The Elder Scrolls: Legends Review

The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a free-to-play Trading Card Game (TCG) from Dire Wolf Digital and Bethesda. It is heavily based on the Elder Scrolls lore and features deck building, arena matches, excellent artwork matched with epic background music and remarkable voiceovers.

Upon starting the game, you are invited to choose an avatar and one of the 10 available races, directly related to the Elder Scrolls universe. Your race determines the kind of cards you will receive as a reward during the course of the game, so choose wisely! Immediately after, you enter the story mode which serves as a tutorial and where you play as the legendary Tyr, also known as “The Forgotten Hero”. Through 20 chapters you will relive the events that almost lead to the destruction of the Imperial City before your hero jumped in to save the day and in the meantime you will learn to play and earn a good number of cards, themed decks and in-game money.

As in every game of the genre, you build a deck (50 cards are the recommended total) using cards of varying rarity and try to defeat your opponents by reducing their life total from 30 to zero. You will meet mechanics common in every TCG named differently for the sake of difference; for example, the “Trample” ability is called “Breakthrough”, “Deathtouch” is “Lethal” and so on. However, there are some innovations; there are two available lanes to summon your creatures and some creatures have the ability to change lanes and gain unique abilities in the course, adding an extra layer of strategy. Additionally, the artwork is beautiful, targeting a more mature audience and is heavily inspired by the Elder Scroll lore; the excellent voiceovers and the battle effects together with the epic soundtrack contribute to the whole experience.

Besides the main story, you will find a Practice mode and an Arena where you can either create a deck on the fly and face other players or take your favorite deck and participate in ranked matches for great rewards. Daily log-in rewards and quests try to make you come back for more and the in-game shop features many interesting bargains for reasonable prices, but in order to enjoy the extra content added with the, so far, two expansions, you will have to pay. Another rather frustrating thing is that players spending real-life money in the shop seem to have a clear advantage; understandable but still annoying.

To make a long story short, The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a typical representative of the genre; it doesn’t rediscover the wheel but it can be fun and intriguing, especially for a fan of the Elder Scrolls lore. If TCG is your thing, then it is recommended to at least try this one!