RAID: Shadow Legends Review - Just visuals or more?

  

Raid: Shadow Legends, the name is literally everywhere. Influencers quote it as the best role play game of 2019. A very promising trailer with magnificent graphics. The most installed game on the play store, being promoted and advertised everywhere. Installed the game with high hopes, the game however disappoints. 

Raid: Shadow Legend starts with an amazing storyline. It's a tale of four champions that take on challenges and couldn't survive the final dragon. The story is narrated with sarcastic dialogues, great visuals, and lit illustrations for flashbacks. 

Since it's a role play game, the arbiter then asks us to make a team to defeat the ultimate dragon. We get one champion at the start of the game with basic skills. As we progress through the game, we earn silver and energy. 

On winning battles, our champions get more skills and artifacts that have to be claimed through silver coins. Reaching a high level, new champions are unlocked. Each champion has a unique role, some are defenders, some attackers, and other supporters. 

The champions are categorized by rank, level, rarity, and affinity. Raid: Shadow Legends no doubt has the largest collection of champions. The character development is impressive. Each champion has a quirky look with distinctive features. 

The strengths of Raid: Shadow Legends

What makes Raid: Shadow Legends the most dope are its spectacular visuals. This game uses digital art to its full potential. The castles and Arenas are full of intricate details. 

When the rain falls on the ground, the floor and characters get wet, you could see water dripping as if watching a 3D film. The fire flickers and the shadows are in accordance with the light. The Bastion has the environment of the kingdom from Frozen but only better. 

The weaknesses of Raid: Shadow Legends

There is no denying the game has glorious graphics. But with shallow gameplay, how far can you go? The game, despite its visuals, is full of flaws. 

There is absolutely nothing happening in the game. There are 3 stages in each battle. One champion makes their cool move on the opponent while all other players watch. Then the opponent hits you while you stand there getting hit waiting for your turn. It seems more like a dance-off than an actual fight. 

With no content to the game, the prolific promotion and continuous advertising seem dishonest. It is a diametric opposition to consumer values.

Initially, you're given a good amount of silver and energy but as you add artefacts, skills, and equipment to your player it ends. With each progressing level, the artefacts and champions get more expensive. 

You either wait for the next day to receive silver or else you’d have to shop. You wish to increase your champion collection, buy summons. You want to equip and upgrade your champion, buy energy refills. You even need silver to swap gear you already own.  Everything that you need to level up your game is present in the in-game shop. Keep paying and keep winning. 

This sort of sleazy ploy manipulates users into a cycle of detrimental spending. These gambling aspects and predatory loot boxes are practically the whole game. It doesn't have much to offer if you're not spending. 

To make things worse there exists an option of auto-play where the players have the battle themselves and win it for you. Not only that if you find it boring like one of your academic lectures, have the autoplay battles at 2x speed. This further elaborates the developer's awful sales pitch as the autoplay only stops when you need to upgrade by shopping. 

In addition to this, you can't pause a game and return. It gets stuck, and you'd have to go through the launching process all over again. Raid crashes every time you leave the screen and come back. 

Suggested Improvements for Raid: Shadow Legends

Adding more content to the gameplay with non-linear battles would make a lot of difference. The game has the advantage of great visuals, integrating interesting fight sequences would be a game-changer. 

Raid: Shadow legends need to minimize the microtransactions and gambling aspects right away. The in-game shop should unlock items when you upgrade to a higher level. 

The animations are cool, they could be used to add substance to the gameplay. Letting all champions be active at all times, making moves by their own expertise would make the game more interesting. 

Overall, the game doesn't offer much right now. But there is room for a lot of updates and improvements. Although if you like games with extraordinary graphics, you should definitely give it a go!

Ratings: 4.4/5

Pros:

• Magnificent graphics
• Amazing animations
• Large collection of champions 

Cons:

• Blatant pay-to-win aspects
• Crashes often
• Takes unnecessarily long to launch 
• Least immersive gameplay
• Manipulative in-game purchases

Screenshots 

Requirements:

CPU: Snapdragon 660 Octa Core 2.2 GHz or equivalent

GPU: Kyro 260 or equivalent

RAM: 4GB

Storage: 121 MB

OS: iOS 9/Android 6.0 and up

Phone: iPhone 8/Samsung Galaxy S10 or equivalent

Notes:

• This is a demanding app.
• Your phone should have these or equivalent specs to run the app smoothly.
• Requirements are predicted and could be bound to change as more data becomes available.
• You are encouraged to express your feedback below. 
• Please use our resource only as a guideline and if you spot any errors let us know.