Legendary Hoplite

Review

After being fatally wounded in a duel and on his deathbed, Odysseus reveals the secret of a powerful artifact to his most trusted commander. But the evil force of the underworld has heard about this powerful artifact being kept in the thriving city of Ithaca, and they are prepared to launch an attack to take ownership of the artifact. As a young commander, you must protect Ithaca and push back all offensives by the ruthless underworld army, in Legendary Hoplite.

Legendary Hoplite is a tactical Tower Defense game developed by TripleBricksGames and published by Ravenage Games on the 3^rd of February 2024 on the Steam platform.

The game is presented a bit like the Plants vs Zombies games, but instead of having a horizontal grid, the grid is vertical here in The Legendary Hoplite. The grid has seven columns, and your character, Dio, will be at the bottom. Your goal is to make sure you don't allow any of the enemy units to reach the gate or to pass by your character. If 30 enemy units reach the gate, it will be game over.

After selecting a saving slot, you'll go through your first level, a comprehensive tutorial, I might add. When you finish the tutorial, you will unlock the Phalanx unit, which is one of the eight units you can use. The other units to unlock are the Barrel Thrower, the Palisade, the Archer, the Stone Thrower, the Musician and the Witch. All units can be upgraded up to six times, and you have two different paths to choose from. The last three upgrades will give you access to War Technique and additional perks for those upgrades.

From here, you'll arrive at the Ithaca map, which is divided into three chapters. You'll only be able to play on the first chapter and must finish it before being able to unlock the second and third ones. I would say you have around 45 missions in total. I can't be sure because I am stuck on the eighth mission of chapter two, and I can't seem to beat it. Each chapter also has additional stops with mini-games or rewards, and yellow icons representing them. On the Ithaca map, you'll also have four icons at the bottom of your screen: the hero and army on the right and achievements and gamepedia on the left. The gamepedia will display all the enemies you have encountered so far, and you also have tips. Unfortunately for me, no tip on how to beat the boss on level eight in the second chapter! When clicking on the hero icon, you can see the items you currently carry (helms, spears, swords and shields) and your abilities, which can also be upgraded.

All items will have their characteristics. For the spears and swords, you'll have how much physical damage they will inflict, what elements damage (magic, poison, fire, lightning) they have, attack speed and how much stamina they will use when employed. The helms and shields have other specifications that you can discover yourself. And of course, you have common, uncommon, rare and legendary items. Legendary will have better specifications than common ones. But all have a powerup attached to them, giving you extra offensive or defensive options.

The gameplay is pretty simple. Dio will be at the bottom of the screen with a spear in one hand and a shield on the other. You'll have two vase, one on the bottom left and one on the bottom right of the screen. The left vase is for stamina; each time you use your spear, sword or powerups, vase guage will decrease. To regenerate it, Dio must stand still for ten seconds or so.  There are four eligible powerups to the right of this vase. The vase on the right side is the combat points you’ll need to purchase new units. To the left of this vase, you have the four unit types you selected for that battle, and each unit type will have a number showing how many combat points you’ll need to purchase each unit. The gates will be between the four units and the set of powerups in the middle of your screen. Remember, it will be game over if 30 enemy units reach the gate. Every unit kill will give combat points, and you can elect to have the next wave of enemies early, providing you with substantially more combat points.   

When you successfully finish a mission, you'll be given a few rewards, such as ability points, coins or new war techniques. But here is one issue, and probably the biggest for me: the coins. You are not given enough coins as a reward. Some enemies will drop coins during your last mission, but it will be around 100+ and sometimes up to 200. But the upgrades for your units will become expensive after the third one. The forth will be around 1500 coins, the fifth around 4000 coins and the last 8000 coins. Multiply this by eight units and you will be there for quite some time – it’s grinding. Yes, you can sell your items, but you won't get much. Perhaps decreasing the cost would be a good idea. In my case, I have upgraded units that are not favourable to the chapter's eighth mission, and honestly, I would rather stop playing than restart the game.

It is challenging to strike the right balance for a game like this. Although the developers have done a great job on most aspects, the cost to upgrade your units makes it far too grinding. Is it because they realise that there is not much replayability afterwards? It could be it. Don't get me wrong, it is fun to play and challenging, but there is a point, and when you reach it, you'll probably put the game in the too-hard basket.

The graphics are good, and the game runs well. If you like hard rock music, you'll be pleased with this game, but you can turn the music off if you are like me. You can play with your mouse and keyboard or a gamepad for the controls. The game has been translated into eight different languages.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Legendary Hoplite Steam Store Page