Legion of Heroes is a free-to-play fantasy MMORPG on mobile devices with a large persistent world, tactical turn-based combat, an engaging story, and over one hundred heroes to collect.

Legion of Heroes is a huge 3D open-world MMORPG published by NEXON M, Inc. Explore a large persistent world full of monsters and mystery. Team up and party with players from around the world. Legion of Heroes features unique, turn-based combat and has over one hundred heroes to add to your party. Arrange your party formation and battle monsters both tactically and strategically. Participate in real-time PvP or party with others to raid the Chaos Abyss. Adventure through dungeons and embark on an engaging story full of colorful characters and dialogue. Join guilds and chat with other players in public chat rooms.

Full Review

Legion of Heroes Review

By Herman Y.

Legion of Heroes is a free-to-play 3D mobile MMORPG developed by the Korean gaming giant, NEXON Co., Ltd, and published by NEXON M Inc., a mobile gaming subsidiary of NEXON Co., Ltd. Legion of Heroes was released for Android on October 23, 2013 as NEXON’s first mobile MMORPG. Although not as popular as other mobile MMORPGs such as Order & Chaos Online and Avabel Online, as it was not available for the iOS upon its initial release, Legion of Heroes emerged as one of the more unique MMORPGs in both combat, gameplay, and story and reached over a million downloads in early 2014. The originality, combined with high production value, has made Legion of Heroes one of the top competitors in the mobile MMORPG market.

Classes and Character Creation

When players first begin their journey, they can choose between one of four classes which are gender-locked and race-locked. These classes include a male beastkin Berserker, female fairy Mage, male human Gladiator, and female human Sniper. The Berserker can wield powerful two-handed axes and cannons, the Mage can blast enemies with elemental spells and heal her allies, the Gladiator specializes in one-handed swords and two-handed spears, and the Sniper can fire at enemies with bows and guns. Unfortunately, these four classes are both gender and race-locked and the game offers no appearance customization so all players end up looking the same. Equipping different armor does not change your character’s appearance. Despite this, however, you can switch your leader to a different hero (which I will explain later) and there are many different heroes to collect in this game.

A Beautiful Fantasy World

Legion of Heroes is another one of the few mobile MMORPGs with a large persistent world to explore, and the world is beautiful. Players start off in a bright, grassy town and the surroundings are full of trees, rocks, buildings, and other nice details. There are monsters roaming around and NPCs waiting for players to approach them. The game has a medieval fantasy theme and there are many dungeons and new maps to explore with widely different appearances and themes. There is an auto-move feature for quests so players can sit back and enjoy their surroundings while their characters move toward the quest objective. My only problem regarding this world is that the game is slightly lower-resolution (under 1080p) so the environments, monsters, and NPCs do look a little blurry and bland in texture. From a distance though, it isn’t so noticeable and the world still looks gorgeous.

Unique Tactical Combat

Unlike other mobile and PC MMORPGs that feature point-and-click or hack-and-slash combat, Legion of Heroes has a tactical, turn-based combat system where players control many heroes at once. Very similar to the PC MMORPG Atlantica Online, which is also published by NEXON, players can hire a huge variety of heroes to join their party and control all of them during battle. Players start off with three party slots and can unlock up to six slots by Level 15. Players can then place their heroes into formation on a 3x3 grid which involves some strategy. Every collectable hero in this game is one of the four classes mentioned earlier (Berserker, Mage, Gladiator, Sniper) and has different skills.

Although the world is persistent, the combat takes place in instances (similar to Final Fantasy) where combat is initiated by tapping on roaming enemies. Once in battle, players must fight through three waves of enemies with a boss at the last wave. There are also some boss battles that only have one wave of enemies including the boss. The game is turn-based so players can choose which hero to use to attack and choose which enemy to attack. There are also skills to use once the Fury meter is built up. After the player’s turn, the enemy gets to attack, and the process repeats until one side is defeated. Combat actually requires quite a bit of tactics and strategy. Knowing when to stun/silence the boss and which enemies to focus first makes a big difference in whether all your heroes survive the battle or not. If one of your heroes die, they can be revived with Hearts (premium currency), and if you decide not to revive them, they are injured for a period of time and cannot participate in later battles unless you heal them with some gold. The combat is very unique and tactical, and players have to be cautious in keeping every hero alive. Those familiar with Nexon's Atlantica Online should find the combat in Legion of Heroes to be quite similar. This is likely because nDoors (Atlantica's developer and subsidiary of Nexon) played a role in the development of Legion of Heroes.

