights.
Tip: The 5 elements within the games are: Water, Fire, Earth, Light, and Dark
When you first enter a battle, you are required to select up to 5 characters to use. The stages are divided into three waves where the player must battle against a variety of enemies. Your turn is depicted in an action bar at the bottom of the screen. This action bar is related to your character’s speed stat. In order to obtain victory, you must defeat all the enemies or the boss within the wave. You will also lose if all your characters fall in battle. At the end of each battle, you will be awarded a rating from 1 to 3 stars. This rating is determined by how many characters fell in that battle. You will also obtain rewards, depending on the stage and its difficulty. By entering a stage you consume energy, but at the start of the game, you will want more than enough for a while.
The difficulty of the game depends on the power level of your character and how fast they are able to defeat the enemies. The characters are easy to level up and can amass great strength in the early game. In the early game, it was easy to overpower the enemy and most of them can be killed in a single hit. I focused on leveling up the early game characters since you can easily acquire gear for them by completing quests.
Gacha Mechanics
Lord of Heroes does include elements of a gacha game, but isn’t overly focused on it. Most of the characters are obtainable through the story, and the only thing that is based on luck is the artifacts you equip to your hero to make them stronger. The currency used to summon through artifacts can also be obtained by clearing missions or completing achievements. Of course, you can also buy them, but the game gives you plenty of free artifacts. However, each artifact’s strengths will be different as some will give you stats in your defense, health, attack, etc. For the more veteran players, you will want to obtain more powerful artifacts that boost your knight’s damage.
What I Liked
The graphics of the game provide a great immersion for both the environment and the combat system. The characters all have unique attack animations and even change appearances when you promote them to the next rank. You are also able to customize your character’s appearance and they will appear within your castle and in cutscenes.
The battle system was also full of action and also easy to understand. By leveling up your characters, you will immediately see a difference in the damage you deal to enemies. Since all the battles are 3 stages long, the battles don’t feel dragged out, unless there is a boss fight. There is even an auto attack option so you can easily farm for materials.
What I Didn’t Like
Right from the start, you are thrown into a world where you are the ruler without much explanation. All the characters from a deep backstory which often felt pushed on to me. There is a ton of dialogue between the characters that drag on for too long. I did find myself skipping some of the dialogue due to how unengaging it becomes to read throughout all the text.
Leveling up the new characters as you unlock them also becomes more of a hassle in the later game when you are scarce for resources. Instead of trying out the new characters, I stuck to the original 5 characters and they have been able to clear a majority of the battles just fine. The more characters you obtain, the harder it is to get all the resources for them to be as good as your original team.
Conclusion
Lord of Heroes is a turn-based strategy RPG where you must lead the country of Avillion to victory in battle and conquer different lands. The game has plenty of action-filled combat with a simple yet exciting battle system. There is also a variety of characters for you to use in battle, but you will most likely stick with the first couple of knights you obtain since they will be more leveled up. As the monarch, it is your choice to determine the best way to lead your nation, whether it is through peace or war.
Gameplay 4/5
The gameplay of Lord of Heroes and its mechanics were simple and easy to follow. I got the hang of how everything worked after a couple of battles. I did find some of the dialogue long and dragged on. It was hard to fully understand each of the character’s relationships with each other in the beginning. I didn’t find myself fully committed to the story as the character’s motivations are unclear and aren’t fully explained.
Enjoyability 4/5
I enjoyed the combat system of the game the most. It was exciting to see the characters deal massive amounts of damage after spending a lot of resources and gold to level them up. Each level didn’t feel too difficult, but there were certain dungeons that I had a hard time beating because of the low level of my team. Gold and items to promote your characters were also pretty limited in the beginning and you are forced to choose which of your characters to level up.
F2P Friendly 5/5
You can clear all the content without spending any money on the game. There are ads you can watch to obtain more items and also bundles to unlock more characters, but those don’t restrict the free-to-play players from any content. The game is also pretty generous in the reward it gives out to the player and you are even able to unlock a 5-star character simply by logging into the game. Of course, there are a ton of bundles and deals you can buy, but those aren’t necessary to fully enjoy the game.
Score: 4.3/5
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The Informal Gamer 