Legendary Hoplite Review

Legendary Hoplite is a unique spin on the tower-defence formula, giving the player real-time control over Dio, the commander of the army, while still building a formidable army to defend the Greek city of Ithaca from the hordes of the undead. Does this new formula work, or simply fall flat?

The story works fine, but didn’t blow me away at all. It’s told very slowly and broken up, presented through very short pieces of dialogue between stages, and focuses on finding out who is sending hordes of undead to attack the city and why. As someone who isn’t super in love with Greek mythology, a lot of it was lost on me, so the story is more targeted for people invested in the setting. For me, though, I didn’t find the story to be a prime driving point of the game anyway, as it felt like more of a framing device for the gameplay than a focal point. Despite this, the visuals are utterly gorgeous, with an art style reminiscent of geometric Greek art, and I was particularly impressed by the character portraits.

The gameplay is definitely where Legendary Hoplite shines brightest, with an interesting combination of strategy and action, along with some sadly lacklustre RPG elements. Each stage takes place on a grid, where you build up an army of soldiers to defend the gates of Ithaca while being attacked by the Undead legions. There are a multitude of different units, from Phalanx to Archers and Barrel Throwers, yet you can only take four different units into each stage, which requires you to plan and choose the right units. It takes some trial and error, but finding the right builds for them can lead to some satisfying puzzle-solving. Taking control over Dio gives you access to a multitude of abilities dependent on your gear, many of which feel somewhat pointless or underpowered, along with a basic spear throw attack. It’s much more engaging trying to balance real-time combat while still building a solid defence, but I don’t think it adds as much to the gameplay loop as I would have hoped.

The gear and skill points system for Dio feels more like a way to help keep up with the increasing difficulty than a deep system for creating new and interesting builds, which is a disappointing contrast to the unit upgrades. Each unit has a few different upgrades, which feel like they specifically have targeted build requirements and abilities to build them in specific ways, such as tuning the Phalanx to be more defensively or offensively attuned or building the Barrel Throwers to be more focused on support and debuffs, rather than pure damage output. You have unlimited access to free respecs for these units too, which emphasises trying out new things instead of stubbornly sticking to a single build and trying to brute force each stage.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy Legendary Hoplite, yet I do think it needs some changes and improvements before I can wholeheartedly recommend it as it stands. For fans of Greek mythology, it’s worth checking out, yet I can’t say the gameplay goes as deep in practice as it seems on the surface.