The Ruined King, a Turn-based RPG published by RIOT games based off their ”Ruination” storyline from the release of Viego in their hit MOBA ”League of Legends”. To all League fanatics this game was extremely exciting, almost all League of Legends fans relish the overall lore and endless stories yet dislike the actual game the lore is attached to. With ”The Ruined King”, we were given a chance to explore some important areas of lore, deepen our connection with who was chosen as the playable cast, and actually beat Viego in a fight! Everything a League player could ever want.
However, it came up short quite literally. The first thing I noticed was how insanely fast I was moving through the story progression, by the time I got a full party of playable characters I was already at 50%! I finished the game at 21 hours of playtime, with doing side quests to earn the legendary weapons for each character. An experienced JRPG player looking to just beat the game could easily knock this out in 15–18 hours; while a new player looking to enjoy the story of the ”Ruination” would be looking at roughly 25–28 hours of gameplay. For an RPG game those numbers are abysmally low, RPG (or Role-Playing Games) pride themselves on being fairly long with the average gametime sitting in the 50–60 hour thresholds. As a first attempt at an RPG game it’s pretty acceptable at a lower price point ($29.99) instead of the usual $59.99 full price.
For a first dip into Role-Playing. The Ruined King boasts an incredibly unique combat system featuring a triple lane system (Speed, Power, and Balance). Your skillset includes three skills that don’t cost mana to use and generate “Overcharge” (excess mana that only lasts for that battle); along with “Lane Skills” costing mana to use. These skills also have the ability to switch “lanes” to Power or Speed instead of the standard balance lane. Power lane lowers your casting time but increases your damage while the Speed lane does the opposite. Playing with your placement on the lane track was crucial to getting through some fights as some boasted the ability to lay traps that you dodge by changing your cast speed/swapping to a different lane. you also fight with a “wildcard boon” for each fight that adds an area across all lanes that give a buff or debuff based on a roll at the start of the fight. Lastly but most importantly, each character has three ultimate abilities; two available from leveling up and the final coming from a side quest. These ultimate abilities rely on a separate resource and act immediately with no cast time like a basic ability and are a source of incredible damage/heals/shields.
Being a “League of Legends Story”, our main cast is made up of some fairly popular champions from the MOBA game. We have Braum who acts as a tank who can shield and buff his allies while taking massive amounts of damage. Then Illaoi who is also a tank but she specializes in lifestealing to mitigate damage and can heal the rest of your party, these two are the only options for tanks in the game out of our 6 man roster. For magic users we only have Ahri who can specialize in high magic damage or be a strong support healer depending on what you need in your team. Onto the long list of physical damagers; first up is Yasuo who specializes in constant critical hits with a lower damage than normal crits with a high speed so he takes alot of turns. Then we have Miss Fortune, she’s capable of very strong critical hits and hitting multiple enemies together. Lastly and definitely the carry of my personal run: Pyke; Pyke is a self-stealthing unit who inflicts a large amount of debuffs on the enemy with each hit. His kit empowers his hits based on whether he has certain buffs, if the enemy is debuffed, or if they’re below a certain percentage of health (He was dishing out 20k damage a turn for myself in the final boss fight). There are definitely more popular champs to have included instead of this six but they fit perfectly into the story they wanted to tell, so I understand their choices.
The story quests were not very impressive which is also tied to the lack of time for progression. You get about one dungeon per character to showcase their skills then you’re set free to go and explore before the final battle. It was nice to see more of how “The Ruination” was caused, but I believe they really missed a profitable mark not following up with a Ruination game and letting the MOBA’s in-client event tell that story. You got alot more story if you went out of your way and search for every piece of lore in the game/each sidequest which adds some insight to history of characters from the League of Legends roster. The exploration was limited to a few areas however; bouncing between Bilgewater and The Shadow Isles in this story leaves many places left undiscovered that hold incredible amounts of League lore (Demacia or Noxus especially). Its a shame to not have gotten these views, hopes were high for more had they not shut down the divisions that created these works. The dialogue was fairly well-written, except for a few conversations of each of our female protagonists flirting with Braum for some reason? My only story gripe with this game was the odd animation choice for the cutscenes as it lacked, well… animation. If you’re a fan of the MOBA game you should recognize the beauty of a RIOT League of Legends trailer. So it was very odd to see them chose to go with a comic style animation of moving from panel to panel with a voice-over, I think they definitely could have (and should have) done better.
Overall I’m still glad I played the game, the gameplay was unique and challenging and it did tell a decent story fairly well, I just wish there was more.
Story: 9/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10
Duration: 4/10
Cutscenes: 5/10
Overall: 8/10
