Dice Legacy Review – Strategic Builder Sim With Dice in Test

Very hard build-up strategy game Dice Legacy in the test – Save the dice world

In this Dice Legacy review, I’ll show you the new build-up strategy game that requires a lot of brainpower and some luck when rolling the dice. On a ringworld, we build a Dice Legacy with our dice underlings. The game was just released for Nintendo Switch and for PC on Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store.

This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Dice Legacy Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Dice Legacy Review – Intro

Hi there, this is the Zap. In this Dice Legacy review, you’ll get a sneak peek at the new build-up strategy game with dice and lots of tactics that will stimulate your mind. I’ll tell you how it is played, what’s in it, and at the end, there will be a rating from me. But most of all, I want to give you all the info, so you can decide for yourself if the game might be fun for you.

Dice Legacy is developed by DestinyBit and published by Ravenscourt. So far, there is already one other game from the developer, Empires Apart. I received a free trial key, my thanks for that. However, this should have no bearing on my review, as I always test all games with the thought in the back of my mind, how would I feel if I had paid full price.

Dice Legacy Gameplay – Game Type – build-up strategy RTS

Dice Legacy is a build-up strategy game on a hex “tube”. This means the map is rather narrow but very long. The graphical implementation resembles a ringworld, roughly like in Halo. The special twist in this game is that our inhabitants and soldiers are dice.

These dice, up to twelve in number, can each perform several tasks. However, the actions are arranged on the different sides of the dice, and so it is random which ones we have available when. Later, they can also be trained and improved to make the farmers then researchers, soldiers, monks, or merchants. These have then other possibilities and compositions of their cube sides.

There is a hostile force to destroy that resides at the other end of the tube, ah, no, the ringworld. Along the way, in addition to numerous resources, there are neutral tribes that we can either ignore, destroy, or trade with.

A large part of the gameplay consists of attacks by the enemy, which we must fend off with our soldiers and pawns. In this, we are helped especially by the defense towers, which automatically weaken opponents. And at the same time, we have to constantly expand our territory and capture the territory of the opponents in order to win. This part plays more like a real-time strategy (RTS) game.

There is summer and winter. In winter, we have to provide heat, otherwise, our cubes can freeze, and that makes them useless until summer starts. Unless we have a tavern and beer, then we can thaw them there. But that will cost quite a bit of grain and extra work.

There are eight different basic resources, this starts with food, wood and stone goes to gold and iron, and finally to grain, beer, and herbs. Most of them we can get in several ways, or convert them into each other, but this requires the construction of certain buildings.

Or we need corresponding deposits on the map’s hex squares. As an example, fresh wood deposits often have 30 charges, and when we have chopped wood 30 times, they are exhausted and disappear from the map.

Gameplay – Strategy with dice

Dices can provide different functions, and depending on the variety of the dice, they have certain symbols multiple times or not at all. For example, there are mining, working, building, fighting, researching, or pillaging. The latter is probably the least useful of all. Depending on which side of a die is currently on top, a soldier can attack, or pillage, or build, for example, but only one of them at a time.

There are 5 types of dice, farmer, soldier, explorer, merchant, or monk. And each type forms its own faction that can make proposals in the council. This council meets 2 times a year and always proposes three decrees, but we can only choose one of them. These are mostly improvements that last throughout the match. However, which proposals we accept also influences how the factions like us. If a faction is happy with us, this gives advantages, if they are not, they may strike more often and block buildings temporarily, for example.

With a research tree, we can unlock numerous technologies that open up new possibilities or massively strengthen existing ones. Here I would like to point out especially the much-needed defense towers, or functions to merge or improve Dice. There is a chance to learn extremely rare enhancements that we can use to ascend dice. And ascended dice we can then even take with us to the next game.

Dice Legacy features a map that is randomly populated with resources and special features at each start. Once you have played through the basic scenario you get access to different heroes and 5 different scenarios that specify different starting conditions. Here there are variants with 6 instead of 12 dice, permanent winter, fewer council decisions, or heat waves, which can cause our buildings to burn in the summer.

Tech, Graphics, Sound

Dice Legacy was built in the Unreal Engine. Thus, on the one hand, fancy graphics are offered, also a few quite nice effects. But all in all, nothing stunningly surprising or unique is offered here, good mid-range stuff throughout.

For this, it runs very smoothly and the game offers an extensive options menu, with which you can adapt it to possibly weaker hardware and your own needs. The keyboard layout cannot be changed at the moment, but the game only uses a few keys and you can actually operate all functions with the mouse only.

The audio is okay to lower middle class. There is no voice acting at all, the sounds are adequate and serviceable, the music is okay. But overall there is rather standard quality in the sound department.

Dice Legacy comes in twelve languages, which have been translated well in terms of craftsmanship. In addition to English, German, French, there are variants in Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Portuguese, as well as Chinese in traditional and simplified forms.

Dice Legacy Screenshots – InGame

Click or tap on the image for a larger view.
In the enlarged view, you can scroll right and left on the edges

Dice Legacy Test – Opinion and Conclusion

Dice Legacy is tough as hell but very interesting and challenging. This level of difficulty is definitely not for everyone. Those who enjoy trickily and brain-tickling strategy games should definitely take a look here.

