DC Legends Mobile Review
DC Legends is a squad-based strategy title for the iOS and android platform from Warner Bros. Games. The game puts you in the audience of an unfolding DC story where the manhunters have returned to destroy the Earth. But the manhunters did not come alone; they have joined forces with Nekron and his Black Lantern Corps.
Your task in-game is to build 5-man (and woman) cell teams that are comprised of a mix of DC superheroes and villains as you try to stop two forces from totally annihilating all life in the universe.
Visually the game brings the experience home for any DC fan.
Gameplay
I think I oversold the game a little bit with the way I described the game’s storyline. While it seems that DC Legends’ narrative brings in a bit of an interesting premise, the game’s gameplay feature on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired. The game follows your typical unit collection title where you acquire heroes (outside of the starter characters) by getting their shards from quests or paying for chests with real money. You progress through the game by going through the story points where you not only continue with the game narrative but also face off against waves of AI controlled mobs (a mix of manhunters and black lanterns) in active time battles.
Typical to mobile games that has instances as its main game progression system, you will earn stars when you finish an instance depending on how many of your units survive the encounter. This will come in handy later, especially when you reach the mid-late gaming phase as you’d need to farm rewards to improve and strengthen your hero pool.
If the gameplay seems a bit familiar, well, DC Legends practically uses the same game features from another title of the same genre – Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. DC Legends copies a lot of SW:GoH’s gameplay features to the point it just feels like a reskin. Sadly though, DC Legends has less to offer than Galaxy of Heroes, and that’s saying something.
Thanks to bringing villains into the picture, the game's roster of heroes is quite large.
Heroes and Villains
Let’s move on to the game’s primary draw, its roster of characters. In DC Legends, unlocking the various non-starter heroes would require some ingenuity and a lot of patience if you’re being a cheapskate and not wanting to spend a dime on the game. Thankfully the game does make it a little bit easier for you to do that by allowing players to repeat through the same map either by using the “speed force” item that allows you to automatically finish one twice daily, or you play through the instance yourself.
There are various ways for you to strengthen your heroes in-game. DC Legends allows players to manually level up your heroes and their moves. The game also has the item system in place where each character has a dedicated slot in their inventory where you can put in character specific items to increase their stats. These items can be acquired by going through instances. You can also level up the item levels per character by completing their collection which unlocks more stat affecting items later.
Characters in DC Legends also get to “evolve” to their higher rarity versions of themselves. As long as you meet the required level and shards, you can then evolve your heroes and villains to the next step version of themselves with higher stats, more useful skills, and a bit of a visual upgrade as well.
If you don't enjoy the PvP gameplay, DC Legends will get boring very fast.
Other features
DC Legends has not held back in terms of providing a robust roster of heroes and villains to choose from. And the game does present a really solid storyline for the game, albeit its presentation is a bit too reminiscent of Marvel’s Contest of Champions with the way the characters speak to one another to move the story forward. However, the game sorely lacks anything else for you to spend your time on in-game.
Aside from the solo campaign that you will have to go through, you can attempt to join in the live events the game will be having on set schedules. You can also fight against other teams in ranked matches. You also have the essence collector where you can earn time-based essence that provide you with resources to upgrade items, improve character levels and boost abilities. However, the game doesn’t present any other play modes. There’s no social features in place or side games. Just PvP and campaigns. This makes the game lackluster in terms of keeping your attention as you play through. I actually got bored playing the game after the 2nd stage of the campaign and instead switched to the auto play setting at the fastest speed.
I mean sure, Marvel’s Contest of Champions doesn’t have that much of other features as well, and in fact, in terms of gameplay, they have the same amount of features with DC Legends. The only difference between the two is that Contest of Champions has social features in place so that you can at least chill (or troll depending on your taste) with others in-game. DC Legends on the other hand just feels like another grindfest style, unit collection game. And the only interaction you’ll be getting from other players is when your team’s fists meet their face.
Conclusion: Fair (2/5)
DC Legends is a game that could’ve brought more than its competitors with the game just being released. But what we got instead is a copy of the already overused gameplay features of unit-collecting games. The game dawdled so far on the safe and sure formula side that it has nothing to set itself apart on the playstore beyond the DC tag. The game had a lot of potential, especially with its own standalone storyline. Sadly, it just did what it’s live action movie cousins did, making the audience feel like they are seeing, or in this case playing, a half-assed experience. It’s just disappointing when you can tell the money and resources were there, but the execution was not.
Why do you do this to us Warner Brothers? Why?
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