Arcane Legends is a free-to-play, fantasy MMORPG on mobile devices (also on PC & Mac) with colorful cartoony graphics, hack-and-slash combat, large instanced maps, collectible pets, and co-op partying.

Arcane Legends is a 3D semi-open world MMORPG published by Spacetime Games, the creators of Pocket Legends , Dark Legends, and Star Legends . Explore a large fantasy world filled with monsters and quests. Team up with up to three other players from around the world and fight your way through huge maps. Choose one of three unique classes (Warrior, Rogue, and Sorcerer). Collect a large variety of pets to fight by your side and level them up as you level. Complete hundreds of quests and discover over 1,000 different weapons, armors, and items. Play PvE solo or co-op or battle with others in real-time PvP.

Full Review

Arcane Legends Review

By Herman Y.

Arcane Legends is a free-to-play, 3D mobile MMORPG developed and published by Spacetime Games, the same developers behind Pocket Legends, Star Legends, and Dark Legends. Compared to their previous games, Arcane Legends has a medieval fantasy theme and more of a story. It was released on November 27, 2012 and is cross-platform between Android, iOS, PC, and Mac. It has over 10 million downloads on Google Play alone and is one of the most popular MMORPGs on mobile devices. With a focus on combining action combat, cooperative online gameplay, and a quest-based storyline, Arcane Legends creates an impressive mobile gaming experience.

Classes and Character Creation

Arcane Legends has three classes that players can choose from. These classes include the muscular and tanky Warrior, the quick and deadly Rogue, and the powerful spell-casting Sorcerer. The Warrior has low damage, high amounts of health, and lots of AOE (area of effect) skills. The Rogue has high damage, average health, and can melee with daggers, shoot with bows, and lay traps. The Sorcerer has the highest damage, lowest health, and has lots of powerful attack and support spells. Unfortunately, these classes are gender and race-locked meaning the Warrior is a human male, the Rogue is a human female, and the Sorcerer is a little blue male creature (the game does not specify what he is). There are, however, a couple of face, hair, and hair colors to choose from for appearance customization.

The World of Arcane Legends

Arcane Legends is a semi-open world MMORPG. There are some persistent areas such as towns, strongholds, and campsites where players can interact with one another. These areas tend to be very crowded and are unlocked as players progress in the game. The actual combat areas, however, take place in instances similar to Guild Wars. Upon entering a certain combat map, the game connects players with other players in the same map and each map can hold up to four players. I really like this system and it makes it easy to find other players to party with. However, there are some problems where the difficulty of the enemies will match the level of the first player in the map, meaning if the first person in that map is high level, all of the monsters will be high level and vice-versa. Also for some reason, some players decline party invitations even though no one else can join the map due to the player limit and do not share all the experience. Otherwise, the party system is great in connecting random players together and each of these combat maps is very large and is filled with lots of monsters and quest objectives scattered around. The world is also very colorful with a cartoony look to it and the levels are varied in theme and design.

Action Combat and Skills

Arcane Legends has a hack-and-slash combat system as well as different skills for each class. Players can move their characters with a virtual joystick on the bottom left of the screen and the camera is in an isometric angle so there is no need to turn or move the camera. There is a button on the bottom right that can be used to attack once by tapping or to unleash a special attack by holding and then releasing. Each class has three stat attributes that they can increase after leveling up (strength, dexterity, and intelligence) and ten different skills (excluding passive skills) that have four additional upgrades to each skill. For example, some skills have upgrades to increase damage, AOE radius, and poison effects. This upgrade system adds some nice customization to skills and gameplay for each class.

The biggest con I have about combat is that attacking lacks the feeling of impact or collision. Monsters don’t get knocked back when you attack them and it feels like your attacks are going through them rather than hitting them. There’s no indication that your attacks have landed other than the numbers that appear on the screen. You can also run through monsters and move while attacking so players will find themselves running through mobs, spamming attack, and watching numbers fly up and health bars drop down.

Questing and Loot

Arcane Legends offers a lot of quests and a lot more loot. Players will generally find quests in town areas and in the beginning of each combat map. Quest objectives usually involve collecting a certain number of items, defeating certain monsters, or finding specific NPCs somewhere in the map. Quests can be a bit confusing since there are no quest guiders (markers) and it’s hard to find NPCs sometimes but quests offer some story and reasons to go through maps. The game does have some interesting quest dialogues and cutscenes that appear every now and then. Going through maps with a random party does not mess up quest objectives, which is good.

The shear amounts of loot in Arcane Legends makes leveling and questing much more enjoyable. With over a thousand pieces of equipment for three classes, finding new weapons, armor, and items in Arcane Legends is a common and fun experience. There are different variations of each piece of equipment with better or worse stats and they have different appearances on your character. The loot system is similar to the game Diablo and players that like games with lots of loot will enjoy this aspect of Arcane Legends.

Companions: Gotta Collect Them All

Arcane Legends has a unique pet system and has a lot of companions (pets) to collect which fight by your side. When players begin the game, they can choose between one of three starting companions, which provide different stat boosts. These companions include a wolf, a panther, and a turtle. There’s a little under a hundred different pets to collect in this game through quests, with in-game gold, and with Platinum (the premium currency). They range from magical imps to furious dinosaurs and provide varying stat bonuses. Companions offer a fun bonus to the gameplay with different pets to collect as they follow you in battle and fight by your side. You do, however, have to keep them happy if you want them to be able to use their skills, by feeding them (with gold) and playing with them.

Cash Shop/In-App Purchases (IAP)

In-App Purchases offer some advantages to those that pay but are not necessary to enjoy the game. Platinum, the premium currency, can be used to purchase temporary experience and stat boost potions, special weapon and armor sets, health and mana potions (which can also be purchased with in-game gold), and Vanity (costume) sets. The experience and stat potions are useful for those that want to level faster but are not required for regular players willing to play the game at a more casual pace. The equipment sets do give better stats but are level-locked and almost similar equipment can be crafted without paying. Overall, the in-app purchases aren’t too bad but give advantages such as leveling faster, being slightly stronger, and cosmetic costumes. It is possible to get free Platinum from leveling up, in-game events, and offers/surveys.

Final Verdict – Great

Arcane Legend had a large impact on the mobile MMORPG world when it first launched in November 2012 and still manages to provide an enjoyable experience in 2015. With cartoony but well-aged graphics, action combat, online co-op gameplay, and fun loot and pet systems, Arcane Legends remains one of the top mobile MMORPGs for some quick doses of online fun on your phone or your PC/Mac.