Riot’s new push into other games and mediums using the League of Legends universe has been long awaited, and for good reason. Tons of readily available short stories and lore on the characters already exists, and people have been clamoring for more for a very long time. Especially with all the hype surrounding Netflix’s Arcane, there really hasn’t been a better time to get into the world of Runeterra. With these releases came a turn based RPG by the team behind Battlechasers and Darksiders Genesis. The Ruined King: A League of Legends Story has so much packed into such a comparably small game that it’s almost criminal it wasn’t longer. The brevity isn’t a bad thing, because the pacing of the game felt just right. While I have much to say about it, The Ruined King blew away my expectations and had me hooked on an RPG for the first time in a long time.
Going back to what I said about the lore, League of Legends has a ton of characters and areas to pull from, so seeing a game set in Bilgewater was an unexpected twist. There are more well-known territories along with characters, but the setting was just right for this game. Bilgewater is a coastal port city populated with pirates and criminals, and one of your characters is effectively their queen. The prologue with Miss Fortune quickly and effectively explains all the game’s combat mechanics, as the systems run a bit deeper than I was expecting. The game is split into two parts: overworld traversal with dungeon crawling and turn-based RPG encounters. The fights are turn based with stats affecting things like turn priority, but the standout feature is the “Lanes” system. When you select your abilities, you have the 3 instant skills and a handful of Lane abilities. The instant skills are basic things like attacking and defending, with a third being reserved for a character-specific mechanic. The lane skills are different spells to use in one of 3 lanes: balance, power, and speed. The balance lane is just as it sounds, no alterations to the skill or priority. The speed and power lanes work by either speeding up the cast time and reducing the effectiveness of the skill or pushing down the cast time and increasing the effectiveness. While a simple system, its paired with customizable character builds that change the effects of skills when used in different lanes and this makes later game combat incredibly interesting. The combat was so fun for me that I was voluntarily running into every encounter, and ended up at the maximum level incredibly early. Once I had all the playable characters and the team setup I wanted it was so fun just watching my builds come to fruition.
As a whole, the style and presentation of The Ruined King are stunning. Again, the game is not super huge or super long, but what’s here is beautiful. Set pieces like Bilgewater and even the differing areas there, along with the NPCs that have fun dialogue make the world feel alive. Interactions with the characters in combat and even their altered designs for the game make them feel more animated, it’s a sensation you can’t get from reading the lore or playing League of Legends. There are a ton of little nods to League of Legends as well, being item names, ability names, even some easter eggs. What’s overwhelmingly evident is the amount of effort and love put into this game from a team that genuinely understood the vision and world they were attempting to portray in this game. Rest conversations can be funny or touching, and each character feels uniquely motivated enough to go through with this mission. Despite the differences in perspective and reasoning, the unlikely group of heroes does their best with the tools they have, and it’s inspiring to see.
The Ruined King really brought back a drive to fully complete a game that I haven’t felt in a long time. While it could be a combination of being a very recent League of Legends convert and the game being a great time, The Ruined King was a game I couldn’t put down until I was finished with it. Even having beaten the game, I’m going to finish all the side-quests and explore more of the world that I haven’t seen. While I can gripe about how short the game was, the pacing was incredibly well done, and no part really dragged on for too long. Story beats felt fully fleshed out, and if you want to read deeper into it there are a ton of lore collectibles laying around. Even if you haven’t ever played a game of League of Legends in your life, this is a stellar RPG that stands on its own two legs. I eagerly await future titles like this, as The Ruined King left me wanting to keep playing even more.
Score: 10 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5