Skip to main content

Hands on: ‘The Elder Scrolls: Legends’

‘The Elder Scrolls: Legends’ Splits The Difference Between ‘Hearthstone’ and ‘Magic'

the elder scrolls legends hands on beta featured
Image used with permission by copyright holder

“Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.“

‘The Elder Scrolls: Legends’ splits the difference between ‘Hearthstone’ and ‘Magic: The Gathering’, combining the former’s accesibility with a bit more of its forebear’s complexity.

Recommended Videos

Like Dungeons & Dragons before it, Magic: The Gathering looms large over modern gaming. The original collectible card game established the rules we still use whenever players duel using custom decks filled with fantastical creatures and spells.

Magic has spawned countless derivatives, but none have made quite the impact as Hearthstone, Blizzard’s take on the form inspired by World of Warcraft, which translated the famously complicated card game into a widely accessible digital experience. Trading on Hearthstone’s success, publisher Bethesda Softworks has created it’s own take on the collectible trading card game, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, inspired by the incredibly popular high fantasy universe of games like Skyrim and Oblivion.

Wagering that a lot of players want a game that sits somewhere between the two, Legends, which is currently in public beta, has infused Hearthstone‘s slick presentation with a bit more of Magic’s strategic crunchiness to offer something different than the games that inspired it.

Something old, something new

Any Hearthstone player will be able to very easily jump right into a game of Legends and know generally what to do. At the start of a game, both players draw one card at the start of their turn, and begin with one mana, gaining one more to spend on each subsequent turn. Minions have numbers for attack and defense, and after their first turn can attack either the opposing hero or their minions once per round. Most of Hearthstone’s keyword effects, such as “battlecry,” a special effect triggered when a minion is played, and “taunt,” which enemies to kill that minion before attacking any other target, are present in Legends under different names (“summon” and “guard,” respectively).

The most immediately apparent way that Legends differentiates itself is by splitting the battlefield into two lanes. Minions must be played into one lane or the other, and are only able to interact with other minions in their respective lane. In addition to the basic new tactical dimension of managing defense and offense through two channels, both lanes can feature environmental effects that complicate decision making. The standard configuration features, a normal lane and a Shadow lane, where minions cannot be targeted for one round after they are played (like Hearthstone’s “stealth” effect). Other, more powerful effects can occur in certain play modes as well, such as a wind that pushes some minions around between lanes, or giving every minion a random weapon when played.

Each player starts with thirty health in a standard match, but their portrait is ringed with five glowing runes. As you pass each five damage threshold between thirty and zero, the runes break, allowing you to draw a card. Having more cards is extremely powerful in games like this, so this counter-balances hard-hitting play styles by compensating the victim with card advantage.

That baseline advantage is amplified immensely, however, with “prophecy” effect, a modifier similar to “summon” or “guard.” When a burst rune causes a player to draw a card with “prophecy,” they may play it immediately and at no cost. Some of these cards are extremely potent, giving games a tendency to swing dramatically, especially when players build their decks around Prophecy cards to ensure that they trigger more.

Something borrowed, something blue

Legends also takes a few cues from its IRL forefather, Magic: The Gathering. Like Magic, Legends adds item cards that can be equipped to minions, buffing their stats and adding new abilities. It also reintroduces enchantment-type spells that apply ongoing effects to the field after they have been played.

Legends splits the difference, adding a bit more of Magic’s grit and complexity to Hearthstone’s elegant mechanical core.

Where Hearthstone has classes, limiting each deck to cards from one class plus neutral, Legends takes a page from Magic by giving cards colors. Rather than elements, the colors correspond to attributes (Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, and Endurance). Each can contain cards of up to two colors, in addition to neutral cards. Every pair of attributes corresponds to a class (i.e. Strength + Intelligence = Battlemage, Endurance + Agility  = Scout, etc). This opens up a more complex deckbuilding space than Hearthstone’s, further helped by increasing the deck limitations from a fixed thirty cards with no more than two copies of each up to fifty to seventy cards with no more than three each.

Epic solo adventures

Legends shares the same basic play modes as Hearthstone, with ranked online multiplayer, arena runs with drafted decks, but places a much greater emphasis on single-player gameplay. The game’s tutorial extends into a full campaign, replete with voice-acted and illustrated cutscenes, and a growing cast of characters having adventures throughout the Elder Scrolls world.

Like Hearthstone’s more sporadic single player expansions, the campaign plays around with Legends’ core rules to make matches with unique conditions that flavorfully match the narrative circumstances. For instance, during a bar fight each player’s turn started with a one damage broken bottle being thrown at a random opponent, or the aforementioned weapons lane was applied when our heroes were fighting gladiators in a colosseum. The way Legends awards cards fun ways tied to the story: When evil cultists held a member of my party hostage, we had to choose between saving his life, gaining his unique minion card, or sacrificing him to grab the powerful artifact for which we had come.

