Review: Legacy: Steel & Sorcery

Genre / Tags: Souls-like, Dungeon Crawler, PVP
Developer/Publisher: Notorious Studios/Notorious Studios
URL: Legacy: Steel & Sorcery on Steam

I’ve been eyeing this game since it was announced back in June of 2024 I believe. Looked right up my RPG loving alley from the get-go, so I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this game. The demo that’s out for Next Fest 2024 on Steam gave me that avenue to finally give it a try.

Legacy: Steel & Sorcery is more in the style of an “extract” game. Think of it like Escape from Tarkov, or Dark and Darker would probably be a better example. You pick your hero and go out into the field either solo or with up to two friends. Your goal when out into the field, is to kill monsters and find loot either from said monsters, or other players out on the field to then take back and ‘extract’ from the mission before you perish yourself and lose all that loot.  You do get to keep a very small amount of experience and whatnot gained if you perish, but the main goal is to get out alive.

This demo has 4 playable classes shown in the pictures above. The Warrior, Hunter, Priest and Rogue. As well as four-character slots available to you for the demo itself, enough for one of each class, seeing as it won’t let you make multiple of any class.

Once you’ve selected what class you want to play, you’re brought to your hub/lobby. I’m not sure what they are calling it just yet, but this is where you can create your team if you so choose, interact with the various villagers in the “City”, pick up some quests, or add materials you’ve found to the lodge to upgrade the various things in the lodge.

The city there’s a handful of various people you can talk to. These city folk are Alchemist, Armorer, Enchantress, Tailor, Tavern maid, Treasurer, Weaponsmith, and a crafting bench. All seem to be merchants in one regard or another, carrying a variety of materials that you can spend your money on to buy things from. They all seem to have an experience bar to them and levels, so i’m assuming as you either buy or sell things to them, or do quests from the quest section that they’ll have more things for you to buy.

City Example

Alchemist

I played a round or two of the game just to kind of get my bearings in the game and understand how it plays and feels. The game itself is definitely in a very alpha stage, even for there being a playable demo. There are lots of placeholder things with just big squares with a simple one-color texture on it, etc. I was able to do things that I wouldn’t have expected. 

One of those being climbing. It seems that you can climb up most cliff faces which is kind of awesome for a class you’re trying to sneak around a bit more like a hunter or rogue. I was surprised . I find a lot of these styles of games either do or don’t have it, and it’s usually the latter. It’s a nice touch to communicate if you want to maybe be peaceful with your enemies or deceive them even.

I find the inventory is definitely pretty limited. Most things I could loot through mining or killing monsters were anywhere between 1 – 6 slots in size. And when you only have a couple pouches to deal with, you definitely have to pick and choose what you want to haul back home.

Combat seems to be another thing that exists currently, but is definitely in a rougher state for the demo. It’s fairly easy to just keep button smashing. Your main hit ability and just completely lock either the monster or player up where they can barely fight back.

I haven’t had a ton of PVP action in the game thus yet. I was pretty easily able to take most ‘basic’ mobs just by keeping them locked down smacking them a bunch. It’s also really difficult to tell when something is dead or not currently. Animations have a slight delay, so things don’t die right away when slain.

I think Legacy: Steel & Sorcery definitely has a great footing in its current state. Has quite a way to go but I’m excited to see where it’s going from here. I’d give this game a solid 8 out of 10. Aesthetics are great, the game loop is solid. Just needs some polish to both assets and animations and we’ve got a pretty great competitor to the PVPVE / Extract PVP game.

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