An Engaging MMORPG Story and Questing

I admit I am someone who tends to skip the quest dialogue in most MMORPGs. However, Legion of Heroes is not one of those MMORPGs. NEXON M did a great job with the story and quest dialogue in Legion of Heroes. Instead of reading a wall of text before each quest, each quest begins with quick and interesting dialogue between different characters who have their own unique personalities. Instead of having thousands of random NPCs with no backstories, players regularly quest with familiar NPCs with witty dialogue. Most of the quest NPCs are also collectable heroes that can join your party and become part of the story. Quests in this game usually involve killing monsters, which is fairly generic, but the dialogue in between still keeps it entertaining. The storyline is divided into chapters and there is a big boss battle at the end of each chapter.

Over One Hundred Heroes to Collect

In addition to the unique combat, Legion of Heroes also has a unique hero system. Heroes are characters that can be collected throughout the game and added into the player’s party. Each hero can be manually controlled and has different skills and roles in battles. Heroes can be collected either through completing quests or by using tickets. Tickets can be acquired by both completing quests and from completing battles. Each battle gives a chance at obtaining tickets which have four variations: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. Using tickets gives a random hero and the better the ticket, the better chance of receiving a high rank hero. Acquiring tickets is actually quite easy (and can be farmed) and heroes add variety to the gameplay and are fun to collect.

Cash Shop/In-App Purchases

In-app purchases are largely optional in Legion of Heroes. One important freemium aspect I’d like to mention first is that this game has Morale (energy), which is rare even in mobile MMORPGs. Every battle uses up some Morale and players will have to wait for their Morale to recover before they can fight some more. This is a very inconvenient feature because it limits how long players can grind and level up but luckily, Morale lasts for about 1-2+ hours depending on how much players are grinding so for casual players, it’s not too bad. Morale can be replenished with real money.

In addition to replenishing Morale, certain heroes, Hearts, in-game gold, equipment, and Orichalcum can be purchased with real money or Hearts. Hearts is the premium currency that can be used to purchase in-app purchases (and revive heroes) and Hearts can also be gained freely from some events and achievements. The equipment purchased comes in randomized chests and Orichalcum is used to lower level requirements of items. In-app purchases are not very necessary in Legion of Heroes since everything is farmable, except Morale, but unless players intend on playing for hours non-stop, it isn’t too much of an issue. PvP is the only aspect of the game where spending money (on equipment, heroes, or Orichalcum) can lead to an advantage.

My Game is on Auto-Pilot

Automation is one of the big complaints I hear about Legion of Heroes. Quests have an auto-move feature which guides players directly to the quest objective, whether it be an NPC or a monster. Personally I find this to be very convenient and useful but others may find that it makes the game feel too automated. In addition, battles also have an “Auto” feature that allows the computer AI to take control of the player’s characters. While I found that this works well when grinding lower level monsters, the “Auto” feature is a bit inefficient against higher level monsters because it does not always employ the proper tactics needed. Some people may complain that the game is too automated but from what I’ve seen, “Auto-Move to Quest” and “Auto-Battle” are largely optional. Players are not required to use their features and the “Auto-Battle” is not very efficient unless players are fighting lower level monsters.

Final Verdict – Great

Legion of Heroes attempted to shake up the traditional MMORPG formula by introducing a unique combat and Hero system and in my opinion, was very successful. Despite the optional automation in questing and combat, lower resolution graphics, and Morale system, this game has a very engaging story, fun and unique combat and Hero system, and fair in-app purchases that make this a highly enjoyable MMORPG that all mobile gamers should check out.