Dragon Age Legends Reviews

Not a lot of sites appear to be itching to play the Facebook iteration of the Dragon Age franchise, but we have two more for your perusal. Rock, Paper, Shotgun is pretty clear in its opinion by their title alone; “Please Stop: Dragon Age Legends”.

Again the option to pay doesn’t trouble me. Games finding new revenue streams in an increasingly digital age only makes sense. It’s that the game conspires against you in such a way that it’s essentially unavoidable which is the problem all sense of skill and challenge is completely removed, because the game knows full well that you’re going to need a crapload of potions and mates to survive battles against stuff like wolves that can attack three times per turn. If levelling up wasn’t so glacially slow maybe I’d be bothered less too, but the trouble is there’s so little meaningful sense of progression. Excitements seem few and far between. It’s a straight grind, a horribly futile timesink with tedious, repetitive combat, and it expects you to pay for the privilege. ‘˜Microtransactions’, we’re told. Does this look like micro to you?

For reference, summoning a colleague back to the fight before his 2 hour recharge time is up costs 19 crowns (and will result in the next wait becoming 5 hours). So, for three times as much as buying a copy of Dragon Age II, I can buy enough crowns to respawn party members 315 times. That sounds like a big number. It isn’t. Factoring in the Energy required to play (29 crowns for 5 units of it, which is enough for one more battle, or very occasional two) as well, I suspect that wouldn’t get me much more than a week or two of not particularly intensive Facebook gaming. That is a guess, but I’m pretty convinced the sum total is nowhere near what you’d get for buying three traditional games (and especially RPGs).

GayGamer gives more of a feature overview, but they do note that there are currently 4 of 5 Dragon Age Legends available for unlocking, and that they can be unlocked “in a handful of play sessions”.

Unfortunately, the class balance as of right now seems as if it needs more work, as I went to their forums and gave out my Facebook account so people could add me, and see mostly bow-wielding rogues and mages. Warriors are usually not tanks either, as most go the two-handed route for maximum damage. The combat is best handled by incapacitating your foes or killing them outright, not playing a waiting game, or hiding behind a shield–but I may not have fully explored those options as yet. As they are still working on patches, tweaking, and consider themselves in beta (as the majority of Facebook games seem to do), I would expect some nerfs and upgrades as time goes on, and as has been evidenced thus far.

There is a leveling system, and the skills it uses are a mixture of those you can see in the Dragon Age series along with ones specifically suited to its battlefield layout. Each class has various trees in which it can specialize. Rogues can choose trees that enhance dual-wielding or using a bow, along with a number of other skills. Warriors can specialize in two-handed weapons or sword and shield, or general combat boosts. Mages can summon, heal, use the elements, or rely on entropy (I spent the most time with the mage class). Unless there has been a further tutorial system, it can be a bit confusing. You earn one skill point per level, and can spend it in a new skill/spell, or use it to upgrade a previous one. Some skills and spells indicate they improve with every three levels, which I thought was a reflection of my level, but indicates you need to spend three more skill points to see a further increase in that skill’s use. It generally needs some work in its descriptors.