Nintendo Switch Review Provided by Ravenscourt
It was quite refreshing to see a new take on the management tycoon-type genre that steps away from regular life as we know it. Instead of focusing on civilization, cities, theme parks, or the countless other aspects we are usually given with a resource management game, DESTINYbit has created a more rugged form with Dice Legacy. If you are looking to have your management skills tested, then take a look at what publisher Ravenscourt is bringing to both PC and Nintendo Switch.
Gameplay
When you start the game, you will only have one mode and one ruler to work with. I suggest starting the game on the Normal difficulty and start getting used to all the aspects. The mode you start with is the standard game mode called “Stranded” and you are given a basic ruler that starts with all peasant dice. It took me a few rounds to just understand everything in the game before I finally had a successful winning round.
There are a few different types of dice. The dice are basically your citizens and the different types are their class. You have the peasant, civilian, merchant, soldier, and monk classes. Each class has its own useful aspects that can be utilized for strategized play. For instance, if you need people who can build then you can look to peasant, civilian, and soldier classes. If you need people who can look for resources then you can look to peasant and merchant classes.
When it comes to each class’s specific use is where you want to consider when to get each one. Soldiers are best for fighting and raiding while civilians are best for general work and gaining intelligence. Figuring out the best use for each dice is part of what makes the game fun and helps build your own style, however by the end of this section I will explain the setup I utilized to win even on the hardest difficulty.
Note that each class will have its own happiness meter as well. While it is best to keep them all as happy as possible, the main problems come from having an unhappy class that is the majority of your dice. When the majority class is unhappy, they can riot against you and if not fixed in time, that is a game over. Plus, even if they aren’t the majority class, unhappy die become an inconvenience due to them starting fires in the town. I didn’t really notice a lot of other side effects from unhappy citizens since it is fairly easy to keep them happy. Just make sure you have built the town square and have the resources for festivals. Also, the district buildings you make can be turned into class-specific buildings which will raise that class’s happiness meter, so save a couple of them just to give it to a class if ever needed. Having both those resources on standby will prevent any of the unhappiness threats you will come across.
Another way to get their happiness up will come at the end of each season when The Council meets. Basically, you will be given a random set of three laws to pick from and the one you vote in will make the associated class happier. While each class has beneficial laws, I do find myself in preference of the peasant laws given there is one to make buildings in the district fireproof and one that makes it impossible for your dice to freeze when using buildings in the peasant district.
Other than just utilizing your dice, you will be able to enhance, combine, and ascend dice as well.
Enhancing dice will add extra power to one face of the die you put in the enhancement chamber. For example, a soldier naturally comes with one sword side with a 2-point marker on it and a civilian naturally comes with one general work side with a 2-point marker on it. By putting them in the enhancement chamber, you can improve these sides to have higher point values on one side or even add more points to a random side that currently had the standard 1-point marker. When you have a side that has a higher point marker on it, it counts as that many of that face. So, when you need your wheat fields tended and it takes two general work dice to handle it, you can use a single civilian die with its natural 2-point side.
Combining dice with the forge will also increase the power of one die’s faces, but it will cost you one of the two dice being put in the forge. This isn’t optimal as your classes tend to become unhappy when their people start dying, regardless of the reason. The other way to combine die is with the laboratory, which then you can pick one of the faces you want to go on to a die, but know that you will be killing six dice to make one with all the faces you want on it. While this seems optimal, the created die won’t be able to recharge its roll slots by eating and so is a very limited use item, making it not really worth the effort.
Ascending dice is basically marking a specific die to be usable in another game. To do this, you will need to build an obelisk and each obelisk will only ascend a single die. You can change your chosen die up to three times, but once it is ascended then it will be available whether you win or lose the current game.
Now, when it comes to actually making progress in the game, you will need to look into both your intelligence and building options. Having the right buildings and not making ones that you won’t need is the best move as you don’t want to waste resources. Each building has its use and it is explained when you highlight it, but I suggest having two cookhouses, one house, one workshop, two wheat fields, one mill, one brewery, one tavern, one apothecary, one enhancement chamber, a centralized steamer, and a district building turned into a peasant building covering the mill, brewery, and wheat fields. This setup will give you access to everything you need for the first two or three winters of the game. If you can also get two or three towers to work together along the pathway towards the city to help fight against incoming enemies for you, that would be ideal.
From there, you just need to utilize your resources, intelligence points, and people to get a winning outcome. After you beat the game, you will find new modes that will provide challenge options and unlock new rulers with different start-up options. My favorite ruler to use is “The Mad,” but I don’t believe there is a wrong answer here either.
Audio and Visual
Both the visual and audio aspects of this game are simplistic and subtle throughout. Music is only escalated briefly to help pronounce moments worth focusing on, but otherwise was nothing more than background noise to let the player focus. The sound effects were a nice touch though as it really felt like being a giant ruler over the civilization I made.
I did enjoy the way they presented the land in front of you and your limited space. It felt confined and direct with an obvious direction to go and an obvious visual set of aspects to note, such as boundaries. I do wish they would have let me tilt the screen to see the sides better though as things on the very edge of the map sides were sometimes hard to see or even missed until later through the round.
Replayability
Seeing as I have already played through the game multiple times on multiple difficulties and in different modes yet still can’t say I’ve tried each mode out yet leaves me to say that this game is definitely replayable! I do wish they had an endless mode option though as that would have been the best mode to fill out this game, but they seemed to have everything else for players to try another round or a new challenge.
What Could Be Better
Only a few minor issues, in my opinion. I wasn’t a fan of that visual spin the game did when I beat the game but didn’t have my screen on the last house during the fight. It was the time I beat it on the hardest difficulty and I wasn’t sure if it would actually end so I was going back to my village to set up for another attack, but then it pulled me back to the house with a nauseating spin before saying I won. Just pan back up or camera lock onto it; get rid of the spin.
Also, as I mentioned just a bit before this, an endless mode would have been a great mode for this game.
Conclusion
Dice Legacy is surprisingly enthralling! I really didn’t think I was going to be a big fan of this game and thought it just looked a little interesting, but it took literally one game attempt to get me hooked on it. Something about the simplicity in just managing resources and people while conquering a new land after starting from scratch just blends so well together. Plus, it is nice to have a management game that isn’t sucked into a money management clone like so many of these become. Truly a unique experience that I recommend to fans of management-based games!