 

Tying together gameplay and story is Legends’ biggest contribution to the form. Depending on the rate at which Bethesda produces new content, it could be one of its biggest selling points for players that might not be as interested in competition.

That said, the story is classic Elder Scrolls, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on the player. Though the game often translates its story into gameplay cleverly, the narrative does not stand out in and of itself. The band of unlikely heroes coming together, creatures such as elves, undead, sinister cultists — it all falls well within the series’ somewhat rote high fantasy wheelhouse.

Put on your grown-up tunic

Despite their fundamental similarities, Legends feels bigger and meatier than Hearthstone in every way. Every element feels a little more complicated, a little more expansive, and a lot more serious. Hearthstone puts a light-hearted spin on Warcraft’s already colorful world. The Elder Scrolls, on the other hand, is a much more classically poe-faced fantasy franchise, and Legends reflects that more self-serious tone. Whether that’s a selling point or not is a matter of taste.

In a vacuum Legends’ changes all feel smart and interesting, making it an evolution rather than a derivative.

Although Magic is hugely popular, it’s always had a reputation for being something of a “gamer’s game,” drawing a conventionally nerdy crowd along with all of its baggage. Just like with World of Warcraft, Hearthstone refined what made that niche genre compelling to make it much more broadly appealing and accessible. Legends fills a space between those two, adapting features from both while adding a few new twists of its own.

In a vacuum Legends’ changes all feel smart and interesting, making it an evolution rather than a derivative. TCGs live and die by their communities, however, and while the abundance of single player content certainly helps hedge against the need for a huge player base, there is no replacement for a robust pool of invested players. In that way, it will be up to the fans to decide whether or not The Elder Scrolls: Legends becomes that next phase in the evolution of digital card games.

Highs

  • Smart evoltion of Hearthstone’s basic gameplay
  • Rich Elder Scrolls lore from which to draw
  • Adds more complexity akin to MTG

Lows

  • Serious high fantasy won’t appeal to everyone
Will Fulton
Former Staff Writer, Gaming
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…
The Elder Scrolls 6: everything we know so far
The Elder Scrolls

The Elder Scrolls 6 was first revealed over five years ago with a 36-second announcement trailer. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a lot of concrete news on the title since.

Now that Bethesda has launched Starfield — the developer's first brand-new IP in 25 years — with great success despite plenty of criticism on the game's advertised scale versus its gameplay, it goes without saying that the studio will be shifting to the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series. The new title will be building off the wild success of its predecessor Skyrim (which made the cut for Digital Trends' top 50 video games of all time) and MMO The Elder Scrolls Online.

Read more
Bethesda turns Skyrim into a mod platform with new Creations feature
Aldmeri Anti-Mage is one of the mods available through Bethesda Game Studios Creations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is over 12 years old at this point, but a hefty Bethesda Game Studios update that dropped today is meant to revitalize its modding community. It turns the game into an easily accessible platform with user-made mode content, even on console.

Building on what was once the Bethesda Creation Club, this new feature is called Bethesda Game Studios Creations. Its first implementation is in Skyrim Special Edition and Skyrim Anniversary Edition across PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PS5. Bethesda created a Creations storefront where players can buy and download mods that add anything from items to new characters and questlines. It's also letting Skyrim mod creators join its Verified Creator program so they can set prices for their mods and earn royalties from the sales.

Read more
The Elder Scrolls Online’s 2023 updates bring players back to Morrowind
A mage looking over morrowind in Elder scrolls online.

Following Xbox and Bethesda's Developer_Direct and a dedicated livestream for The Elder Scrolls Online, we learned that the MMO's 2023 updates are all set in Morrowind. Falling under 2023's Shadow Over Morrowind banner, the first two pieces of DLC in March and June will see the addition of new PvE dungeons and the first new playable class since 2019. 
While Morrowind is most famous for being the titular location of the third Elder Scrolls game and 2017's The Elder Scrolls Online expansion, ZeniMax Online Studios teased that some of the areas featured in this expansion haven't been seen since the first game in the series. The player's first taste of this new Shadow Over Morrowind content will come with the Scribes of Fate DLC in March. Scribes of Fate adds two four-player PvE dungeons to the MMO. One sees players fight the Scribes of More in Scrivener's Hall, while the other will have them take on Bal Sunnar.
Scribes of Fate launches on March 13 for PC and Mac players and on March 28 for those on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

The more significant update will be The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom chapter, releasing on June 5 for PC and Mac and June 20 for consoles. The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom will add 30 hours of new story content set in eastern Morrowind, two new companions, and a new Arcanist class. Arcanists utilized a variety of offensive and support magic, most of which is based on the powers of a Daedric Prince in Oblivion. For fans of Morrowind and this MMO, it's clear there will be quite a lot to sink your teeth into this year. 
The Elder Scrolls Online is available now across PC, Mac, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. 

Read more