App Army Assemble: Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast

Each week, we get early access to an exciting upcoming game and give it to a select few hardened mobile gaming experts that make up the App Army. We then feed these thoughts back to you, our audience, so you know whether it's worth your time or not. Gamer to gamer.

This week, it's Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast, an RPG in which you'll travel worlds based on popular Iron Maiden songs as the band's mascot Eddie. Along the way you'll complete quests, meet allies, and fight a bunch of Maiden-themed nasties as you uncover the pot and upgrade your team of warriors.

But is it any good? We'll leave that up the App Army to decide...

Kainen Ryan

Likes: Ok, let's see here. It's sort of an RPG in the sense you can level up and upgrade Eddie and your team of monsters, but I was a bit disappointed by the lack of a world to explore.

The game is mostly made up of turn based battling, which is like a combination of Final Fantasy and God Of War. It's fun at first but I reckon it will wear thin as there's not much to it.

Dislikes: It's not the game I hoped it would be but adding a greater variety of tactics for the battles would go a long way towards improving it. Chanandler Likes: The music is awesome. Anything Iron Maiden do sounds great and it perfectly fits a game that mostly involves beating things up! It also looks great - the menus are slick and intuitive.

There's a lot of content. I've only dropped about 5 hours into it and I don't think I've even scratched the surface.

Dislikes: It's free to play - with no spending ceiling - and yet another linear progression-based adventure game. I've seen it so many times before, just not with this particular skin.

I don't think the IP the game is based on is enough to keep me interested long term.

Aaron Carey Likes: As an Iron Maiden fan, I wasn't expecting much more than a marketing stunt but this is the real deal. I was pleasantly surprised by how polished and complete it is.

The combat is fairly nuanced and has some strategy to it, plus some interactive elements to keep it interesting (timed taps to increase damage).

Dislikes: Time will tell whether I stick at it or get punished too much by the gacha system though. The story is OK, but not too thrilling. Really, it's the collect and battle elements that bring me back to the game.

Maybe I'm not enough of a Maiden fan to really love the setting and characters.

Edward Davis

Likes: As you'd expect from an Iron Maiden game, the soundtrack is great- as are the sound effects. The graphics are fairly good as well but as for positives, that's about as far as it goes for me.

Dislikes: the gameplay is too basic. I need more than a simple "tap when the circles are aligned" to entice me to come back for more - particularly if you want me to spend money on it.

Luis Santiago Likes: Liked the art style and the game play is engaging enough but there far too many options in terms of characters. Once I'd found a healer, an area attacker, and Eddie I was pretty much set. I simply had to pump all my experience boosters on them and steamroll through the fights.

Dislikes: It was good for a couple of days but didn't sustain my interest after that. GGod Hand Likes: I've been playing this for a while now, and the best thing about it is the awesome metal music! Though the sound effects, art, and animations scream quality as well.

The game mechanics are also solid, and Eddie is a cool mascot. The intro is short but really well done.

Dislikes: The story is a bit boring and poorly developed. It follows Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie on a quest to retrieve the pieces of his soul that the forces of evil have high jacked.

As for the gameplay, it gets repetitive rather quickly. While the RPG elements are decent, it's the same formula used by a plethora of mobile games, rendering this game unoriginal - despite the Iron Maiden paint.

Lastly, the thing I dislike most is the cut and paste IAP cash grab system. This game had so much going for it and had the potential to be something great had it went down the premium route.