King’s League: Odyssey Review

If you’re fond of both RPG and management games, King’s League: Odyssey (out now, $1.99) may appeal to you. Especially if you enjoy leveling up and upgrading characters.

screen480x480Don’t start the odyssey looking for action though. While there are plenty of battles to be fought, your heroes will fight automatically, and there’s nothing you can do within a battle to influence the outcome. Your work comes before and between battles.

The first thing you’ve got to do is recruit soldiers. Initially, the only place you can go to for this is a village, but in time you can unlock three other areas: the forest, mountain, and city. Each subsequent area costs more money to hire from (in addition to the amount you’ve got to pay your soldier). You’ll also have different character types to choose from, and they’ll carry different rankings. Apart from their levels and character attributes, they’re also graded according to rarity. The most valuable characters are classified as unique, followed by rare, uncommon, and lastly, common.

Once you’ve got your soldiers, you’ll have to train them. Basic training involves a choice of gym (fighting prowess), reading (intelligence), dancing (dexterity or speed), swimming (health), and travel (multiple attributes). After you unlock the advanced training mode, you can train two attributes at a go. Training involves a cost too, however, in terms of number of days and training points. The latter is limited and replenishes over time.

screen480x480After you’ve hired and trained your soldiers, it’s time to battle. There are league battles (the campaign) and various quests. In addition, you can capture territories, from which you can earn income (in the form of money and crystals), but you’ll also have to defend them from attacks now and then.

Currently, King’s League: Odyssey is rather too short. You can finish a campaign within a few hours and the map isn’t big. Also, you can only level up a character 10 times, although there are many different types of upgrades in addition to training individual skills. Another downside to this game is that the premium characters are only available via IAP. These certainly aren’t essential to the game, but after you finish the campaign and level up all your characters, you really won’t have anything to do with all the cash and crystals you amass. Endless mode gets dull after that. You can, however, start another team and play the harder difficulty modes.

iFanzine Verdict: King’s League: Odyssey, part RPG, part management game, is strangely engrossing. Despite its endless mode, the game feels very short, both in terms of the campaign map and upgrades. Still, there are a good number of character types to play with, so if you enjoy RPG (especially the leveling-up aspects) and management games, this is well worth a download.