Review for The Elder Scrolls Legends. Game for PC, Mac, Android and iOS, the video game was released on 09/03/2017
The public is certainly not new to online trading card games, a genre to which The Elder Scrolls: Legends belongs. The success of Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh! it has not just given birth to countless other games, but has given developers the opportunity to run their own digital game. No more cards in hand or packages to buy in the store, now the trading cards are on computers, mobile phones and tablets.
Needless to say, the most famous is Blizzard's Hearthstone, of which you can read the reviews of the latest adventure (A Night in Karazhan) and the latest expansion (The Slums of Meccania), waiting for the new expansion that will be released in mid-April. And if Blizzard made its move a long time ago, Gwent, the card game from The Witcher, is also recently appearing on the market, of which you can find our preview here. But, a bit muted, perhaps due to an advertisement that didn't exactly reach many, Bethesda also decided to have her say.
The Elder Scrolls: Legends has had a closed beta since April 2016, which became open in August. Since then anyone has been able to test the game in its development stage, until a few days ago when it was officially released. The March 10 2017 is therefore the day one di The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and all the cards and achievements obtained in the beta phase have been kept by the users who have been loyal up to this point. But it is now that it gets serious: in fact, an expansion that will bring new cards and mechanics is expected soon. We will talk about this expansion at the release, for the moment let's focus on the base game.
Zone of light, zone of shadow
The mechanics of The Elder Scrolls: Legends, at least as a basis, are very similar to those of Hearthstone. Each player has Magicka crystals (starting at 1 and increasing by one each turn) to spend each turn to play creature cards or spell cards. Spell cards have very varied instant effects (or they can be Support spells that stay on the field and passively give their effect until they are destroyed), while creature cards have attack and life total values and any special effects. So far all very classic: each turn, each player can play creature or spell cards and attack the opponent's creatures or directly their life total with each of the creatures placed on the field in a previous turn. What makes The Elder Scrolls: Legends truly special and creates a veritable riot of strategies and tactics, is the presence of two different play areas that divide the field: Creatures placed on an area can only attack opponents placed on the same area. Moreover, the area on the right, unlike the "normal" one on the left, is called the Shadow Zone and makes all monsters summoned in that area unassailable for one turn.
This would already be enough to give a deep identity to the game, but there is much more. Creatures have some effects in common with those of Hearthstone (such as Taunt, here called Guard, which doesn't allow direct attacks on the player before getting rid of the creature with this ability, or Charge, which allows an attack in the same turn as the evocation), but they also have several new effects. Drain causes the player to recover Health points equal to the damage dealt by the creature, Deathtouch allows the creature to destroy an opponent no matter how much damage it deals, Steal allows the creature to activate a special effect if it deals damage to the enemy player's HP, Regeneration does return the HP of a creature to the maximum at the beginning of its turn, or even Breakthrough which allows you to inflict damage to the opponent's life equal to the difference between the attack value of our creature and that of the enemy creature that was attacked.
The most interesting mechanic, however, is the Rune system, which allows you to see real reversals of advantage. Each player (who has 30 HP) has 5 Runes, placed around their avatar portrait. Whenever a player loses 5 VPs a rune is destroyed and a card is drawn. This already brings a considerable advantage to the hand of the offended player, but, as if that were not enough, there are some cards with the Prophecy attribute: if such a card is drawn following the destruction of a Rune, it can be played immediately, even on the opponent's turn, and at no mana cost. Needless to say, this takes the strategy to even higher levels, allowing players to study their deck also based on this very particular mechanic, which more than once has led to victory a player who seemed doomed.
History and Evolutions
Another difference compared to Hearthstone is the fact that the deck is made up of 50 cards, rather than 30. Each card has a maximum limit of 3 copies, including the Legendaries (but there are some very powerful ones, which are limited to 1 copy per deck), and each deck can consist of up to two different “categories”. In fact, if in Hearthstone there are classes (and therefore each deck can be composed of "neutral" cards and those exclusive to the chosen class), in The Elder Scrolls: Legends the non-neutral cards are divided into 5 different attributes: Strength ( which is based on weapons to equip creatures and creatures with Charge, Breakthrough and high attack value), Intelligence (which is based on magic and artifacts), Will (which is based on dropping numerous creatures and gaining life points) , Agility (which is based on Stealing and petty tactics like Death Touch and Zone Switching), and Lastly, Stamina (which relies on Guard, Regeneration, and creatures with high Hit Points). Each player can then decide whether to create a "pure" deck, using a single category plus neutral cards, or whether to choose two different categories also using special "two-colored" cards exclusive to each pair of categories. Players are therefore not limited by a class, but can choose a race among the many available in the avatars and this will determine the nature of some cards received as a gift, every 3 wins.
In addition to normal and ranked battles (which will allow us to obtain from 0 to 3 copies of a new Epic card created specifically every month, depending on the rank reached), there is also the inevitable arena, which at the price of 150 coins ( or a payment with real currency) will allow us to try our hand in a single player experience or against real opponents, in a climb towards, respectively, 9 or 7 wins before suffering 3 defeats. Depending on how successful you are, you will get sizable rewards in the form of packs of cards, coins or crystals to create the cards we want - significantly cheaper than spending 100 coins for a single pack.
The interesting part is the presence of one Single player story mode for newbies. In this mode we will take the form of a "Forgotten Hero" on a journey to prevent the evil elf Naafirim from summoning the Daedra demons and releasing them around the world. Continuing with the plot will make us get some initial cards with a green symbol in the corner, which will evolve into a more powerful version once we reach a certain level of account experience. In addition to this, in some points of the story mode we will have to make some choices on how to behave (such as choosing whether to kill an enemy or whether to leave it alive) and this will radically change the card that we will get as a reward.
People talking to themselves
Graphically The Elder Scrolls: Legends is quite essential: the menus are simple and well structured and the game board shows everything you need, giving the necessary explanations for each effect simply by keeping the mouse pointed at the card. The music is very suggestive, while a demerit note goes to dubbing: despite being well made, you immediately notice the scarcity of voice actors, and this results in a great many creatures using the same voice for their summoning or attack; it is not uncommon to observe two or three different creatures on the field at the same time speaking with the same voice, giving a slightly annoying sensation due to a latent sense of "saving".
Apart from that, the title absolutely lives up to its name and competing productions, perhaps even a notch higher. Needless to say longevity is practically infinite, and we have noticed a certain generosity in giving out Legendary cards compared to competing productions.
The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a respectable production, which takes the foundations of already established games and deepens them, proposing new and original mechanics, very innovative and with gigantic strategic potential. In our opinion this game is currently head and shoulders above all the others in this genre, and we are really curious to see what its future will be and where the meta will go with the arrival of the first expansion, soon to be released. A pity for the dubbing made a bit 'to save, but this does not affect the quality of the product in the least, really recommended to everyone.
► The Elder Scrolls Legends is a Card Game type game developed and published by Bethesda for PC, Mac, Android and iOS, the video game was released on 09/03/2017
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