3/5 ★ – MadMajora's review of RAID: Shadow Legends.

Yep. I played it. I even beat it. Let me tell you about the forsaken game that is “RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS” Let me set the scene: Imagine that you’re me, struggling to fall asleep all night until you decide to just give up and pick up your phone. It’s like 5 AM and you don’t need to be awake for another 5 hours, so what will you do? Suddenly, your mind is filled with flashes of YouTubers thanking their sponsor for their video - a new party-building, dungeon-crawling mobile RPG - you remember RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS. You decide to take the plunge, to install this notorious game. You’re surprised by what you find… So, what did I find? I found a game that is incredibly difficult to rate or summarize. Let me address the elephant in the room first: this game is unabashedly pay-to-win in every sense. It isn’t shy about that. Some pay-to-win games offer slight upgrades for a cost… this game straight up sells RIDICULOUS power boosts for wild prices. It is pretty icky to see, with pop-up ads also just flooding you whenever you log in. The frustrating hyper-monetization aside, this is a very thorough loot-focused, party-building, dungeon-crawling RPG. That was a lot of hyphens, but genuinely… this game is pretty damn good. As much as it pains me to say it, this is legitimately a full PC quality game available on your phone. If you choose to play for free, as I did, you will find yourself needing to be strategic and patient with a slow-burn pace. Thankfully for me, that is the exact kind of game I enjoy playing. I know for many, it will be far too slow to be enjoyable. While the main story only takes a couple hours to beat, the real game lies in the PvP Arena. Grinding to be more powerful in the PvP mode is really satisfying as you see your power level increase and you beat tougher and tougher players. All in all, I think this game makes progression insanely gratifying. There isn’t much to talk about with this game. It’s a rinse-repeat dungeon crawler game built around grinding. It has great graphics and engaging mechanics, especially for a mobile game. But either the game fundamentally is for you or it isn’t. If you have money to throw at it, you can increase the pace a lot. If you don’t, then just prepare for a grind. Do I recommend it? I guess so. I think it’s probably the most high-quality and fleshed out mobile game available on the App Store. That isn’t saying all that much, to be fair. I couldn’t decide whether or not to give this 5 out of 10 or 7 out of 10… so I’ll just meet in the middle. Raid: Shadow Legends Final Score: 6/10