.What happens when the low-level enemies in a fantasy world get fed up with being slaughtered en masse in the name of an EXP grind? They rally the forces within the forests to march against the humans in the name of loot and growth. Doesn’t this premise sound awesome? Unfortunately, Legend of the Slime Idle RPG appears to be afraid to let players explore its excellent premise via any significant gameplay.
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LoadComplete’s Legend of The Slime- Idle RPG suffers from many of the issues that turn gamers away from the mobile market. It offers a compelling premise that lures players in and immediately baits and switches them into an experience that serves as little more than a front to get them to binge through as many 30-Second Ads as possible or pay incremental fees to bypass that experience.
The game advertises a loot, companion, and skill system, but the only way to summon these items is through crystals. The player earns these crystals through quests or by watching ads for a marginal amount items.
Questing for Closed Doors
The quest system initially teases a way for these crystals to be earned through gameplay. It quickly becomes known that each quest system holds yet more ads for the player to sit through. The primary quest line cycles through the same styles of objectives, including the completion of each type of dungeon. The player accesses each of these dungeons through keys. Only three of which are given daily, and two of which are gained by watching more 30-second ads. Beyond the five keys per dungeon, players will have to make purchases to make any additional progress.
The daily objectives are not better, as the game offers daily quests to gain crystals. Players will realize that to claim the rewards for completing these quests; they must watch another 30-second ad.
It is unfortunate these items are locked behind ads as there is a variety to offer customization to players. The downside of this customization is that it boils down to creating the highest damage per second. The slime uses this damage to battle itself through the stages, as players never get to take control. The only meaningful interaction players can have with the action is using the skills. Manually operating the skills will offer no tactical advantage to the player.
Another upgrade branch is accessed by mining for resources that can be used to unlock additional abilities. These abilities are primarily passive bonuses to percentages such as health, damage dealt or accumulation of mined resources. What could be a fun mechanic is crippled by limiting the number of tiles that can be mined. The player gains additional tiles to mine by watching 30-second ads. The player then needs to wait on upgrades or they can be sped up by using the precious summoning crystals or watching 30-second ads.
Personality Beneath the Ads
Legend of the Slime offers a bit more than most Idle games as it animates the slime’s battles for players to watch and wait through, cheering as their newly equipped slime makes its way through primary stages, dungeons and boss battles. The game offers a wide variety of companions that serve as cute forest creatures to accompany the slime through his adventures. The skills have a similar variety featuring exciting animations such as bombs, explosions, lightning bolts and reaper scythes that trigger and can blast enemies away as players watch battles unfold.
The game features an Eight-bit soundtrack that harkens back to adventure games of old in the same way that many of the creatures’ designs do. This will tug on many traditional gamers’ nostalgia, reminding them of clearing dungeons and adventuring in better games. This will draw players in before the ads and wait timers begin to suck the fun out of the experience.
A Parody of Potential
The Legend of The Slime- Idle RPG mostly suffers from similar flaws as the entirety of the idle genre. In this way, it serves as a reflection of many of the unfortunate practices perpetuated by this game style. Numerous wait times, the requirement to watch innumerable ads and endless pitching of microtransactions to get players through the grinds that make up most of the gameplay’s runtime. These factors are why so many traditional gamers have shied away from the mobile games market.
LoadComplete has shown awareness of many of these facts and has created several offline single-player titles that offer better alternatives. Aware of the issues with this style, they released Slime Quest, a sibling to Legend that appears to take the fantastic premise and capitalize better on its promise. Still, it does not serve to redeem the deep seeded flaws within Legend.
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