Ruined King: A League of Legends Story (2021)

It's odd finally getting around to playing Ruined King in 2026. I had been an avid LoL player for years back when they rolled out the Ruination event and announced they were branching out to making side games. Back then I expected that I'd get around to playing the tie-in game for the event sooner rather than later but... here we are about 5 years since release and I've only just finished it. Now that Riot Forge has closed its doors, I wonder if their first project might have been the best of the bunch.

Ruined King stands on its own as a solid if-not-quite spectacular JRPG, but there are a lot of fun little lore nods and easter eggs that'll only really land if you're familiar with the lore of League of Legends. These were typically pretty tastefully included (Necrit!!) and I don't think they'd detract from anyone's experience were they to play this before trying out any other League content.

What's really awesome is getting to see champions moving around the world of Runeterra and following the ambitions that you only really get a glimpse of in the source game. Miss Fortune in particular feels miles better here. Where League offers a skimpy pirate halloween costume, Ruined King serves up an assertive captain who will pull no punches when it comes to taking what she believes is rightfully hers.

I was very pleased to see my old main, Ahri, getting some really solid development here as well. It would've been easy to give in to fanservice but all of the main cast feel properly fleshed out and given a chance to shine, in my opinion. Each has a goal that ties them to the others and interestingly enough, not all of them even necessarily get what they want (or what the audience may want) by the end, a writing decision that struck me as particularly ballsy as I ruminated on it while the credits rolled.

Surprisingly, this game does set up a pretty interesting combat system. It's fully turn-based, which I adore, and reminds me a bit of FFX's where you can see the upcoming turn order but manipulate it through ability usage. Where this system throws a curveball into the mix is the introduction of the Speed and Power lanes, which allow the player to decrease or increase the cast time for abilities at the detriment or benefit of damage/healing numbers, respectively. Each lane can also have hazards appear within them, which forces the player into a strategic balance between maximizing numbers, minimizing cast time, and keeping away from the damage and debuffs present via said hazards.

Character progression, too, has several "lanes" to it. Much like in LoL, players can augment each character's abilities by leveling them up individually, apply runes to confer character-specific bonuses, and also equip items to gain stats and special abilities. I feel like Ruined King introduces all of this a bit too quickly at the start and it was overwhelming, but the game plays a tad on the easy side on Normal difficulty, which allowed me to dig into the character progression when I felt ready. Not that it was too easy, mind you. Some encounters have some sharp teeth. Most of the time I was pleased with the level of difficulty.

Where the game makes some missteps for me is in its dungeon design. While I very much appreciate that it offers several lengthy dungeons with plenty of side paths to explore, there are simply too many enemies peppered into narrow corridors. While one can in theory avoid combat by dodging around them this isn't worth it imo (also often isn't possible) and you're much better served just confronting each one head on. This means dungeons that would otherwise be well-paced can slow down to a crawl as you slowly clear out rooms full of pacing enemies before reaching the next treasure chest or puzzle. This made the mid portion of the game really tough to push through. I often had to force myself to play when I knew I'd just be wading through tons of combat for a sitting.

Some other quick thoughts:

• The voice acting is pretty great across the board, even if volume mixing isn't perfect. I loved hearing characters I played from LoL brought to life here with more personality than they've ever had before.
• The graphics are really nice. There's a strongly defined color palette of greens and blues much of the game but I never tired of it. Cutscenes are reminiscent of comic book art, but get enough animation to elevate them above what I've seen other games do with a similar style.
• There are unfortunately many bugs. You'd be hard pressed to do a playthrough without hitting any. Sometimes collectibles don't get marked off on the map properly (rare, thankfully), sometimes UI elements in combat don't update as they should, and other times you can just get stuck unable to move while walking through a doorway. The game autosaves often enough that the latter didn't ruin the game, but the few times it happened were very disappointing to say the least. This game needed another go-over or two by the testers for sure.
• The story takes a while to really get rolling but when it does it's a good time.
• There's a postgame of sorts that allows you to explore and access some new quests, which is a very nice inclusion.

