Ruined King: A League of Legends Story™

Nothing ground-breaking, but it's fun and well-written, with plenty of interesting synergies between the characters.

This is a good RPG and you don't need to have played League of Legends nor know anything from the universe of Runeterra to appreciate Ruined King: A League of Legends Story. If you played LoL before and even watched Arcane, you will recognize some things, some bit of fan service. It's always welcome and I enjoy looking for bits that reminds me of LoL. The Good: Story is simple, not too long, not too short. I finished the game after around 30 hours I think. It doesn't have any surprise or plot twist but it's fine like that. More games should have more simple and enjoyable story like that. I liked that the story is localized to only two big islands and some small stuff on the side. We really focus on Bilgewater and the Shadow Isles and nothing else. All main characters are lovable! They are all stereotypes of some kind but they have really well written dialogues and their relationship with each other is nice and evolves a bit during their journey. I liked the combat system. It's engaging enough with abilities that you can upgrade to give them bonuses. But for more than half of the game, I stuck with three characters until the end: Braum, Ahri and Pyke because I felt like they were the strongest. Enchanting is a good idea! And I really liked that I didn't need to farm for Essence to get the enchants on my items. The game is almost fully voiced! And the voice actors did an incredible job! Nothing to say here, it was perfect. Sound design is great! Attacks felt powerful, shades with their last breath were spooky, water splashes were watery, etc... The mid: This is very personal but I'm not into pirate stuff, and a huge part of the game is on a pirate island with lots of pirates doing pirate things. If you like that, good for you, you'll probably love Bilgewater. If you don't, heh, try to stick to it until you reach the Shadow Isles. I felt like the colors of the game were kind of dull. There's a lot of colors, but somehow, it felt washed out, darkened and foggy. Like there's a filter on it. Musics are fine I guess. I didn't really notice anything in particular. I wished dialogues portrait had more than only one portrait for each character. Luckily most dialogues had incredible voice acting so we could tell what the characters were feeling, but the lack of expressions on the portrait was disappointing. There are some backtracking that were annoying. Like needing a specific character that isn't in your team to unlock some secrets but to get this character, you have to walk back to a Rest Point that is very far and then walk back again to a secret that isn't worth it. Fast travel are okayish, but not every map has it and there's a lot of walking involved. It felt like a waste of time when we had to backtrack. It makes sense for lore reasons maybe, but for a game, it's just annoying. The bad: The game lacks polish. Lots of small bugs and graphic shenanigans. Individualy, they aren't that annoying, but there are so much of them that you can't help but feel frustrated or notice how bad it looks. Several times, I had to quit the game and restart it because of a black screen when changing map or a fight with an immortal ennemy. It happened at the last boss fight and it really put me out of it. Shadows are badly done and feel kind of random. Elevators cast a shadow when they shoudn't. Lights are visible behind walls. Invisible walls, lots of them. Some side quests will be available and even have tracking on your world map but you can't start them unless you reach a certain point in the main story. I wasted a lot of time trying to comprehend why I couldn't start that specific quest, look for answers on the internet and realize that I had to continue the main story before actually starting the quest. The menu is meh. Consumables menu is bad and worse during fight. And I still don't know how the sorting works. It feels random. - I liked the game, and I'm glad that I finished the game after 30 hours. A longer game would have been really frustrating with the lack of polish. I do hope there will be more of this kind of RPG though from Riot Games. Runeterra is a huge world and there are plenty of things to explore and discover. I wouldn't mind another game in the same style. I actually hope there will be some in the near future!