Flipping Legend review
:: FLIPPING INCREDIBLEPrice: Free
Version: 1.0.2
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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As phones get more and more capable, the ambition of games on the App Store also tends to increase. Every once in a while though, a simple game with a simple concept comes along and just reminds you exactly why phone games can be so great for quick arcade experiences. Flipping Legend is precisely this kind of game. It's fast, challenging, fair, and feels flipping fantastic every time you play it.
Arcade acrobatics
Flipping Legend presents a three-lane environment that your character can flip between. Flipping involves a tap to the right or left to make your character move diagonally forward to a neighboring lane. If you find yourself on one of the edge lanes, tapping again toward that edge will make your character flip to the opposite side of the screen.
Using these simple rules, Flipping Legend challenges players to make their way through a variety of different environments that include all sorts of hazards. Bandits, spike pits, scorpions, and more are littered along your path, and its up to you to flip past these things and kill enemies in an effort to make it as far as possible. To make things a little more intense, your character has a life meter that is constantly draining, and only flipping to kill enemies can keep you alive.
Flip differently
Flipping strategically is fun on its own in Flipping Legend, but the game really gets a lot of replayability thanks to its class system. These classes start with some classic dungeon-crawling archetypes (e.g. ninja, archer, warlock), with others you can unlock by meeting certain objectives along the way. Each of these classes have their own abilities that can really change up the way you approach situations.
As you continue to play Flipping Legend, you'll also earn experience points that you can feed into each class to make them stronger and more survivable. This in turn allows you to get further and further into the game on each run, which allows you to earn more coins to unlock new classes or create portals to different sections of the game.
Flip freely
As a light, arcade experience, there are really two ingredients that make Flipping Legend feel great. The first of these is just how dang good the game feels. Your hero will move as quickly as you can tap and lands in fun poses all along the way. It also helps that the game has a really awesome looping soundtrack that makes dramatic shifts in tone between the game's different areas.
The second–and perhaps more important–part of Flipping Legends's success is its fair free-to-play model. The game is ad-supported, but not in a way that is annoying. Players must watch ads to unlock chests, but can otherwise enjoy an ad-free experience. For those that wish to unlock chests without viewing ads, a single purchase of $3.99 removes them completely from the game. This ends up making Flipping Legend mostly feel like a premium experience, even though it technically isn't.
The bottom line
On its face, Flipping Legend is a pretty light game that doesn't look like it has much to it. Once you get your hands on it though, the game ends up feeling like a lot more than that. It's got a great core mechanic, a solid amount of variety, and some amazing detail work. Flipping Legend may be an arcade-style phone game, but it is a truly excellent one of those.