Imagine yourself surveying a museum full of artifacts and relics of a time gone by. A time, in fact, that you wish you could have been a part of in its heyday. Further, imagine that you are making your way toward competing in a trial that embodies the spirit of that time and allows certain abilities to be within your reach. If that sounds like something up your alley, you have a treat in store with Wizard of Legend, the new release developed by Contingent99 in partnership with folks behind Humble Bundle.
Contingent99 does a great job of explaining the setup for Wizard of Legend in their pitch for the game. “Every year in the Kingdom of Lanova, the Council of Magic holds the Chaos Trials, a gauntlet of magical challenges put forth by its strongest members. Contestants that successfully complete all of the challenges and demonstrate superior wizardry earn the right to become a Wizard of Legend!”
Players first fill their minds with lore in an innovative tutorial while navigating through a museum of sorts on their way to said Chaos Trials. It’s been a long time coming for your turn at the competition, and you can’t fail. Except… you can fail. And you will. A lot. This fast-paced rogue-like dungeon crawler challenges you to your brink, and then rewards you quite heavily when you succeed.
Sporting a pixellated art style in an homage to the gameplay of titles like Darkest Dungeon, Wizard of Legend will have you banging your head against a wall as you attempt to navigate the procedurally generated trials of the competition your character has entered – but, like… in a good way. It feels satisfying to play each section over and over again as you discover each type of enemy and what takes them down. That thing which takes them down is a frenzied assault of magic and spells known as Arcana. Determining the mix of Arcana that you want to take with you is a lot of fun, but actually picking them out can be a bit frustrating at times. There aren’t many descriptions of what each one does (this goes double for items and buffs within the game) and obtaining one can be sometimes costly. If you don’t like what it does, you’re a bit stuck. That said, it’s not hard to store up enough gold to try out a different one.
Enemies in Wizard of Legend are varied and smart. It won’t be often that you’ll find yourself battling the same enemy type in the exact same way, making it difficult to determine their weaknesses and defeat them. This isn’t a bad thing though because it feels all the more satisfying when you do finally get their weaknesses and patterns figured out.
Your base move is a simple attack. Your character, whose outfits can be varied and customized, also has the ability to warp or jump very quickly. This makes dodging enemies and navigating a ton of fun and also challenging. You’ll be ready to evade an attack and zip across the play area, only to find that you’ve thrown yourself off the edge of the platform on which you were standing. This is a dual-edged sword though, because much of the gameplay allows you to launch your enemies into those same depths.
Other moves can be earned and changed at many points within the game. Want to generate a rock and destroy it thereby sending fragments into your foes? You can do that. Prefer to send a fireball out right after you’ve frozen a baddie in place? That’s a possibility as well. The amount of spells and abilities you can switch between is quite extensive and you’ll soon find yourself loving creating a new load out for yourself.
There are many item shops inside of the trials as well. The prices of these items is pretty easy to obtain, but the frustration comes in, as noted above, when you aren’t terribly sure what they do or how to use them. Some of these pieces may have been helping me or hurting me – I just never knew exactly what the buff did. That’s not to say that none of the relics or items were helpful – they certainly were! – there’s just not a lot of guidance as to what they are before you purchase and test them out.
Recommendation: Overall, Wizard of Legend is a solid purchase and we recommend it heartily. It’s fun, fast, and challenging all while having a wonderful soundtrack and (even if not unique) fantastic art style sure to please anyone looking for a retro-inspired game with fantastically tight controls.
We recommend picking up Wizard of Legend here, through our Humble affiliate link! The game is excellent on the Nintendo Switch and if you need some e-shop credit, follow our Amazon affiliate link! Both of these links will get us some credit for your purchase, but cost you nothing extra!
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
*Wizard of Legend was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
