Need to know
What is it? A League of Legends RPG from the team behind Battle Chasers and Darksiders.
Expect to pay $30/£25
Developer Airship Syndicate
Publisher Riot Forge
Reviewed on Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, GeForce RTX 2060
Multiplayer? No
Link: Official site
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Ruined King may seem familiar if you follow fantasy RPGs. Not because it’s a League of Legends spin-off—I’ll get to that in a moment—but because it draws heavily from developer Airship Syndicate’s Battle Chasers: Nightwar. Ruined King, too, is an isometric RPG with a turn-based battle system and the unmistakable artwork of Joe Madureira. Ruined King, too, has a fishing minigame and vaguely Zelda-ish dungeons. If you’ve played Battle Chasers, you’ll be right at home. Those coming to this from League of Legends may require a more detailed explanation.
Essentially, a few of the LoL champs—Miss Fortune, Illaoi, Braum and a handful of others—have teamed up to save the city of Bilgewater from your standard Deadly Fantasy Mist: the same mist that has consumed the nearby Shadow Isles (nee Blessed Isles). Each happens to be in Bilgewater on unrelated business, before fate conspires to bring the gang together. It’s all to do with former Bilgewater tyrant Gangplank—he’s another LoL champion, by the way—who has murdery history with Miss Fortune, and romantic history with Illaoi, the Kraken Priestess.
There’s not much more to Ruined King’s story than that. It’s a straightforward fantasy RPG, with a setting that’s barely touched on, and with characters moulded firmly on archetypes. Sarah Fortune is the fiery, headstrong pirate captain, Braum is the lovable lump of muscle, Yasuo the disgraced samurai seeking redemption. Illaoi is more notable, being a muscly priestess who batters foes with a massive golden idol. Still, you’ve seen versions of most of these characters before, in other RPGs or fantasy fiction.
(Image credit: Riot)
Everything you’d expect from a turn-based RPG is dutifully and slickly presented here. It’s just not very exciting
As for why the story didn’t grip me, it didn’t give me time to care—about the characters, or about the fate of their world. This is a CliffsNotes take on the RPG: excitable and lightning-paced, but where it feels like it starts about halfway through the adventure.
Flashbacks fill in some of the gaps, but not enough to make me invested in the world. I suspect you’ll get much more out of Ruined King if you’re already on-board with the characters and setting of League of Legends.
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