Tempo Reynad reveals his biggest problem with Legends of Runeterra
Tempo Storm founder, streamer, and card game developer Andrew ‘Reynad’ Yanyuk gave his first impressions of Riot’s new League of Legends-inspired card game Legends of Runeterra while broadcasting.
Legends of Runeterra’s beta is off to a hot start. Immediately after its release following the League10 celebration on October 15, it was averaging 225,000 viewers on Twitch, with both LoL and card game streamers broadcasting Riot’s new digital title.
But like any game in beta, it is prone to criticism, and while streaming his first impressions of the game, famed Hearthstone player and streamer Reynad delivered unfiltered criticism, and explained why it’s “slightly worse” than the games it takes inspirations from.
Reynad’s impressions of the game were prompted by someone from chat asking plainly if he found the game fun to play. While he prefaced his thoughts by saying that the game was by no means bad, he did say that many of the mechanics and cards exist in other games, and aren’t as good in Runeterra.
“If I want to play a game where I can react to my opponent’s stuff, or play a game with defensive combat, I’d rather just play Magic,” Reynad said. “If I want to play a game where I’m passing priority back-and-forth with chess-like gameplay, I’d rather play Gwent. And if I’m living life post-lobotomy and I wanna drool on my couch, I’ll play Hearthstone.”
His Hearthstone joke aside, Reynad’s opinion is that the biggest issues Runeterra faces is that it didn’t take any risks, that casual players would rather play Hearthstone, and players who want a more complex game would rather play Magic.
But he did highlight one feature that he loved, and that’s the dynamic card art that changes in-game. Reynard remarked that he would “definitely steal it” for his upcoming, crowd-funded digital card game titled “The Bazaar”.
While being a jack-of-all-trades game isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Legends of Runeterra could struggle to bring in dedicated card game fans if they share Reynad’s sentiment that other games already have the same mechanics and do them better.
That being said, Legends of Runeterra’s preview patch ends on October 20, and the next doesn’t come until November, so the game fans see now and the one they see upon release could be drastically different.