Legendary Tales: Dawn of History Review

Shadowdropped last week, the Dawn of History DLC of Legendary Tales has arrived to PC VR and PlayStation VR2 with a slew of new content.

Legendary Tales is, first and foremost, a classic dungeon crawler in virtual reality. Its obtuse RPG systems and nonexistent story mean, as our less-than-enthused reviewer wrote, “you have to grit your teeth to enjoy it all.” Fortunately, the reception to feedback from developer Urban Wolf Games means that Dawn of History, its first full-fledged expansion, addresses many of the issues of that first outing. Delivering an incredibly robust variety of builds, friendlier onboarding, and dangerous areas to explore, this DLC fundamentally changes the game for the better.

The narrative serves as an excuse for players to hack and slash their way through underground mazes. An alarmed goblin has arrived in the town, your hub area, explaining that trouble is brewing in the depths of a cathedral’s ruins. The game smartly stays out of its own way by adding simple but clear objectives in your quest to face the darkness below: destroy a magic crystal, eliminate ten enemies in a certain area, break a cursed tablet.

What is clearly impressive from the get-go is how expansive these areas are. Depending on how effective you are at clearing each enemy-filled room, each level could take about one to two hours. Although not fundamentally changing the objective of the quests, the level layout changes per player; I found out as I played what I thought would be the exact same maps in multiplayer. While this is mostly an aesthetic choice, it adds to the replayability.

Dawn of History is sinisterly playful in the way these levels are presented. The starting areas might be straightforward, with the familiar skeletons and new hellraiders assaulting you as you explore for loot. Soon you will find that it is in fact riddled with traps. Buzzsaws hanging from ceilings will end your journey short if you are not careful. Mimics, or fake chests, will bite the hand of greedy adventurers. At one point, I was in front of three doors to choose from, two of which were deadly traps as well.

Commonly criticized in the original release, there is still no map to speak of. As expected, this resulted in getting lost in these mazes often. Thankfully, this is circumvented by using wisps that show the correct path called “Guide Spirits,” found by breaking wooden boxes or vases. Advancing each floor by falling down further into the caves signals the increase in danger.

An approachable design choice, Dawn of History can be accessed in two ways: through a quest in town with your longtime character or by simply creating a level 50 character ready for the action from the main menu. This allows returning players who would want to play the fresh content to easily get there. Not only that, but it also gives players 100 thousand gold to flexibly customize and try their hand at the various builds on deck.

Quite clearly made for veterans of the game—there are no difficulty settings—I found it better to play with others. Luckily granted a legendary hammer by a crystal spawning random weapons bought in the main hub, I decided to go for a tank build, focusing mainly on blunt strength and vitality. This worked surprisingly well when I ventured with a powerful mage who had a legendary wand in turn. Its special skill to levitate powerful enemies while I beat them like a piñata meant we had a type of fun I did not know this otherwise gritty game had.

Our collaboration worked in more ways than one. He could enchant my hammer to cause frost elemental damage, enhancing each hit. With his divine build, he was able to heal and revive me. It is clear Legendary Tales harkens back to the days of olden RPGs such as EverQuest or Tibia, where the synergy between builds instilled a winning formula. Playable online with up to four players, I can definitely imagine a group of seasoned warriors with two tanks, an archer, and a mage obliterating everything in their way.

Preset builds are saved from the menu to face every scenario depending on what is required. This makes respeccing, or changing your character stats, quick and easy. Swinging your arms around for extended periods is tiring, so to be able to change your skill tree and ability points from warrior to mage is useful. Its physics-based combat allows for precision parries that sometimes stun the enemy, which the punch build, famous among the community, can make short work of.

This helps plenty since Dawn of History is not messing around. There is only one boss in this expansion, and he is at the end of the four available dungeons. Teleporting on a whim behind players’ backs, every player needs to be at the top of their game to be able to defeat him. To even reach it, there are so-called Champions found randomly in every level. Boasting a greater health pool, these swift subbosses require great effort to be defeated with no casualties.

The last but most important improvement that I noticed compared to the base game was the improved tutorials. Everything needs to be done manually, so even though it enhances the immersion, it used to be confusing. From creating potions with alchemy to grinding sharp weapons, it all requires an exact gesture that the game now implements a short video and written explanation for. The novel Seal system that buffs weapons is comfortably applied because of it.

Legendary Tales: Dawn of History – Final Verdict

Legendary Tales was a solid dark fantasy akin to Dark Souls, but it failed in many aspects to be crowned a true classic RPG in VR. The hostile onboarding, the flimsy hitboxes, the lack of reliable multiplayer. Two years on, Dawn of History course corrects to offer one of the richest role-playing experiences on the medium. With new and revamped systems, it can now be recognized as a best-in-class dungeon crawler. The frankly baffling amount of builds alone makes for an equally cutthroat and entertaining sandbox to create your own legendary tale.

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