Pretty much anyone who’s ingested any form of alternate media lately has seen the brazen logo for Raid: Shadow Legends emblazoned across their video/podcast as their host emphatically describes the “ground breaking, gorgeous mobile fantasy RPG that’s already got millions of downloads!” Developed by game studio Plarium, Raid: Shadow Legends is a free turn-based mobile RPG created with the “gacha” mechanic: you spend in-game currency to unlock equipment and “Champions” to play with. On the surface, it seems like a pretty generic freemium mobile game, and despite genuinely having millions of downloads, it doesn’t really seem to permeate the gaming world very often, even in conversations about the scandalous mobile gaming market. Due to this curiosity, I decided to pump a few hours into it and see if it’s actually worth all the advertising money it seemingly dumps on various online entities.

P 莱蒂谁的摄入任何形式的替代媒体最近已经看到了厚颜无耻的标志对于RAID多少人：“破土动工，这已经得到了数以百万计的下载华丽移动奇幻RPG”影子传说在他们的视频/播客字样作为其主机着重介绍 Raid：Shadow Legends由游戏工作室Plarium开发，是一款免费的回合制移动RPG，由“ gacha”机制创建：您花费游戏内货币来解锁设备和“冠军”。 从表面上看，它似乎是一款非常普通的免费增值手机游戏，尽管确实有数百万次下载，但它似乎并没有真正渗透到整个游戏世界中，即使在有关丑陋的手机游戏市场的讨论中也是如此。 由于这种好奇心，我决定花几个小时，看看它实际上是否值得它看似倾倒在各种在线实体上的所有广告钱。

As soon as you boot the game up, you’re treated to a pleasant cutscene that transitions considerably well into gameplay. Credit where credit is due, Raid looks pretty incredible for a mobile game. Some of the old ways are still there; a pile of dragon’s gold is just “gold.png” textured over some terrain, and many of the textures are pretty muddy when you zoom in to get a better look, but — especially for a mobile game — these things can be forgiven. The Bastion, which is the hub world, is vibrant and bright, while the dungeons you fight through vary from razed cities to dank sewers. The voice acting is also satisfactory, with the intro cutscene being delivered well and the game’s guide, known as “The Arbitor,” is voiced adequately. One of the main objectives of Raid is to unlock and upgrade your Champions while collecting artifacts (which act like buffs) to further your Champions’ fighting ability. Unlocking Champions is pretty satisfying, and there’s a real investment when you select “unlock” and wait for your Champion to run out of the portal and onto the screen. The design of the Champions is probably my favorite aspect of Raid. They are unabashedly high fantasy, with orcs, elves, undead, human warriors, monsters, sorcerers and many more having the possibility to pass through the Champion Portal. The orcs look massive and menacing, the humans have colorful gambesons and eccentric weapons, and the elves look sleek and beautiful. Most of the costumes they wear are gleefully over-the-top, and each Champion — even the more common ones — feel distinct from each other.

一旦启动游戏，您就会获得令人愉悦的过场动画，该动画可以很好地过渡到游戏玩法中。 归功于应得的荣誉， Raid对于手机游戏而言看起来非常不可思议。 某些旧方法仍然存在； 一堆龙的金子只是在某些地形上纹理化的“ gold.png”，当您放大以获得更好的外观时，许多纹理都非常泥泞，但是-尤其是对于手机游戏，这些事情是可以原谅的。 堡垒是中心世界，生机勃勃而明亮，而您穿越的地牢则从疯狂的城市到潮湿的下水道。 声音表现也令人满意，前场过场动画传递得很好，并且游戏指南(称为“仲裁者”)的声音也足够好。 突袭的主要目标之一是解锁并升级您的英雄，同时收集神器(其作用类似于buff)以增强您的英雄的战斗能力。 解锁冠军很令人满意，当您选择“解锁”并等待冠军退出门户并进入屏幕时，这是一项真正的投资。 冠军的设计可能是Raid我最喜欢的方面。 他们毫无疑问地是高空幻想，兽人，精灵，亡灵，人类战士，怪物，巫师等等，还有更多可能穿越冠军门户。 兽人看起来庞大而凶险，人类拥有多彩的步枪和怪异的武器，而精灵则显得圆滑而美丽。 他们所穿的大多数服装都欢欣鼓舞，每位冠军，甚至更常见的冠军，都感觉彼此截然不同。

