Review: Legends of Runeterra is worth it even without knowing LoL

Legends of Runeterra arrives as a card game to compete with the biggest names in the genre today, such as Heartstone and Magic Arena. The game was fully open on January 24, still in beta, while it had been in closed beta for over a month. LoR, as it's abbreviated, was announced late last year during League of Legends' 10th anniversary as one of several Riot Games projects for 2020.

The company's intention is to expand the Runeterra universe beyond a single game, but into several other genres of games, comics, animated series and music. In this massive strategy from Riot, Legends of Runeterra enters mainly to expand and better detail the entire Runeterra region and introduce new characters in addition to obviously placing itself strongly in the market for games in one more genre. For Riot this is relatively easy, as their LoL player base is already massive. LoL players and Heartstone fans are sure to at least experience LoR.

This card game is still essential to serve as the basis for the rest of Riot's projects. There are already characters that are only on LoR ​​cards and that players are charging to arrive as new champions of League of Legends. LoR, then, is also a big audience poll for Riot Games.

Review: Legends of Runeterra, novo card game do universo do LoL

But regardless of LoR's role in Riot's strategy, the game is really beautiful and attractive for those who already play LoL and for any player of online card games.

Interface

An extremely positive point is a very simple and intuitive interface. There's no way to get lost in the LoR client. At first, a very well done tutorial explains everything you need to know about game mechanics. The cards also bring all the possible and necessary explanations when hovering the mouse over their description and specific effects.

At this point, a completely new game is much easier to start playing, unlike Heartstone and Magic Arena which already have many mechanics and greater complexity. Heartstone, however, is just as friendly and explanatory, while Magic requires some Google searches outside the game to understand some things.

In the end, LoR presents itself as a card game simple enough for children to play and with the potential for growth and complexity to please fans of other card games.

Mechanical Engineering

While the similarity with Heartstone is undeniable, LoR has its own system with the difference of taking turns taking attackers. That is, you can only attack turn yes and turn no. Each card played also implies a turn of your opponent's response, with a few exceptions involving "burst" spell cards, or "impettuoso" in Spanish.

There is also a mana system very similar to Heartstone, but with a "mana reserve" used only for spells and filled by unused mana in a turn for up to 3 stacks. All champions have an evolved form, while evolution depends on specific conditions for each of them. Lux, for example, must be on the field and the player must spend 6 mana or more on spells. It makes her evolve. There are strategies that revolve around just one champion. The decks are 40 cards, so the games shouldn't be too long like in Magic Arena.

However, it is still a beta version and few cards exist. Each region has only 4 champions each, two of which are already unlocked by starting decks. There are a total of six regions, each with its typical characteristics and strategies. Decks can only consist of cards from a maximum of two regions. It is impossible to merge a deck too much, and it is mandatory to maintain at least one style of play typical of the regions.

The current beta, however, still doesn't leave you wanting to play for long. It brings daily rewards, but there is still very little existing content, so the game becomes monotonous after successive games, without much diversity. But again, this is beta momentary. This card game has real competition potential with other games of the genre and also brings integration with other Riot games and future projects. A new champion in LoL can become a new card and vice versa.

Visuals and animations

It is impossible not to highlight the beauty of the illustrations and animations of the LoR cards. Not a single image made for LoL was used, Legends of Runeterra had a complete new visual production work which makes it a real treat for the eyes, especially for those who are already familiar with the Runeterra universe and its champions.

All cards come with summon and attack animations, just like in Heartstone. There is also a wide variety of styles divided by regions, each with its theme, color palette and champions that represent them. At least initially, it's more biased to choose one deck or another for its look than its mechanics.

Soundtrack and dubbing

Legends of Runeterra has amazing sound effects and dubbing cards that tell a little about the personality of each character and champion. It is worth mentioning that the Spanish dubbing is not yet available, but it has been in the works for a long time and should be added to the current servers in no time. Even the present text is in English at first, with no built-in language switch setting. But the data for Spanish translations is already in the game and it is possible to switch languages ​​manually.

Here's how to change the text to Spanish:

First step is to open the LoR file location. From a second mouse click on the launcher icon and click on "open file location"

You should get to this screen, go back to the "Riot Games" folder and click LoR > Live > Patcherdata > Patchablefiles > gameplaydata.

Within gameplaydata, there are text files for each language. The only currently active file is "en_us". So just change the name of this file by "pt_br" and the original "pt_br" by "en_us". To do this, remove one of them to your desktop, change the name of each one of them to avoid conflicting files with the same name in the same folder and then return it to the original folder. Your game should be in Spanish as it is in the prints.

Conclusion:

Legends of Runeterra arrives as both an add-on to League of Legends and a completely new game with a lot of history behind it. The development of the cards, characters and spells really show more of the Runeterra universe, which is very appealing to anyone who is already a fan of the universe. However, LoR is still explanatory and simple enough to introduce the whole universe for those who have never even had contact with LoL.

Visually it's very beautiful, mechanically it's even too simple, for now at least. The beta brings a good introduction to the game but leaves a lot of expectation for future expansions. At first, due to the small amount of cards that exist, it doesn't leave much desire to buy any package in the in-game store, since you can get a lot just by the initial missions. This is a very positive thing, because the game is truly free-to-play and the only things that are exclusive to purchase are arena skins.

At the end of the day, it's a fun, beautiful, simple game but quickly asks for new patches with more content. For those who like online card games, it's hard not to like Legends of Runeterra. For those who just like League of Legends, LoR can be a good entry point for the card genre.