I always try to enjoy games from our ‘own’ soil more than other games. True, I’m not from Belgium, and the folks from Warcave are, but the Netherlands and the Belgians have a tight relationship (or so I do hope). I lived a few years across the border and was pointed towards this game by a friend of mine, who knows one of the developers. And to make it full circle, the developer knew my editor in chief, small world, isn’t it. But you did not come here to hear me ramble about personal relationships; you want to know more about Black Legend – well, you came to the right place.
Warcave
Before we dive deeper into Black Legend, let’s give the guys from Belgium some background information! Warcave is a Belgian game development studio founded in 2017 and located in Geel, Belgium. They are a dedicated team of developers, designers, artists, programmers, and, most importantly, gaming enthusiasts. They try to create epic groundbreaking titles for PC and next-gen platforms with great interest in strategy and RPG games. All of our games are developed in-house. We build and nurture long-lasting and inclusive communities around gaming experiences that engage, connect, and exhilarate our players.
They released their first game in 2018 and was called War Party. A strategy game where you enter a prehistoric world of Dinosaurs, Cavemen, and Magic! Build up your chosen faction, gather resources, explore the land and command them against enemy tribes and wildlife! Will your story be about Life, Death, or Balance? Can you survive? This time, they traveled a little bit farther back in time, entering the grim scene of Black Legend.
Black Legend
In Black Legend, you lead a squadron of mercenaries into the accursed city of Grant to aid a struggling resistance against a deadly cult of fanatics. Piece together stories from survivors, discover new equipment and classes for your team and delve into many locations during your quest to discover how to stop the city’s curse from spreading. Explore deep into the city to eradicate a madness inflicting fog that shrouds the streets in this thrilling alternate history turn-based strategy RPG. Alternate history is a curse word with historians, but I enjoy it most of the time. Especially settings in which Nazi Germany won WO2 or in which the Americans discovered Europe is always good for a few hours of solid entertainment.
Gameplay and struggles
Let’s discuss gameplay first – Black Legend offers strategy-focused gameplay. You approach each combat with a tactical focus, where unit placement, ability combos, and well-chosen attacks are key to survival. It felt a bit like the older Fire Emblem games’ elements or even a bit of XCOM thrown in. Combine this with the options to enhance your ranged and melee combat using alchemy for a wide array of explosive effects. Add up stacks of four different alchemic attacks to injure, poison, and debilitate your foes, but be warned, they will do the same to you. Next is the option to add a wide array of classes to build a mercenary band from, each with unique abilities, with the ability to improve each of your mercenaries with new weapons, armor, and trinkets, and create your own ability sets by equipping cross-class abilities.
It sounds a bit much. Well, the tutorial throws everything I discussed in the above paragraph at you. When you want to play this game, you better take up a notepad in which you put down all the combos and options to take down enemies. It gave me a headache – and not in a good way. I don’t mind a challenge, and I like the idea of alchemy added to my gameplay but keep it … doable. Combining certain colors creates new colors, which do more damage, but if you combine the wrong colors, the combo-damage won’t do more damage than usual. I compliment them for taking the time to create such an elaborate system, but if the tutorial gives the player a headache by figuring out all the concepts, it does not stimulate them to play more of Black Legend.
Story and lore
The story makes up for a lot of the hate I dropped in the above paragraph. It feels a lot like 17th century Italy, even though it’s based on the Netherlands/Belgium/Germany (and yes, I know, Belgium did not exist in the 17th century, neither did Germany). Grant’s status as a city-state started very early. No kingdoms or true borders had been established when Grant started to grow. The location was tactically chosen, being near the water as a source of food and mercantile opportunities and very central to land routes. Fast forward a bit – War eventually broke out between two neighboring nations. Both sides forged alliances with other kingdoms, which removed the threat of instant retaliation that originally kept the city safe. Both sides had set their eyes on Grant, and news of this reached the city council.
After much discussion, the council received a visitor, an incredibly talented Alchemist introducing himself as Mephisto. He laid out a plan to produce a special beer that creates a very toxic fog, which would envelop the entire city and the outskirts. The population would evacuate inside the city walls and be given an antidote to the fog. When the kingdoms attacked, their troops would succumb to the mist and go berserk, safeguarding the city for as long as the war would rage on. Fast forward again, and a horn was heard, and what remained of the armies retreated. Life continued fairly normal in the city. The recipe for antidote was safeguarded heavily to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. However, it was evident that none of the warring nations still had an interest in taking Grant after hearing about the fog’s power. All goods were checked before leaving the city, making sure nobody tried to smuggle them out.
Black Legend is a fine addition to your library for fans of rich historic storytelling though, most of its creatures inspired by centuries-old stories, respun uniquely.
I won’t spoil the next parts of Black Legend, but you can smell there’s something fishy going on. Still, I would have enjoyed Black Legend more as a book than in its current state as a game. The Nintendo Switch version suffered from long loading times, stuttering frame rate, and crispy graphics. I don’t know how it looks on a PC, but you might opt for a different version than the Switch version – just for the sake of graphical prowess. Black Legend is a fine addition to your library for fans of rich historic storytelling though, most of its creatures inspired by centuries-old stories, respun uniquely. Based on Belgian and Dutch folklore, these stories and the monsters that emerge from them have ancient roots, predating the Early Middle Ages.
Conclude
So to conclude – Black Legend is a promising concept but tries to do too much, while they should have (or could have) focused on a few smaller details instead of trying to hog everything in one game. Black Legend has the potential to become one of the bigger IPs in the gaming scene since it’s basically Assassins Creed meets XCOM (if we want to label it), but in its current state, it’s failing on both sides. What it makes up for lore gets destroyed by the game mechanics. I feel that this game will resonate with a very certain audience (I’m looking at you Europa Universalis players) and will find its way on Steam – but it can become a challenging option for those playing it on the consoles.