Important note: No city-builder or The Settlers

But the game has nothing at all to do with City Builder games or settlement simulations. Although it looks cutely like The Settlers or Anno on screenshots in some cases, it has almost nothing in common with those games. And whoever is looking for such cozy gameplay is completely wrong here.

The controls and the basic concept with the dice are a bit confusing at the beginning. I have to say that I must have spent two or three hours at first working around rather haphazardly and needed several restarts before I had halfway understood the basic principles of the game.

Whereas the game has a usable tutorial, it already explains many functions. However, the gameplay is also so very different from “the usual stuff” that it needs a certain learning phase before you can fully start playing.

And for the first playthrough of the base map, I needed with all restarts then already 9 hours. Where the first half of the time was completely just failing and learning from it and the other half was the real playthrough.

There is some replay value due to the scenarios and procedurally generated maps. The game also offers over 40 different achievements, and collecting them all is guaranteed to be a challenge that not everyone will manage. Even away from the scenarios, I think I’ll definitely be starting the game again and again.

Once you understand the underlying principle, it’s a bit like playing a game of chess or a good board game. You can definitely play this more often without getting bored. Besides the really steep standard difficulty level, there is also a pacifist mode, where you can just build without any opponents. For even more challenges, there are four additional difficulty levels if needed.

Stable and nearly bug-free

Another very positive thing to mention is that the game did not crash once during the entire testing period. And apart from a small inconsistency with the military academy, I didn’t notice a single real bug. So here, great care was taken before the release to bring a really finished game to the market, very commendable.

The content of the game is not particularly extensive. So there is only one type of card, which you can then just play more often with different starting requirements and different rule variants. Here I would have liked more variety as well as more content. Dice Legacy builds long-term motivation rather through the level of difficulty and variations than through a larger amount of game content.

Overall, as a strategy fan, you get at least 10 hours of gameplay here for less than $20 or €. If the basic principle grabs you or you want to hunt down all the achievements, it’s probably well over 30 hours. And because of the board game-like gameplay, you can play a game every now and then even months or years later without getting bored.

Dice Legacy Review – Rating

Dice Legacy offers a very unusual game system that challenges the mind and wraps this in appealing visuals. The game comes with a price tag of $19.99 or just about €17. For that, you get a minimum of 10 to 20 hours of gameplay, and if you really enjoy the game, you can probably play it almost endlessly.

But since the game offers a really crunchy difficulty level, it depends a lot on your preferences as to how you should rate it for yourself. If you don’t like big challenges and starting all over again several times is rather annoying for you, this results in a deduction of up to 5%. But if you like that a game challenges you to puzzle and you like to bite through heavy strategy titles, this can mean even up to a 5% upgrade for you.

For the very original and unique board game setting, bug-free implementation with snazzy graphics, and nice sound, I would like to give Dice Legacy a base rating of 80%. And since I have nothing else to complain about, this is my final rating. And you should modify the result a bit for yourself, depending on how you classify yourself according to the above-mentioned criteria. Thus, the personal rating can then fluctuate between 75 and 85%.

Dice Legacy

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Very hard build-up strategy game Dice Legacy in the test – Save the dice world
In this Dice Legacy review, I’ll show you the new build-up strategy game that requires a lot of brainpower and some luck when rolling the dice. On a ringworld, we build a Dice Legacy with our dice underlings. The game was just released for Nintendo Switch and for PC on Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store.

Strategie

Originell und Ungewöhnlich

Grafik

Sound

Umfang des Spiels

Preis-Leistung-Spaß

Rating

Dice Legacy offers a very unusual game system that challenges the mind and wraps this in appealing visuals. The game comes with a price tag of $19.99 or just about €17. For that, you get a minimum of 10 to 20 hours of gameplay, and if you really enjoy the game, you can probably play it almost endlessly.

But since the game offers a really crunchy difficulty level, it depends a lot on your preferences as to how you should rate it for yourself. If you don’t like big challenges and starting all over again several times is rather annoying for you, this results in a deduction of up to 5%. But if you like that a game challenges you to puzzle and you like to bite through heavy strategy titles, this can mean even up to a 5% upgrade for you.

For the very original and unique board game setting, bug-free implementation with snazzy graphics, and nice sound, I would like to give Dice Legacy a base rating of 80%. And since I have nothing else to complain about, this is my final rating. And you should modify the result a bit for yourself, depending on how you classify yourself according to the above-mentioned criteria. Thus, the personal rating can then fluctuate between 75 and 85%.

4

Outro

Do you like dice and an original digital board game? Or are hard strategy difficulty and abstract dice-inhabitants not for you? Feel free to write me your opinion in the comments of the video above or in the community Discord.

More gaming news, game reviews, and guides can be found on the YouTube channel or at https://zapzockt.de – thumbs click, subscribe and share with friends certainly can’t hurt and then I wish you a great day, ciao ciao, your Zap

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