Legendary: Game of Heroes

First Impression

I downloaded Legendary: Game of Heroes last fall after a coworker named Mike wouldn’t stop talking about it during lunch breaks. He said it was like Pokémon meets Bejeweled, and sure, the first hour was pretty. The graphics are flashy, the opening tutorial holds your hand, and I thought I’d found a fun little time-waster for my iPhone 15 Pro. But by the second day, I started noticing the cracks. The energy system hit me hard—I’d be on a train Tuesday evening, finally getting into a battle rhythm, and then boom, “out of moves.” Mike laughed and told me to just wait or pay up. That’s when it started feeling less like a game and more like a toll booth.

What It Does Well

I’ll give credit where it’s due: the core puzzle mechanic is genuinely satisfying when it works. Matching colored gems to trigger attacks feels smooth, and the hero animations are charming. My iPhone 15 Pro ran the app at 60fps without a hitch, no lag or crashes after the initial load screen. I also appreciate the guild system—Mike and I joined a group called “DragonSquad” and the chat was active, people trading tips about which heroes to evolve. The artwork on the legendaries is stunning, like someone actually cared about the character designs. There’s a clear effort in the visual polish, and the constant events (always some seasonal thing going on) kept me opening the app daily for a while. The crafting system for equipment is decent, though you need rare materials that I never seemed to find without buying a premium pack.

Where It Falls Short

Honestly, the game feels designed to frustrate you into spending money. Progression slows to a crawl after level 20. I spent three weeks stuck on the same boss fight, and the only way to beat it was either to grind the same boring stages for days or drop cash on a hero bundle. The energy system is aggressively stingy—you get about 10 minutes of play per refill, then you wait hours or pay up. I checked my screen time once and realized I’d spent more time staring at countdown timers than actually playing. Also, the gacha mechanics are predatory. I saved up premium currency for a month, used 30 pulls, and got nothing but duplicates. On my birthday in January I did a $5 pull just to treat myself, and got a hero I already had three copies of. That felt awful. The game also constantly pushes notifications at you— “Limited time offer!” “Your energy is full!” —it never shuts up. I had to turn off notifications completely because it stressed me out.

Is It Worth the Price?

The app is free to download, but calling it “free” is misleading. You can technically play without spending, but you’ll hit a wall within the first week. After two months, I caved and spent $15 on a starter pack. The value was laughable—I got a mediocre hero and some gems that bought me maybe 15 extra minutes of play. Compare that to a $15 indie game I bought on Steam later that month, which gave me 30 hours of content with no ads or timers. Legendary wants you to treat it like a subscription, but you get nothing real for your money. For a privacy-focused person like me, the intrusive spending prompts felt dirty. So no, unless you have a high tolerance for microtransactions and a wallet you don’t mind emptying, I’d say skip it.

Developer & Support

I reached out to PerBlue support once. I had a bug where my guild login streak reset for no reason—I’d been logging in at 9 PM every night for two weeks, and suddenly it showed zero. I submitted a ticket through the in-game contact form. Three days later I got an automated reply asking me to clear my cache. I did that, it didn’t fix anything. I replied again, waited four more days, and got a copy-paste message about restarting the app. Eventually I gave up. On Reddit, I saw other people complaining about the same bug, so it’s clearly a known issue they just won’t fix. Support feels like a ghost. No phone number, no live chat. I’m not asking for white-glove service, but a human response within a week would have been nice. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

Privacy & Safety

This is the part that really bothers me. When I first installed it, Legendary asked for access to my photos, contacts, and location. For a puzzle game. I denied all of them and it still worked, so why even ask? I read the privacy policy—it’s a wall of legalese that basically says they share data with “advertising partners” for “personalized content.” That means they’re tracking your behavior across apps and selling it. I noticed my iPhone started showing ads for other mobile games right after I started playing—probably coincidence, but still creepy. The app also uses third-party analytics tools (it lists like six different SDKs in its settings). For a game aimed at a younger audience, that’s concerning. I set my iPhone’s privacy settings to “Ask App Not to Track,” and the game seemed sluggish after that—likely their way of punishing privacy-conscious users. Not cool.