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Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast review, tips & tricks (iOS/Android)

Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast preview and guide: Metal legends Iron Maiden are rocking iPhones and Android handsets with their first mobile game, Legacy of the Beast, a rather bonkers turn-based RPG fighting title. Here’s our full Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast review, along with our beginners’ tips and tricks guide.

PC gaming fans may just about remember Iron Maiden’s first foray into videogames, Ed Hunter, which turned out to be a perfectly generic House of the Dead clone. Seventeen years on the hardcore rockers are back, this time in RPG form on our mobile phones. And while Legacy of the Beast seems to take inspiration from plenty of other mobile titles, this slick adventure is still great fun, even if your Maiden knowledge ends at Number of the Beast.

Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast review

As you might suspect, Legacy of the Beast’s plot is streamlined enough to be detailed on the back of a matchbox. In a nutshell, band figurehead Eddie has had his soul pinched by a bunch of ugly cultists, and the only way he can win it back is by summoning some beastly friends and kicking a whole load of arse.

Gameplay is broken down into a series of multi-stage turn-based battles, in which Eddie and his chosen chums square off against a number of opponents. Fans of classic RPGs will be right at home, but newbies to the genre won’t take long to adjust, helped by the handy tutorial and tips that pop up at the beginning.

Essentially, you just choose an attack type (or some other power) for each member of your team, then select who to target on the opposition. You get a chance to hit them and then they get a chance to hit you; continue until one side is dead. However, most attacks also involve a reaction-based Quicktime input, tapping the screen just as two circles overlap, so you at least feel involved in the action.

Legacy of the Beast packs in a bit of tactical decision-making too. For instance, characters fall into five main classes (indicated by their colour), with each class boasting a power advantage over another. This means you’ll have to carefully consider who to attack with each character, in order to take down your foes as quickly as possible. You’ll also have to decide when to bust out Eddie and his gang’s special powers, for maximum impact.

Successfully clear a stage and you’ll be rewarded with talismans that grant stat bonuses, as well as shards to level up your characters. Legacy of the Beast boasts surprising depth in this area; you can upgrade your talismans and share them around the group, while character skills can also be customised when you gather enough resources. And fresh teammates can be conjured up by chucking captured soul fragments into a portal, which often throws up a dilemma: stick with your levelled-up buddies, or swap them out for new blood?

Legacy of the Beast gets considerably more difficult after a rather tame first quarter, so you’ll need to use careful tactics in order to progress further. More casual gamers will likely lose patience at this point, but the game remains fun as long as you don’t mind a serious challenge.

Presentation throughout the game is strong. Legacy of the Beast’s menu system is a little daunting at first, but you get plenty of help to begin with and you’ll soon get the hang of it. Graphics are crisp and colourful and look great on a capable device (we tested on an iPhone 6s) but Legacy of the Beast will also scale back for older and budget devices. And of course, the game’s soundtrack features some awesome Maiden guitar riffs and ballads, although we’d have liked a greater selection and the ability to play tracks independently.

Check out Iron Maiden’s Legacy of the Beast on iOS and Android when it releases this summer.

Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast tips and tricks guide

Need help or a reminder about some of Legacy of the Beast’s features? No problem, just head to the game’s settings menu (the cog icon) and tap ‘Help’. This handy guide steers you through the various mechanics.

In battle, remember that warriors (red) deal more damage to sentinels (green), sentinels inflict more pain on magus (blue), magus dish out more damage to warriors and gunners (yellow) and assassins (purple) both deal more damage to each other. When you target an enemy, you’ll see a circle appear beneath them. If this is green, you have the advantage. Red means you have a disadvantage, while yellow means you’re equal.

Between each stage, make sure you visit the team menu to see if you can upgrade any of your characters. It’ll be obvious if you have available resources to do so, as the menu tabs will have a red icon next to them.

Also don’t forget to check out the ‘talisman’ tab in the team menu, In here you can select a character and then tap an empty slot, and any available talismans will appear in the bottom bar; give them a tap to give them to your chosen character. Talismans can later be removed, so don’t worry about losing them if you want to sell or replace your character later.

Talismans can be upgraded, to give your characters greater benefits. Just select a talisman and tap the ‘power up’ and ‘evolve’ buttons that appear. If you have available resources, you can boost it and give yourself a greater chance in combat.

The shards you need to level up your characters are rather rare. We recommend spending them on Eddie more than the other characters, as you’ll be taking him into every single battle. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore Eddie’s chums. Try to pick a couple of strong characters to build up, rather than spreading your resources across lots of different heroes. Personally, we found the Rock Golem was well worth sticking with, for instance.

Think Legacy of the Beast is too easy? No worries. Just tap the ‘Normal’ button at the top of the stage selection screen and you can boost the difficulty level to Hard or Madness. Best of all, this gives you even better rewards. Good luck!

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