izigame.me

Bear in mind, this review is coming from the perspective of a Sylas main, so this game basically had to butcher the personality of the characters in order to lose me. That being said, this game is very fun. The game feels well paced story wise, as I never felt like I needed to take a break or was "grinding".
THE COMBAT
I played this game on the hard difficulty. The gameplay reminded me a lot of HADES, but with less customization, not a roguelike, and the unique twist of stealing magic. It's very fast, with enough mobility that I could totally see somebody beating this game with no damage taken. That being said, the game is very aware of this, and often forces you to use your mobility to survive attacks, either from grappling to far away enemies/landmarks, or spam dashing to escape a chasing projectile.
I said there was less customization compared to HADES, but really, it's just different. You aren't in a roguelike, so your loadout is exactly what you make it. You can customize up to four spells you have equipped at all times, varying from AOE damage, healing, simple projectiles, or even utility such as invisibility. About mid-way you also get an empowered state, which comes with your choice of an ultimate. There are 6 ultimates, and each of them have atleast SOME advantage over the others. I only ever used 4, but I do feel the other 2 had their purpose, and someone else would probably find a use for them. You can also spend your currency on base increases to defense, health, physical damage, and magic damage, so there is some variance you can put on your playstyle, though I would be surprised if anyone focused on physical damage, given the game's nature.
The enemies varied from interesting to mildly annoying. There is one enemy that you have to bring to the ground just to hit them, and with my upgrades at the time I had to do this twice in order to bring one down, leading to me just never targeting them first and accepting the damage they cause. There's also a couple of enemies that have weird damage hitboxes, and I still don't know how one of them works. With all of that out of the way, the rest of the enemies were generally intriguing. A lot of the enemies had attack variants that were fun to interact with, such as the early game wind mages buffing allies, and using their magic to kill their allies was just beyond satisfying.
THE STORY
Avoiding spoilers, the story was good. None of the league characters were butchered or ruined really, and a lot of them were actually made much better in my eyes. The original characters were also mostly delightful, with only a couple that I didn't like, but they weren't overbearing by any means, so it wasn't a problem.
The story also didn't feel meaningless, as, despite being at a previous point in the Runeterra universe compared to now, it added a lot of lore, and one of the revelations was very exciting to me. It does make the warriors cinematic/freljordian raid on demacia feel a little confusing, but it's not like they made it impossible, and I wouldn't be surprised if it made more sense to somebody who is more of a lore buff than I.
THE ART
This game's artwork is phenomenal. I don't think I've seen this beautiful of pixel art in a game PERIOD. Every spell looks cool as hell, and the game's contrasting colors meant that I almost always could tell what was going on in a fight, with the exception of maybe one enemy. The sound design was also impressive, even if they re-used a lot of sounds from league. I am very picky with sound design, and have often left games just because of it being badly done, but this game knocked it out of the park.
CONCLUSION
Overall, I'd give this game a 9/10 for anyone who is interested in Sylas/playing Sylas as a character, a 8/10 for anyone interested in the league universe, and a 6/10 for anyone who just wants an action RPG. The game's biggest drawback is it's length vs price, but I don't regret my money spent whatsoever, since I was enjoying every minute of it. That being said, if you aren't interested in the league universe, and just want it as a beautiful action rpg, then I'd wait for a sale, maybe 30% off or so.