I don't play League anymore these days, but I really appreciated this venture back into Runeterra. It's a very cool world with many, many great characters. I'd love to see more games that explore said world in this style but I'm not sure we'll ever get them, which is a huge shame. I miss this world again already.

As a reformed LoL player I was super happy to see a single player game that lets me dive into the lore of the franchise without running into toxic midlaners.

Gareth Coker is here for the tracks, that's awesome. The overall art design is great for a game of this budget and the voice actors are the same as in LoL and their work is splendid.

However, the gameplay itself and the story felt really bland. There are some interesting gimmicks in the turn based formula but to be honest 80% of monsters can be defeated with a good build and auto attacks only, even when using spells the 3 way lanes are useless until the late game when spells have different passives. So the first couple of hours are spent furiously right-clicking, emulating the life of an ADC quite nicely, but not exactly what I'm looking for in a game with a slower pace.

This could have been saved with a nice story, but unfortunately that's not the case. I have no idea why Yasuo and Braum are even there, they land a lot of jokes during rest scenes but except for that they have no input in the quest and no character arc that is tied to the story (fighting Yone felt like a side quest). And overall this is super cliché, cast of strange characters team up to fight bad guy that wants to raise ancient evil for profit kind of thing. Even the most interesting enemies that appear on the way ended up being mere bouncers that you have to go through in order to advance on the very linear progression.

There was also a lot of bugs and the mouse/keyboard navigation was sometimes very clunky, especially in combat when you need to go through dedicated menus to be able to read the huge amount of unique passive buffs that a boss has. Also, you can't use potions without using the left / rights keys for some reasons.

To end on a positive note, progression felt satisfying with the branching upgrades for spells and runes, even though that was never tied to any narrative of any kind. And the game doesn't overstay its welcome (there's no grind), I finished the story on normal difficulty in 17 hours.

I would say it's refreshing to see something new come from this franchise but let's not kid ourselves, if it didn't have the brand to power it this game would never have worked.

As the title says, the story is really interesting, you get to know every champion and what they think through the entire game. They have conversations almost every time you take a rest and they are pretty interesting.

As for the fights gameplay... I played it in veteran and there is really no choice but to play a specific composition. It's a turn based fighting game where you can use/choose 3 champions to play the fights but... in veteran mode, there is no good option than to play with 2 specific champions out of the pool you have. Then, you can vary the third one with your preference (and even there I still think there is one that is better than the others for the 3rd spot but whatever).

So it feels like every fight is the same because you are using the same comp every time (if you choose not to, there are fights that I think are not doable or you would have to spend millions of gold on potions).
So it felt unbalanced and repetitive.

Also, regarding the fights, the game forced you to have some champions in your comp?? Even if you liked their playstyle or not, that felt horrible decision making becasue it wasn't 1 time for half an hour, it was 4 times and for more than 1/1:30 hours??? Literally that was the worst part of the game for me. Like, I get the point that their abilities will allow me to advance through the dungeon but it's still annoying.

I'm giving a 4/5 because the art and story telling was amazingly good, so much that I went through everything I have said and still liked the game. If it wasn't for that, literally a 2/5. (Also, if you don't mind, play it with a controller, PC keyboard and mouse was the worst thing I've ever seen)

Gameplay: 8 /10

Presentation: 8/10

Story: 8/10

Overall Score: 8/10

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

Starting with the gameplay I feel the best part about Ruined Kin's design is that it is simple. It doesn't bog itself down in overly complicated skill trees and ability functions. You can overall know what a character's strengths are and buff those strengths with proper gear and skill points. This of course does somewhat lock the characters into really only being able to work one way most efficiently. Illaoi will be a tanky healer no matter what it won't work to force her to be a damaged role because her abilities just don't accommodate it. I am a person who doesn't want the over complexity though so characters locked into certain defined roles made the game a lot easier to just pick up and roll with.

As far as a presentation I really like the painted texture look and though the detail of the characters isn't quite on par with similar games they still had a good amount of detail (mainly talking about the playable character). The animations were great though to perform an ultimate you would have to watch a mini cutscene which was unskippable. When you have to use ultimates so often on higher difficulties it really gets a bit bothersome to watch every time.

