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Tales of the Ruined King is a turn-based, story-driven RPG set in the world of Runeterra (aka the world of League of Legends). The story begins as Miss Fortune takes control of Bilgewater (a port city run by pirates) where some sort of bad magic phenomenon called The Black Mist begins to creep into the city, accompanied by evil monsters.
I found the story to be quite enjoyable as I was engaged from start to finish, the writing is excellent and accompanied by some beautiful artworks. My favorite part of it all was the main cast, each one of them is beautifully written, full of life, charisma and brought to life by some top tier voice-acting, hearing Braum speak must be one of the top 3 best things in this game. Each one of them excels on their own and they are also elevated so much more by the banter they have with each other, you get this conversations at rest points between two characters where they may talk about their past lives, current events, Runeterra’s lore and so on, and they nailed every single one perfectly.
The other thing that I really enjoyed is the combat system. You have three party members on the field (you can’t swap with your reserve mid-combat), each one of them has access to some basic attacks, a defensive stance, a set of skills that have various effects and “ultimate” abilities that are stronger but also require you to charge and energy bar while battling.
Upon starting an encounter each character is placed on a timeline and they move along as combat progresses, when they reach the end of the timeline they get to take their turn. What’s interesting here is that there are three “lanes” in which the characters can act: the speed lane, the balanced lane and the power lane. When you select a skill you can choose in which lane you want to cast it, a skill used in the speed lane will have its power reduced, but it will be executed faster, conversely a skill cast on the power lane will have its power increased, but it will take longer to be cast.
Different skills may have different effects depending on the lane in which they are used, and the enemies also make use of the lane system. So for example you may have a normal enemy that deals extra damage until hit by an ability cast by one of your characters in the power lane, and bosses make more intricate uses of this system which makes for some really fun battles.
One of the most important parts of the game is character progression , which is handled through three main systems: gear, skill upgrades and runes.
The gear system for me is “okay” weapons, armor and accessories are divided by level and rarity, but at no point did I feel like a needed to grind for better gear, whenever I my gear was outdated I could just upgrade whatever I had on hand and it would be enough.
The skill upgrade system lets you customize the character skills with different effects and I found this to be really fun to mess around with, and the rune system provides various stat upgrades and some passive effects that overall just “make your character stronger”. Both skills points and runes can be moved at will so there isn’t this fear of using up a skill point and then being unable to get it back.
You also get to level up your party but is handled in such a way that you are always around the level you need to be for each area, and after that point enemies start giving you so little exp that there is no point in battling them anymore
There only thing that I didn’t really enjoy about this game was the fact that enemies chase you around the map unless you are way higher level than them, and sometimes, when they initiate combat, you can’t even attempt to run away. I don’t know if this is a bug or intended but it annoyed me to hell and back, especially since there are quests that send you to areas you have already explored so you need to spend half the time running away from monsters that don’t give you any exp.
Also, there is this visual bug that is probably never gonna be fixed on one of the character’s ultimate skills: Miss Fortune’s third ultimate ability. She is supposed to appear inside her ship as the cannons are fired...but the entire ship is invisible so she is just kind of floating there.
Overall, I highly recommend this game. You can “feel” that the devs actually gave a shit. From the combat system to the character interactions, the funny side-quests, the fact that each characters gets their ultimate weapon à la Final Fantasy X, the npc’s dialogue, the environments and THAT ONE random yordle inside a tavern referencing Fate Stay Night.