Riot wants to conquer the hearts of single-player fans for the first time. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story builds on an established role-playing game concept.
The League of Legends universe will soon be open to players who are not at all familiar with MOBAs. With Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, Riot is venturing into new territory, namely the role-playing genre.
Ruined King wants to achieve something that LoL, despite all its success, has not managed to do so far: to introduce players to the amazingly complex lore. So far, the lore has been completely lost in MOBAs. If you want to learn more about the story, you have to slog through long blocks of text. But not for much longer, if Ruined King has its way.
Riot recently proved that it is basically capable of successfully opening up new genres and target groups with the hero shooter Valorant.
Similar success is now expected with Ruined King. We wanted to find out exactly how in a conversation with the developers and asked them about the setting, champions and gameplay.
What kind of game will Ruined King be?
Surprisingly, Ruined King doesn’t follow any of the current genre trends and will be a turn-based tactical role-playing game, which is mainly inspired by classic JRPGs like the early Final Fantasy parts.
However, the surprise gives way to the “aha” moment when you take a closer look at who is behind this project. Airship Syndicate is the name of the studio that is working on Ruined King together with publisher Riot Forge. Airship was most recently responsible for the great co-op action game Darksiders Genesis, but above all for the role-playing game Battle Chasers: Nightwar, which crossed randomly generated dungeons with tactical battles in the classic Final Fantasy style in 2017. And that very Battle Chasers provided a lot of inspiration for the new project, according to lead designer Steve Madureira:
"When we were developing Battle Chasers, we were a small team, just nine people. We had some ideas that we couldn't implement because of that. And we learned a lot during development."
So while Battle Chasers was still a rather small indie role-playing game, the developers can now invest significantly more in technology and scope, and the trailer already gives a first taste of the increased ambition. And that is quite promising, considering how well we already liked the much less ambitious Battle Chasers:
In concrete terms, the larger budget and team is already reflected in a complete German voice output, but especially in the design of the game world: While your heroes only wandered over a schematic map in Battle Chasers, you can explore the world in real time in Ruined King, and from an isometric top-down perspective, just like in Darksiders Genesis. If it comes to a battle, the game switches back to a tactical side view like in Battle Chasers.
Setting, battles and gameplay
The setting of Ruined King: The Story revolves around the run-down pirate city of Bilgewater and the cursed Shadow Isles. Connoisseurs of League of Legends lore will prick up their ears here, as these are familiar locations from the LoL game world Runeterra, but have only taken place in texts and trailers so far.
While the buccaneer fortress is repeatedly haunted by monsters, ghosts and brutal gangs of murderers, a deadly fog lies over the Shadow Isles. A ragtag squad of (anti)heroes must fend off the threat of the Ruined King. Who exactly this antagonist is and what he’s actually planning, we don’t know yet.
What about gameplay? Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any gameplay scenes yet. And the makers have also held back with concrete statements, for example about dialogs or skills. At least we were able to find out a few things about the combat system:
This is how the battles in Ruined King work
In the course of the game, you’ll collect a champion pool of six characters. You can take three of them into battle at a time, which is also familiar from Battle Chasers. Each champion has special abilities, and you’ll have to combine them wisely. Depending on the composition of your team, special synergies are created.
These combos are supposed to be the core of the whole battle system: You can always rearrange your team to find out which champion group suits your play style the most.
The developers also told us which six heroes will be available. Those who know the champions from League of Legends should be able to find all their special characteristics again. And those who don’t know anything about LoL can look forward to some very interesting and, for role-playing games, quite unusual skills.
The six champions at a glance
The developers have held back with concrete statements, but based on the LoL canon, it is already possible to predict quite precisely what hero types and abilities you will be up against.
Ahri: The Fox Woman is a powerful but unpredictable mage. In LoL, she attacks enemies with magic projectiles or charms them with her charm. She is also extremely mobile on the move. However, she can’t take much damage.
Braum: This champion comes from the icy kingdom of Freljord. He is a good-natured and self-sacrificing protector. In LoL, he is a tank who stands between allies and enemies with his powerful shield. He can stun enemies and hurl them into the air.
Illaoi: The “Prophetess of the Great Kraken” relies on the support of her golden idol. She summons magical tentacles that attack enemies. She can also rip souls from the bodies of enemies.
Miss Fortune: This tough lady is a respected captain of Bilgewater. She prefers to have a pistol in each hand and covers her opponents with a hail of bullets.
Pyke: Actually, the harpooner should have been dead long ago. However, he now roams the alleys of Bilgewasser as the undead. In LoL he is a supporter who can cloak and teleport. His specialty is lightning fast and stealthy attacks.
Yasuo: The legendary swordsman hails from Ionia, the Japan of Runeterra, so to speak. He is extremely skilled with his wind blade, can deflect projectiles and throw up enemies.
Who is Ruined King interesting for?
Whether you already know LoL or have never set foot in the MOBA, if you like role-playing games like Battle Chasers, Ruined King might be worth a detour. Accessibility for as many players as possible is the developers’ motto.
For example, you don’t need any previous knowledge to find your way around Runeterra, the entire story is explained in the game. There are several difficulty levels, from the simple story mode to the crunchy hardcore challenge, which was christened “Steve mode” by the developers, because the colleague of the same name always sets all difficulty controls to the stop.
However, if you don’t like JRPGs and turn-based battles in general, Ruined King shouldn’t change that much.
What do we like so far, what remains unclear?
Since we haven’t seen any gameplay scenes yet, it’s difficult for us to assess the potential that lies dormant in Ruined King, even though the developer studio’s previous titles have always been convincing. We find the idea of finally making more out of the really deep background story of League of Legends than just dull text boxes extremely exciting.
What do we like?
- Ruined King could pick up both LoL veterans and newcomers. For experienced players, there will certainly be plenty of “Oh, I know that one!” moments. And everyone else will get a chance to experience League of Legends’ amazingly extensive lore.
- The combo system sounds like a lot of variety. If it works as well as it does in Battle Chasers: Nightwar, we can expect challenging yet entertaining turn-based battles.
- The LoL universe is full of exciting stories, but almost no one has that on their radar. With Ruined King, that might change for the first time.
What remains unclear?
- So far, we haven’t been able to get a concrete picture of the gameplay.
- We can’t yet judge whether the story will actually be exciting enough to keep players interested.
- How free are we in the composition of our squad? It would be a shame if only a handful of combos end up making any sense at all.
Ruined King will be released on Steam, Epic, Xbox One and Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch in early 2021. Those who buy it for the CurrentGen consoles will be able to upgrade to the NextGen version for free later on.
