Black Legend is a turn-based tactics game by Warcave set in the 17th-century fictional city of Grant. The city had seen peace for centuries until its allies could no longer protect it from invaders that threatened its citizens. The council of Grant turned to a legendary alchemist, Mephisto, who made a choking fog that blanketed the streets and handed out the antidote to the fog to some of Grant’s townsfolk. Mephisto left Grant with misery in his wake. A cult formed from the survivors worshipping Mephisto and his deeds; between the cult and the mad denizens of the city, Grant was plunged into violence and despair.
Overview
You command a squad of mercenaries led by a player-designed character, freed from prison to attempt to retake the city from the cult of Mephisto. The squad’s primary task throughout the game is to aid a resistance group in the local Merchant’s Guild with the goal of evacuating as many citizens as possible by boat. The Merchant’s Guild is essentially the base of operations. Your squad can pick up quests, buy and sell gear, and swap out members at the barracks. As the story progresses and new zones within the city are unlocked, side quests become available as well as interactive lore elements throughout the city. Cultists are not the only enemy factions present in Grant either- there are also the Delirious, people driven mad and turned loose by the cult, as well as earlier teams of mercenaries that have succumbed to the fog and even wild animals.
Movement around Grant is free-roaming, using only the player’s character to move outside of combat. Exploration is reminiscent of Mutant Year Zero: Road To Eden; the character travels between zones collecting loot from chests littered around the city, interacting with narrative or lore events, and encountering friendly NPCs. There are doors and gates that provide shortcuts to certain areas once unlocked, however, these usually require the player to fight their way through the district to unlock them. Enemies respawn when the player travels to another district so unlocking these shortcuts is absolutely essential.
In the free-roaming mode enemy detection ranges are visible, also very similar to the way the mechanic is employed in Mutant Year Zero. Most enemies roam around their assigned area so the player can choose to dodge around their vision cones or initiate combat if they choose.
The combat revolves around not only the use of weaponry, but the old concepts of humourism and alchemy. Each squad member has access to various abilities granted by their class, or the weapons they are using to apply various alchemical effects to their enemies. These effects are called Nigredo (black), Albedo (white), Citrinitas (yellow), and Rubedo (red). Each time these effects are applied they are displayed as a stack of the color corresponding to the effect up to a maximum of four per color. These stacks can combine with each other to deal massive damage to the enemy when a regular, or catalyzing attack is used.
Characters have movement points and action points that can be used in any order during combat. For example, a character with sufficient movement points could move around behind an enemy, backstab them then run back to the squad. Increased damage is dealt from the sides and more damage again from the back, so where prudent enemies should be flanked. In combat, abilities and items can provide individual effects as well. Some abilities can reduce action points, apply a bleed effect or set the target on fire while character-held items can do anything from throwing Molotov cocktails to reviving downed allies.
There are a multitude of classes and weapons to choose from. All characters start as the base Mercenary class but rapidly unlock new classes including support classes like the Plague Doctor, tank classes like the Guard, bruisers such as the Doppelsoldner and melee or ranged classes in the form of Rogues, Duelists or Sharpshooters among many others. Squad members have primary classes but can also use skills from other classes or the base class if they have spent some time in combat as another class, allowing for cross-specialisation and experimentation.
Some of these classes require specialised gear like spears, crossbows or greatswords to be usable, and these weapons unlock skills of their own as they are used in combat. Characters level up as they progress through the campaign, and increased stats are automatically assigned. They can also equip alternate weapons and the player’s choice of armour or trinkets. These trinkets can provide a boost in combat like healing the character if they consume Rubedo stacks or increasing skill power if they apply stacks of Citrinitas. Special weapons can be collected from fallen bosses. These weapons can be used in conjunction with certain armour or trinkets to great effect.
At the end of each main story quest chain there are boss fights. These bosses may come alone or with an entourage. They have a lot of health, deal significant damage and have abilities that can spell doom for the player if steps are not taken to avoid or counter them. They push the players to keep moving to avoid their abilities and require teamwork to prime alchemical effects in order to catalyse them for maximum damage output.
Strengths
The alchemical effects being a core mechanic is a really interesting concept and it works well in combat, allowing the player to maximize synergy between squadmates and making battles more interesting than they would be without it. Some of the weapons that employ the elements are also a lot of fun to use. The Wheellock Musket, for example, sounds great when it fires and one of the special abilities of the weapon sets enemies aflame. The hand cannons used by the Dragoon class are like 17th century shotguns and are also satisfying to fire.
Warcave have done a great job of portraying the misery and horror present throughout Grant. As you explore new areas there are always signs of battles, hangings or murders carried out by one of the enemy factions.
Weaknesses
While the concept of battle alchemy is really interesting, the game has some serious balance issues. The early game on Medium difficulty is not particularly punishing, but due to design choices like having no apparent way to heal out of battle besides drinking potions, one bad battle in the early game could force a restart of the story. There is only a small amount of potions available early on, so the only tactic to heal before unlocking a proper healing class like the Plague Doctor is to isolate and lock down a ranged enemy so they cannot move or attack and spam heal the squad back to full health. This is not required after about the first hour but it feels like an extremely irritating design choice. It would be really nice to have some sort of healing option out of combat, even if it were an NPC in the Merchant’s Guild that could heal the party rather than a free roam ability.
On the flip side, after the first hour or so the squad snowballs so the battles throughout the rest of the story rapidly start to feel trivial. Using specialized characters like dedicated tanks, healers and roaming damage dealers made battles feel tedious because my squad became nigh unstoppable. Even bosses failed to present a serious threat once their mechanics were understood. Dedicated damage dealers can become killing machines. Using my Guard and Doppelsoldner bruiser I could pick a choke point prior to battle, block off enemy access to my support and have an effectively impenetrable front line with a dedicated support healer. The Guard class has a damage reducing buff and the Plague Doctor unlocks an area of effect heal so battles become a matter of attrition, the front line pushing forward until the damage dealer can be let loose on the enemy flanks. This tactic worked so well I could carry a very low level Duelist into a boss fight and win with no casualties. The combat became repetitive enough that it was preferable to run around the enemy vision cones than engage in battle.
The UI is adequate in most areas but has issues in a few cases. For example, the mouse over tooltips showing unit stats cannot be seen unless the unit is in battle. While it is fairly easy to guess what the stats represent, it is not helpful if the player cannot see those stats prior to battle in order to know which weapons or gear to equip for their class. Also, there is no apparent way to tell what level enemies are. It is possible my squad were steamrolling everything they encountered because they were facing lower level enemies as opposed to being overpowered, but without level indicators there is no way to know for sure.
Lastly, Black Legend still has a number of bugs. To their credit, Warcave are actively working on squashing them, and many have been resolved as of writing but some still remain. I encountered everything from resolution bugs to mid-combat crashes to inaccessible enemies preventing me from completing battles. Quests bugged out, preventing further progress. Nothing truly game breaking, but having to replay a boss fight four times to finish it without a crash was an exercise in frustration, not to mention having to restart the game and try other workarounds frequently to play past bugs.
Verdict
Black Legend has a lot of potential. Between its decent story, great worldbuilding, and interesting combat mechanics, Warcave has made a rare, if not unique title in the turn based tactical genre. Once it has received some post-release love it could be a great game. With the glaring issues, tedious combat and a couple of baffling design choices present in its current state, I would recommend waiting to see how it fares down the track.
Shaun is eXplorminate’s new tactics eXpert, having expressed an immense love and fondness for the genre. His passion motivated Rob to feature tactics games more prominently here! Look forward to seeing more coverage from him and eXplorminate as a result.