We Are Legion First Impressions

Published: August 5, 2015 9:00 AM /

Previewed By:


wearelegion

On Sunday, PWNEE Studios, makers of Cloudberry Kingdom, held a stress test for their new multiplayer RTS game, We Are Legion.

In We Are Legion, players take command of a massive army whose goal is to defeat the other army by killing their Dragon Lord, the source of their power. If you've played RTS games like Warcraft III, We Are Legion's gameplay will feel very familiar, but We Are Legion speeds up the initial farming and crafting to jump right into moving your massive army across the field. When I say massive, I mean MASSIVE. We Are Legion has no unit cap, meaning players can literally cover the map with their troops.

This is what a game looks like zoomed out. those splotches of color are troops from different armies
This is what a game looks like zoomed out. those splotches of color are troops from different armies

Up to four players will spawn on the selected map where they'll have a Dragon Lord and a bit of gold and jade, the game's two units of currency. The dragon lord doesn't have any gameplay elements separating him from other troops, but storywise he's the one casting spells, and building and leading the army. Gold is used to build barracks, and gold and jade mines. The first thing a player should do is build a gold mine on top of a nearby gold deposit to start a steady income. More gold mines means more gold per second. Then you'll start building barracks that continuously spawn troops. More mines means more gold, more gold means more barracks, which means more troops. Jade is used to cast the four spells in the game. Fireball nukes a small circular area of the map, Raise the Dead resurrects any dead troops within the area of effect and puts them on your side, Summon a Necromancer quite obviously summons a necromancer who raises the dead as he passes by areas, and Raise Terracotta Army instantly creates a small army of clay soldiers to fight for you. From here, whichever player manages their army more efficiently will cut through their opponents and kill their Dragon Lord.

You can zoom in to get a close-up view of the battle
You can zoom in to get a close-up view of the battle

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any others participating in the test. Maybe it was something I was doing wrong, but every time I searched for a public game I found nothing. While I didn't get the opportunity to play with others, playing with the AI on various difficulties gave me a good grasp on how battling players of different skill levels would go.

While We Are Legion simplifies the typical RTS game, its emphasis on creating large armies in a short amount of time means players can jump right into the battles and strategizing very quickly. Coupled with the ability to change your view from a dozen or so soldiers to an entire map means skilled players can micromanage their massive armies to accomplish multiple goals at once. Despite the positives, I believe We Are Legion needs more elements from more complex RTS games, such as upgrading troops and buildings and some more spells to have it survive as a multiplayer game.

It also needs a few unique elements that make it stand out as its own game because as things stand right now, We Are Legion is a watered down version of popular custom games like Footman Frenzy, which have been around for over 10 years now. As the game is in beta, it's likely to assume We Are Legion will be recieving updates for a while, so hopefully we see the game fleshed out in unique ways that retains the game's fast-paced attitude but adds a bit of complexity to battles.  Of course if that never happens, there's always Warcraft III's extensive custom game library to dig into.

 The author requested and received a Steam key to access the stress test.

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| Former Staff Writer

I like games with unique styles so long as they have the gameplay to back it up. Some of my favorite games are Rayman Origins, Katamari Damacy and Super… More about Kyle