Unfortunately, that’s where the positives seem to taper off. Raid: Shadow Legends, it turns out, really is pretty bog standard freemium mobile game shlock. The story is pretty nonexistent, leaning way too hard into the fantasy tropes to have any hope of standing out. It takes place in a realm known as Teleria, tasking players with besting the Dark Lord Siroth, who has subjugated the realm. On your journey, you collect Shards, vessels that contain the souls of past warriors, to build your army of Champions and defeat the Dark Lord. And… that’s it. If you replace any of those names with any terms from the generic fantasy lexicon, you’ll have the same bland story and settings. As soon as you’re left to your own devices, you’re inundated with an abysmal and overwhelming HUD, which is pretty standard in mobile games. There’s over fifteen menu screens to select from, all smashed together around the edges of The Bastion — and coincidentally, your tiny phone screen — along with three different currencies and multiple places to choose from within The Bastion to play the actual game. Now, there’s annoying microtransactions, there’s abrasive microtransactions, and then there’s Raid: Shadow Legends microtransactions. Every time you start up the game, you’re affronted with multiple screens advertising different packs to buy with real world money. These packs include the currency spoke of earlier, energy to be allowed to continue on missions, and Shards to unlock more Champions. As a nice touch, the accompanying microtransaction artwork shows various Champions in clever meme poses, which is charming, but what isn’t charming is the sheer amount of push you get to go to the store. Upon entering The Bastion, I had to clear seven separate store screens just to get to menus and choose the next step in my adventure.

不幸的是，那里的积极性似乎正在减弱。 突袭：Undertow传说 ，事实证明，这确实是沼泽标准的免费增值手机游戏。 这个故事几乎是不存在的，太过刻意地陷入幻想的比喻中，以至于没有任何希望脱颖而出。 它发生在一个称为Teleria的境界中，任务是向玩家征服征服该境界的Dark Lord Siroth。 在旅途中，您会收集碎片，这些碎片包含过去的勇士的灵魂，以组建冠军军并击败黑暗之王。 而且...就是这样。 如果用通用幻想词典中的任何术语替换这些名称中的任何一个，则将具有相同的乏味故事和设置。 一旦您留在自己的设备上，就会被无比沉闷的HUD所淹没，这在手机游戏中是非常标准的。 有15个以上的菜单屏幕可供选择，全部都围绕在堡垒堡垒的边缘(以及巧合的是，您的小巧手机屏幕)，还有三种不同的货币以及在堡垒堡垒中进行实际游戏的多个位置可供选择。 现在，有烦人的微交易，有磨蚀性的微交易，还有Raid：Shadow Legends微交易。 每次启动游戏时，您都会被多个屏幕打扰，这些屏幕上会广告着用现实世界中的钱购买的不同包装。 这些数据包包括先前所说的货币，可以继续执行任务的能量以及碎片来解锁更多冠军。 作为一种很好的接触，随附的微交易图稿以聪明的模因姿势展示了各种冠军，虽然很迷人，但是吸引您去商店的巨大推动力却不吸引人。 进入堡垒之后，我不得不清除七个单独的商店屏幕，才能进入菜单并选择下一步。

After you get through all the typical mobile game nonsense, you can finally play the game. You start by selecting your team of Champions, the amount you’re able to recruit depending on how many enemies you’ll be fighting. After you select your team, you’re met with the opposing force in different variations of the same corridor for every single fight. It’s an incredibly dumbed down turn-based experience. Games like Final Fantasy and Darkest Dungeon force you to consider your options before making any decisions, weighing your items, your magic, the classes on your team, and, if necessary, the willingness to sacrifice one of your own to win the encounter. Most of that is stripped away in Raid. Each Champion has a predetermined set of moves you can choose, from AOE attacks to buffs, and each move has a set amount of turns before regenerating and being able to be used again. In the first few hours at least, the buffs are pretty useless, and whatever Champions do the most damage are typically your best options. When it’s your Champion’s turn, you select an attack by tapping it, then tap the enemy (or enemies) you want to damage, or whichever Champion you want to buff. A short animation plays, damage or buff numbers come up, rinse and repeat. Enemy AI is confusing at best, as most of the time all opposing enemies will attack a single Champion on your team seemingly at random until they’ve died, at which point they turn their attention to another Champion. You defeat three sets of enemies, you get your loud colorful splash screen full of confetti and detritus, and you either continue on or level up your characters and equipment. Raid: Shadow Legends isn’t a bad game necessarily; there’s a ton to collect, and a lot of love was obviously poured into the Champions’ designs and voice work. It’s just underwhelming and bogged down by the standard mobile game rubbish. So, being a bit of a standard experience, how the hell did it get downloaded apparently over 250 million times to date? Pretty simple; an unfathomable amount of marketing.