The story was really good and I may be biased due to really liking LoL lore, but it was fun to be able to see where characters will be used in future content Riot may make as well as getting to see their current stories leading up to and during this game installment. Pyke is one of my favorite characters in the lore and was it not for this game he would still seem like just a monstrous character, but now he really seems to be guided by some other force to make him kill those who do harm to others or are dishonest. I want more of this deeper dive into characters from LoL and based on what Riot is doing they seem to be going that way with multiple standalone character games in the works.

Key point

The power growth of the RPG mechanics are not acknowledged in the story. This effectively renders the RPG genre it exists within pointless.

In Pokémon, SMTV, Wastlanders 3 and so on your need to grow in power is acknowledged narratively and drives the experience. Every RPG mechanic in this game is not acknowledged by the characters to the point that growth feels superficial.

Poor level design

The evolution of Turn based RPGs has enemies visible in the world. This means that levels can be engaging because there is the choice to avoid the enemies. This game has given floor enemies so much speed nearly every mob needs to be cleared by player.

Mechanics

Running in the world feels wrong, sluggish, and laborious. Character abilities feel token and tacked on.

Story

The story is rushed. The developments lack meaning. With no single protagonist to focus on the narrative lacks an anchor.

Visuals

On PS5 the game looks like it is from 2007 and the game has purchasable DLC for outfits that are honestly the terrible.

Summary,

Very disappointed. Massive fan of the studio's past games. This one feels rushed, half baked and without real passion. If you come into this expecting a game that oozes love for league of legends or the RPG genre you will not find such a game.

I have played league of legends beforehand and it did give me a certain "Oh I know you!" exciting feeling while making my way through Ruined King. Basically, I came in already invested and liking the characters, but what did worry me was the gameplay. I do like strategy games with turn-based combat, but this one used different mechanics. Luckily it turned out to be a great system and I had a ton of fun playing the lengthy game, which I didn't even mind as the hours passed by. Graphically the game also left me impressed as the attacks, models, and environments got a lot of attention and detail. I do wish the big "cinematics" got more love, they did feel very flat compared to the rest of the game. Overall, the Ruined King was fun and a good time and with some smaller improvements here and there it could have been even better.

Finished!

Back half of the game is maybe one or two dungeons too long and becomes rote once you've got your preferred loadout all set up, but the quick pacing made me feel like it was worth seeing things through to the end. And there's some fun to be had in flexing your ridiculous burst damage on enemies and bosses alike and watching them evaporate.

My only real fault with the whole experience is that each character's 2 "slow" abilities are so dang slow that they feel like a complete waste of time to ever use: the 2 "very fast" abilities can cast twice or more in the same period, do way more damage, and build more ultimate meter. I think I would've preferred for all abilities to share the same cast time.

But overall it's a pleasant little JRPG! I hope this studio gets to make more stuff in this vein.

This game seemingly came out of nowhere given how high budget it is, but it's pretty rad so far!

I don't have any connection to League of Legends, so I can't comment on whether it's a faithful interpretation of that universe or whatever. But the lovely combat animations, sprawling pirate town you start in, and expressive flexibility in character building and team composition are really selling me on it.

Especially impressive is the mechanical design of the protagonist, Illaoi. She's the anchor of the team and can function as any combination of DPS, main tank, or healer depending on how you build her. But her minion summoning playstyle makes her pretty unique for a jack of all trades, and she doesn't feel massively overpowered the way Crono and other JRPG protagonists tend to.

Should be noted that the game is fairly easy even on the hardest difficulty, and that it's got a whole mess of minor UI bugs, but otherwise it's a very solid dungeon crawler!

This single-player RPG spinoff of League of Legends is a blast to play, with its thoughtful and complex turn-based combat system, vibrant characters, and an engaging story that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The game has a few issues which I’ll get out of the way first, mostly as a warning. It is in a pretty buggy state right now, with a lot of inconvenient UI issues and occasionally even bugs that block or obfuscate progress through quests. I’ve heard PS4 has major crash issues. It’s also lacking in quality of life features that I would have considered standard for this kind of game and is not optimized for current gen consoles. I think this was slightly rushed out the door for business reasons without some much-needed final polish, and you should consider waiting to play it for the best experience.

