Ruined King: A League of Legends Story

Genre: Turn-Based RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Ruined King is, as the game’s subtitle implies, a spin-off of the super-popular League of Legends franchise. Released in 2021, this game departs from the MOBA gameplay of League of Legends and into the RPG genre, with a plot focusing on the playable characters Miss Fortune, Illaoi, Braum, Pyke, Ahri and Yasuo, who find themselves allied with one another despite disparate goals and sensibilities when it becomes clear that they must fight off a malevolent mist emanating from a tainted island. Multiple other “champions” from the League of Legends franchise also make an appearance in the game’s story, including the so-called Ruined King himself, Thresh.

I will start this review by saying that I have zero experience with the League of Legends franchise, so fans of the license may be disappointed to find that I largely cannot comment on how this game ties into the plot of the rest of the franchise. However, if you’re like me and this series is unknown to you, you’re in the same boat as me.

Having said that, I’ll say right now that this game does a more or less sufficient job of introducing its world and characters, albeit quickly and clearly lacking much of the context and history behind everything. You will quickly get a sense for who these people are, but it’s also clear that at least a few of these characters are either in the middle of a journey they have already started, or after the end of a prior story.

As an example, after a brief prologue, this game’s story starts with us being told in flashback that Miss Fortune has apparently already completed her lifelong quest to kill the man responsible for her mother’s murder, with her now taking his place in a leadership role of sorts in the ramshackle city of Bilgewater. While this helps catch us up on the character, one can’t help but feel like we’ve already missed some extremely important parts of this character’s life story. What’s more, some characters clearly know one another and have a history, and some are perfect strangers, further leading to the strong feeling that you’re entering a middle chapter of a story.

Having said that, the story here is well-told, and the characters are well-written, with some really enjoyable interplay between them. You definitely get the feeling that they didn’t just randomly slot in characters from the game, but made sure that this ragtag group of misfits all have personalities that bounce off of one another in interesting ways.

The other elements of the presentation here are quite good as well, with some excellent, detailed 3D visuals for both backgrounds and characters, albeit from a fixed point of view. However, while the characters and world look great, it’s the animations here that truly shine, with characters all having expressive, fluid animations that really show off their personalities. The soundtrack, from Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisp’s Gareth Coker, is also excellent, though not quite as sublime as those games. Still, there are some catchy instrumental tracks here, like Any Coin On Ya, Settling the Score, and Shadows on the Walls. However, for the most part this game’s soundtrack is more mood-setting in nature than something you’ll find yourself humming.

When it comes to the gameplay, developer Airship Syndicate builds on some of the systems and mechanics in their earlier game, Battle Chasers: Nightwar. As with that game, Ruined King features a small cast of characters (six here) that you can pull from to make your party of three, as well as turn-based RPG combat that includes an “overcharge” feature where some abilities give characters extra MP they can use within the current battle, giving players a bit of risk/reward in deciding whether to make use of normal MP for special attacks, or take a moment to build up overcharge so they can conserve their MP for later.

However, the major new mechanic here is the “initiative bar” with “lanes”. The initiative bar shows the order of the turns and how various abilities will affect that. However, this bar is divided into three lanes, and each of these abilities can be shifted from the neutral lane into either a fast lane or a power lane, trading off speed and power. This already gives players some malleability with their special moves, but what makes things interesting is that various situations in battle pop up that can help or harm characters whose turn falls into a specific field within the initiative bar, and players will want to make use of different abilities at different speeds to maneuver characters into or out of these zones in the turn order. It’s a clever approach to a classic RPG mechanic that will have players thinking through whether an ability is worth using even if it fails to place the character in an advantageous spot on the timeline.

Overall, I thought Ruined King was a well-crafted and creative take on the genre, albeit one that fans of the League of Legends license will likely get more out of than others. You can absolutely play this game and follow this story even if you’ve never previously had anything to do with the series, but if you do so just prepare yourself for the feeling of occasionally being out of the loop. However, the quality of this game means that even if that’s the case, you may still find it worthwhile to try.

tl;dr – Ruined King is a Turn-Based RPG spin-off of the League of Legends franchise, and one with an excellent presentation and some really creative game mechanics. Those who are already familiar with the characters, world, and story of this franchise will probably get the most out of this game, but even if it’s all new to you, this is still a superb RPG well worth playing.

Grade: B+

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