It seems like everywhere you look there’s a hack ‘n slash roguelike dungeon crawler yadda yadda, and over the past several years it’s been very hard for many of them to really stand apart from each other. Not that I’m complaining about swimming in a sea of fantastic action games, but with gaming time at a premium and a library full of options I need to be sure that I’m spending my time wisely. Wizard of Legend from Contingent99 and Humble Games is a worthy investment of time, and has been so since its original release way back in 2018, but now that it’s on my iPhone it’s kind of become my go-to option for hacking and slashing those few minutes of free time away throughout the day.
The setup in Wizard of Legend should sound pretty familiar. Run through some randomly generated rooms, kill a bunch of enemies, come across a mini-boss, take that bad boy down, run through some more enemies, take down a super hard main boss, bada bing bada boom. Earn a bunch of loot and XP, level up your stuff when you get back to your main hub, then dive in and do it all over again. This is the type of thing that can get a little humdrum in most of these types of games, but that’s where Wizard of Legend pops in to set itself apart.
The combat here is just fan-freaking-tastic. It’s super fast compared to typical ARPGs, and the focus on magic spells and the things they can do keep the combat feeling fresh and open up all sorts of opportunities for cool strategies. You will find yourself frequently outnumbered by enemies and will discover clever new ways to deal with those mobs of baddies, and it will often be in a way that makes you feel like an all-powerful bad ass wizard. It’s tough to put into words, but Wizard of Legend is just very satisfying in that way. I don’t want to stop fighting, and I don’t want to stop unlocking new spells and trying new loadouts, which this game makes very easy to do.
As I alluded to earlier, this progression loop also lends itself really well to mobile as runs don’t take all that long and it’s the kind of game where even a bad run feels like you did something meaningful. That said, this port doesn’t save your game mid-run, so if you close out of it and it gets wiped from memory then you’ll have to start a run over, which is unfortunate for a mobile game. So far this hasn’t been an issue for me but it’s worth noting. Also, while it plays well with virtual controls and that makes it an easy contender for just busting out of my pocket to kill some time, it’s certainly at its best with a physical controller if you’re going to sit down and take things more seriously.
Whether you’ve owned this on another platform before and just want something super portable, or you enjoy these kind of roguelike ARPGs, this new mobile version of Wizard of Legend is a solid option. Hopefully the few rough edges can be smoothed over to make this something I can see staying installed on my device for a very long time to come.
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