That being said, I still totally loved >90% of my 20 hours with the game. The combat here just has a lot going on in a way that really engaged me. There are so many possible character and team builds, so many interesting decisions to make in tough battles, so many unique enemy mechanics to pay attention to, it made my mind race at times in a way that few turn-based RPGs I’ve played have. Timings and variations of moves, buffs and debuffs, it can be a lot to take in and literally read in-battle, but I enjoyed the depth. I did find they take it a bit too far for the final boss, which is a real gauntlet that even on Normal can be extremely drawn-out and punishing without the right setup and strategy, but YMMV.

The game is not just combat though, as there are several big dungeons to complete with some pretty involved environmental puzzles, as well as town areas and side quests. These pace out the game really nicely, especially with no random encounters meaning you can clear out each room and focus on the puzzle. There is also a good amount of bonus loot which you can go out of your way to snag—very worthwhile.

The story is largely character-driven, which makes sense for a game whose draw for many will be those beloved characters. While there are big bad guys to take down with a compelling plot of their own, it’s focused a lot on your party members’ demons and fears, and their interactions with one another. Most of the main party is really likable, both in their personality and look, as well as how they play in battle. The story is thankfully mostly self-contained, making it a nice entrypoint to this universe. If you aren’t a Braum fan after this game, I don’t know what to say.

Once it has some time to get fixed up, I can definitely recommend this to turn-based RPG fans and anyone remotely interested in the League of Legends universe.

This game’s turn-based combat system is quickly becoming one of my favorite systems of that style, with so many interesting decisions to make to react to enemy abilities and environmental effects and things, and optimize your turns. I am not that kind of person who goes out of my way to fight optional stuff in RPGs, but here I’m doing so. The systems for building up your characters and their equipment feel genuinely impactful and customizable, yet not overly complicated.

I have heard people compare this to Darkest Dungeon’s combat with some added mechanics so now I kinda want to try that, as well as comments that it’s similar to the dev’s prior game Battle Chasers but better and more complex across the board.

I am really curious to see how broader audiences who don’t necessarily follow League and critics respond to this game. I can see some people finding the opening a bit slow and overwhelming, but it picks up quickly once you have a full party of 3.

By the way, the release year is wrong here on the site (should be 2021). Not sure how to fix (it’s accurate on GB).

So, Riot Games, or more precisely, their new subsidiary Riot Forge, surprise released a couple new single-player games yesterday, both subtitled "A League of Legends Story." For these games they have partnered with various outside developers to sort of put a League universe spin on different genres.

One is Hextech Mayhem, developed by the people behind Bit.Trip, a $10 rhythm/platformer. Not on Grouvee yet, but I'll add it to Giant Bomb in a bit and it will end up on here. I think that game is pretty decent, not great, but I'll put a review up once I finish it. I haven't played Bit.Trip, but this game is somewhat reminiscent of a game I have played called Muse Dash (just not quite as good).

The other is this, Ruined King, a $30 turn-based RPG starring several different League characters, developed by Airship Syndicate, the makers of Battle Chasers and Darksiders Genesis. This game I really like so far. It has a pretty genuinely complex and fun take on turn-based combat. Timing of moves is very important, and many League mechanics have been very cleanly translated to this new genre to give a strategic feel. Story-wise, not bad so far either. I have been impressed with the pacing, and I think even those who are not familiar with these characters could get into it (I am only very minimally familiar myself).

Riot also has an MMO, a fighting game, and who knows what else under development, not to mention their expanded ventures into music and TV and 1-2 new multiplayer games each year for the last 3 years... And yet still Riot Forge specifically does have two more single-player games coming out in 2022. Those would be the 2D action platformer CONV/RGENCE starring Ekko (very cool character), and also Song of Nunu from the makers of The Sexy Brutale. Neat.

One of League's greatest strengths is its roster of characters and all the personality and lore they bring to the table, and the fact that those characters are no longer stuck inside a MOBA these days is a great thing.