2019 Retrospective: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[GrimDusk]

2019 was an interesting year overall, not just in Legacy of the Beast. However, I'm not here to talk about the world, I'm here to talk about this mobile game and all of the things that occurred this past year. There were a lot of events and changes to the game overall, some good and some bad. In addition, I want to hear you guys' opinions on everything you thought about Legacy of the Beast in 2019! Just be civil

The Good: There was a lot of good and intuitive content that we got this year. Based on my recordings, we received 29 new Eddies, 86 new toons, and 38 talisman sets! That's crazy! The devs have been doing a great job giving us stuff, even if some people say it's too much. I'd personally prefer more content than less, but either way that's a lot of work put in. We also got the implementation of Clans, and though they aren't at their peak yet it's nice to feel a sense of community among fellow LoTB fans. Another huge change was the addition of Frontier Dungeons! These have given players a lot to do if they don't want to focus on a certain event or just farm for better materials. Some smaller changes include the ability to claim all fragments for souls, and the fix that prevented players from using all frontier keys at once. I think that these are some of the best changes made to the game aside from the addition of Night City to the campaign. The arena even got a new paint job for the background, and some other visual effects for the game were also updated!

The Bad: A lot of server issues plagued 2019, and some are still even occurring in 2020. For instance, the Eternal Frontier Dungeon update locked iOS players out for most of the day, and sometimes it was just impossible to claim the rewards from clans at the end of the day. The devs have promised to work on this though, so I am willing to give them a pass for now. Also, pay only Eddies were added to the game this year, beginning with Gangland Eddie up until the most recent, Guy Fawkes Eddie. This was problematic without a doubt, as even though these characters aren't game breaking, it still comes off as kind of stingy to prevent collectors from getting certain characters unless they cough up some cash. In addition, the store items have become more and more egregious, with lots of talismans locked behind the storefront until a later event where they can be earned through painstaking work.

The Ugly: "Seven deadly sins, seven ways to win" is the most bullshit lie I've ever heard related to Moonchild in any possible way; there are only like two ways to beat that fucker. There were a lot of interesting features added to the game this year, including Awakening and Cosmic Talismans, but by god above and the devil below, these are possibly some of the most annoying additions to the game that you could ever encounter. Let's start with Cosmic Talismans; you know how certain characters were locked out of talismans because they'd be too powerful with a certain combination? Well bullocks to that, Cosmic Talismans allow you to give any character an extra turn augment or the ability to heal on perfect hits. In my opinion, Cosmic Talismans have made PvP extremely annoying due to their random stats and lack of consistent power. My cosmic Echo could be much weaker than that of my opponents, but I have no way of knowing that in a PvP battle. In addition, new character specific Cosmic Talismans are just annoying to face off against, and they should just be part of the character's abilities rather than an arbitrary talisman. Secondly, Awakening as a mechanic is good, but the actual events surrounding it were dogshite. First off, the damn gold price switch the devs pulled. That made anyone who had a stage 5/6 awakened character pre-change lose even more gold, which is extremely annoying considering the devs didn't give any forewarning of the change. In addition, Awakening characters has been widely inconsistent, without a real reason given to us; Cyborg Eddie requires more materials and gold to Awaken than Gunner Lord of Light, and there isn't a reason that's been given for that. Specific awakening materials are made rarer so that purchase is made in order to obtain the higher ranked items, and it's getting worse and worse with each new character. Finally, let's talk about Moonchild. Dear god, this character has become the center of so much controversy it hurts.

Let's start off first with an in-depth look at Moonchild and maybe we can start to see why exactly so many people have called for nerfs or other changes to be made. Let's start with his basic ability, Born to Die. This ability at base level inflicts Doom and lowers stats, kinda like Magus Lord of Light. Not too bad! However, when awakened, this ability gains the power to stun opponents as well. This is more problematic for two reasons: one, the ability innately has a trigger which causes it to deal increased damage to stunned opponents, so if you equip Moonchild with a god-forsaken Cosmic Talisman that has the Echo augment, you can nuke an enemy quite easily. It doesn't stop there, though. His power ability, Mandrake Scream, removes golden effects, has a high chance of inflicting Perfect Stun, and cleanses and heals allies for all enemies already stunned.. It comes at a high power cost of 7, however this is still quite powerful overall. Once awakened though, the ability gains even more power: it also applies passive disable for 3 turns and grants an extra turn to a max of two allies. This is extremely good, but still could definitely be countered. So far, he's very easy to counter if you have the right setup. So, let's look at his passive, Seven Angels, Seven Demons. This grants Moonchild immunity to all effects (aside from Bounty Hunter Eddie's weird stun passive, but whatever), and prevents enemies from hitting him unless it's a perfect hit. That seems completely manageable, no? Well, at Max Awakening it becomes the worst addition to the game. Moonchild's passive essentially is an silence on all enemies that cannot be cleansed, meaning only basic attacks can be used. Now, all of this goes away if you kill him, right? Well, easier said than done considering Moonchild's talisman slots of all purple. This means he can equip Labyrinth talismans, some of the worst and most annoying talismans in the game. These talismans are designed to turn Assassin class characters into tanks, which wouldn't be a problem if you weren't immune to any effects placed on you. In addition, Moonchild's passive just makes the game more boring; why design cool ability animations and fury animations to just have them be silenced by this little kid. To be fair, things have gotten a bit better in the arena, but it's still shitty facing off against this little brat. Taking all of this into account, we also see how the devs have kinda realized how much of a mess-up Moonchild was, and have been frantically releasing new characters all with the intention of specifically countering the little shit. It's annoying as hell that all of the new characters don't get to have cool abilities or unique mechanics because Moonchild needs a thousand different ways to be stopped. He was designed poorly, and I'm not even sure where I would begin to suggest changes. I legitimately do not know what would make him still fun to use while keeping him from being necessary to place high in arena. If you have suggestions, definitely leave them below.

So overall, what do I think of 2019 for Legacy of the Beast? Well, I believe a lot of the content that was implemented was good in theory and I really liked some of the new creative ideas, such as Oni Eddie and his Empowered Blade. However, I think that Awakening as a mechanic has lead to a new gate to keep new players from catching up without paying money; you will only be able to efficiently farm for Awakening materials and characters if you already have a few of the Awakened characters. Otherwise, it's a lot more difficult. Cosmic talismans are similar, and even worse due to the random aspect of it. I do believe however that 2019 was overall good, but there were just some really unfortunate decisions made by the developers. I hope that going forward, the devs listen to us on the forums a bit more with certain suggestions; I think it'll make everyone happier in the long run. What did you guys think of 2019?