DC Legends (iOS) Review

To stand out on the mobile gaming market there are two approaches. Either you use a big name, or you make a game with an extremely high and innovative quality or art style or make it so bad that it turns into a meme. With an IP like DC, the former approach is already a given.

That is extremely good for DC Legends, as the game itself does very little on its own to stand out. In all aspects, it is pretty much the poster child for a typical gacha RPG. That in itself is not a bad thing. The problem is that they seem to have done the far minimum to add unique mechanics, and the few things they do really mixes badly with the turn-based single-player RPG genre.

The biggest thing DC Legends brings to the market, save the roster containing famous faces, such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, is the combat system that, rather than being focused around resources, is based on cooldowns quite like MMORPGs and some other WRPGs. Cooldowns are neat in some RPGs, especially action RPGs and MMORPGs, and then often as a complement to a mana system. DC Legends lacks a mana system and it leads to a very terrible result.

The problem with this is that too often the correct thing to do each and every fight is to pop the cooldowns as soon as they are up, as each turn not using it is wasting it. This leads to a game with very few true choices for the player that affects the battle. If the correct option always is to pop open cooldowns in such a way that their cooldown endings do not interfere with one another, there is little room for choices. This also leads to player skill not mattering, and the only thing to do if stuck on a fight is to wait for the pay gate to disappear or to spend cash. While this result might seem appealing to the publisher, it is all but fun for the player.

Other than this, DC Legends differs extremely little from other gacha RPGs on the market. It does not need to, though, as the DC IP itself will carry it to a certain degree of downloads, but it will doubtfully be good enough to keep players hooked long enough for them to spend any actual money on it.