解决了所有典型的手机游戏问题之后，您终于可以玩游戏了。 首先选择冠军团队，您可以招募的数量取决于要战斗的敌人数量。 选择您的团队后，您会在每场战斗中遇到同一个走廊的不同变体中的对立部队。 这是一个令人难以置信的愚蠢的回合制体验。 最终幻想 ( Final Fantasy)和最黑暗地牢 ( Darkest Dungeon)之类的游戏会迫使您在做出任何决定之前先考虑您的选择，权衡您的物品，魔术，团队中的职业，并在必要时愿意牺牲自己的一个赢得比赛。 在Raid中大部分都被剥夺了。 从AOE攻击到增益效果，每个冠军都有一组预定的动作可供选择，并且在恢复并可以再次使用之前，每个动作都有一定的回合数量。 至少在最初的几个小时内，增益效果毫无用处，而冠军造成的最大伤害通常是您的最佳选择。 轮到您的冠军时，您可以通过点按选择一个攻击，然后点按您要伤害的一个或多个敌人，或者您想要抛光的任何一个冠军。 播放简短的动画，损坏或抛光效果编号，然后冲洗并重复。 敌人AI充其量是令人困惑的，因为大多数情况下，所有对立的敌人似乎都会随机攻击您团队中的一个冠军，直到他们死亡，这时他们会将注意力转移到另一个冠军上。 您击败了三组敌人，获得了充满五彩纸屑和碎屑的响亮多彩启动画面，然后继续或升级角色和设备。 突袭：Undertow传说不一定是坏游戏。 有很多东西需要收集，显然很多的爱都注入了冠军的设计和声音作品中。 它只是让人不知所措，被标准的手机游戏垃圾所困扰。 因此，作为一种标准的体验， 迄今为止，它到底是怎么被下载了超过2.5亿次的？ 很简单； 不可思议的营销量。

Roughly $700,000 are spent a week on mobile game ads in the United States, with that estimate ballooning to an incredible $2 million a week during the Coronavirus lock down. At the forefront of that marketing is Raid: Shadow Legends. According to Redditor borisbemyguide, Plarium is paying upwards of a whopping $9,600 per sponsorship of online entities. Now, this is Reddit, so take it with a grain of salt, as other reports have also stated they pay anywhere between $1,000 to $5,000, depending on platform size and content. Regardless, taking into account the sheer amount of times that phrase “brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends” is spouted across the world wide web, Plarium spends a lot of money. Advertising in the video game industry plays an incredibly important role regardless, with the compound annual growth rate growing 14% in games marketing from 2019 to 2020, with games like World of Tanks and The Elder Scrolls Online even being advertised during massive prime time spots like the Super Bowl. This advertisement obviously works, because Raid is bringing in an estimated $76,000 every single day. So, while Raid: Shadow Legends may never win any awards for its awe-inspiring game play or user friendly mechanics, as long as they persevere with the unmitigated tirade of advertisements in our YouTube videos and podcasts, people will continue to download the app and pump money into unlocking that next legendary Champion.

在美国， 每周花在移动游戏广告上的费用约为70万美元 ，据估计，在冠状病毒锁定期间，该费用每周激增至200万美元。 Raid：Shadow Legends是该行销的最前沿。 根据Redditor borisbemyguide的报道 ，Plarium为每次在线实体赞助支付的费用高达9,600美元。 现在，这是Reddit，所以要加一点盐，因为其他报告也表示，根据平台的大小和内容，它们的价格在1,000到5,000美元之间。 无论如何，考虑到短语“ Raid：Shadow Legends带给您”的次数在互联网上泛滥，Plarium花费了很多钱。 无论如何，视频游戏行业中的广告都起着举足轻重的作用，从2019年到2020年，游戏市场的复合年增长率将增长14％ ， 《战车世界》和《上古卷轴在线》等游戏甚至在诸如黄金时段这样的黄金时段进行广告宣传超级碗。 该广告显然很有效，因为Raid 每天带来的收益估计为$ 76,000。 因此，虽然《 突袭：Undertow传说》可能不会因其令人敬畏的游戏或用户友好的机制而赢得任何奖项，但只要他们坚持不懈地在我们的YouTube视频和播客中刊登广告，人们将继续下载该应用程序并投入金钱解锁下一位传奇英雄。

Hey everyone! Thanks for reading. Raid really isn’t a bad game, it’s just way more of a traditional mobile game than I realized. Admittedly, I got bored after only a few hours so I didn’t really touch on the multiplayer stuff, but, if you’re into these types of gacha games, I recommend giving it a try.

嘿大家！ 谢谢阅读。 Raid 确实不是一个糟糕的游戏，它只是一种传统的手机游戏，远远超出了我的想象。 诚然，仅几个小时后我就感到无聊，所以我并没有真正接触过多人游戏，但是，如果您喜欢这些类型的gacha游戏，建议您尝试一下。

Jared McCarty

贾里德·麦卡蒂(Jared McCarty)