Battleheart: Legacy Review

Battleheart: Legacy is a cartoony and light action-adventure RPG that makes a lot of its competition on iOS look archaic and old-fashioned. Although the game doesn't necessarily push the boundaries of gameplay originality or storytelling, Battleheart: Legacy is an extremely good-looking and well-made game.

Players of Battleheart: Legacy begin the game by creating a character and working their way through a tutorial sequence, but from there the game is quite a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure kind of deal. There are quest givers and such, but the main focus of the game seems to be exploring new areas, fighting enemies, and custom leveling a character with abilities.

It's this custom leveling, along with the game's combat system, that really make Battleheart: Legacy shine. Players can choose to teach their character skills from up to 12 different character classes, each with their own combat style that works well with the game's real-time combat system that's reminiscent of many modern MMO combat systems. To be more specific, player characters auto-target single enemies and attack them automatically when within range. From here, player manage their character's abilities using a toolbar at the bottom of the screen, and it is the management of these abilities and their cooldown times that makes the game's combat strategic and interesting.

All of this might sound pretty rote if Battleheart: Legacy didn't contain a slew of interesting enemy types, gear to be equipped, and awesome combat animations that are pretty unique across every character class. It's all of these little things that are done perfectly that make Battleheart: Legacy a standout title for anyone looking for an adventure title on-the-go.

My only gripe about Battleheart: Legacy is that true mixing and matching of skills between character classes doesn't seem realistic without investing a significant amount of time with the game. Each class demands that players dump experience points into two specific player stats that rarely overlap between classes. So, while it is possible to make a character that combines the skills of a wizard and a ninja, the time investment required to make a viably effective version of that character would feel unreasonable to most.

That being said, Battleheart: Legacy is perfectly enjoyable even when focusing exclusively on one class. The game's adventuring tone makes jumping in for a quick dungeon crawl easy-to-do, while the game also contains deeper underpinnings of character customization that make long play sessions feel significant. This balance, which is hard to fully articulate on paper, is exactly what makes Battleheart: Legacy a very impressive game.