League of Angels Review

League of Angels is a free-to-play browser-based MMO developed by Youzu Interactive and Published by GTArcade. It was released on December 10, 2013.

Gameplay

League of Angels is among one of the most popular free-to-play browser MMO. At the start of the game you select your gender and choose between three classes: Warrior, Mage or Archer. As is the case for most browser-based MMOs, there are no customization options for your characters. Your character’s appearance is fixed, and can only be changed by wearing costumes.

The lack of character customization isn’t a problem for this game because League of Angels is more about collecting party members, raising them, and using them in battle. There are two types of party members in this game: Heroes and Angels. Heroes are your regular party members, and they are recruited from taverns. Each hero has a role and one unique skill. You can have multiple heroes in a formation. Angels are powerful support casters, and each one has a unique, powerful skill and a halo that gives out various buffs to your party members. Unlike heroes, you can only field one Angel in a formation.

Battles in League of Angels are side-view turn-based. It resembles old classics like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 in MMO form. The main difference is that the battles are mostly automatic, and everyone takes turn attacking from their pace. There is a rage bar that slowly fills up during the fight with which you can use to cast skills during battle. Every Angel and Hero character has one unique skill available. Heroes can also have a partner skill, which is a powered up version of their skill that’s only accessible if partnered with the right character.

Heroes and Angels do not level up automatically; you have to train them manually. Heroes level via soul stones, which drop from enemies. Angels require Angel’s Tears. Not all Heroes and Angels are created equally. There are multiple tiers, and it’s important upgrade heroes into advanced tiers as soon as possible. Heroes, for example, have a max level cap of 10 per tier. After reaching LVL 10, you can evolve them to the next tier to level them up again. Evolution requires a particular item: Evolution Crests for heroes and Seraph’s Stones for Angels.

An Arena mode allows you to battle with other players. In this mode, you aren’t fighting against the other player directly. Rather, both your side and the enemy are computer controlled. It all boils down to your party formation and gear. If you win, you will take the enemy’s ranking along with some rewards. If you lose, you can challenge them again. The arena provides various rewards for ranking well.

The Good

My review for League of Angels bumped up with the impressive graphics for a browser MMO. The graphics are pretty crisp and the character designs, especially for the females, are gorgeous. The Angel designs are titillating though a bit over-sexualized. Numerous heroes and angels make themselves available, and they make for interesting choices in building your party.

Since the game is browser based, it’s accessible from pretty much anywhere in the world. But this game’s greatest asset is its quick, fun gameplay. The battles are fast-paced and refreshing. Some people might not like the mostly automated battle, but I do since it removes most of the tediousness of grinding. You can let the battles play themselves, only paying attention to boss fights. League of Angels succeeded in creating a battle system that isn’t tedious while still having some semblance of strategy.

The Bad

League of Angels suffers from horrible feature bloat. There are a lot of half-assed features in the game, like homesteading. The developers randomly add items and features as they want, only to nerf them later in the subsequent patches for being unbalanced. As a result of this strategy, the game is full of half-ass features, and these add to the already overcrowded UI.

Which brings us to the next point: the game suffers from an overcrowded and confusing UI. There are a lot of options in the game, and most of them aren’t intuitive. To be fair, the game does give you short tutorials which show you how to use the various game features. But half of these features shouldn’t be in this game, or at the very least consolidated into one. But they didn’t, and as a result, the top half of your screen is taken over by various icons for promos and features. Even worse, a lot of them serve no purpose for free players.

I’d be a review failure if I didn’t mention the pay to win nature of League of Angels. Literally everything in this MMORPG can be paid for with real money. Want to max level you heroes? Finish all the quests in one click? Pretty much everything here has a shortcut so long as you pay money. If you don’t want to pay real money, a heavy grind will await. The game is extremely grind-heavy. As I said in the review already, there are a lot of heroes and angels to level up. That means a lot of grinding to get them up there. At least with good strategy, you can set battles and just come back a little later.

Closing Thoughts

In the end, League of Angels is fun and easy game to get into. But it’s also heavily monetized. Can you enjoy this game as a free player? Definitely. But don’t expect to get anywhere quickly. If you find the party building and automated battles enjoyable, don’t let the pay to win players get you. If you don’t like automated battles and slow progress, stay away.