REVIEW: Legend of Keepers: Return of the Goddess

REVIEW: Legend of Keepers: Return of the Goddess

Worship the hippo goddess, or else…

Released: Steam
Type: Single-player
Genre: Strategy, Rgouelite
Developer: Goblinz Studio,
TavroxGames
Publisher: Goblinz Publishing
Release date: 13 Sep, 2021

Legend of Keepers finally got its full release in April of this year, after having spent some time in early access, and now it’s seeing its first DLC: Return of the Goddess. The goddess in this case being an ancient hippo-mummy-goddess named Toeris, a master inspired by the ancient Egyptian goddess that shares name with her.

In ancient Egypt Toeris (Taueret, Taweret) was the goddess of childbirth and fertility, but in Legend of Keepers she’s dropped any pretenses of being a kind and protective figure, as her long slumber has meant that people has stopped worshipping her, and instead wants people to fear her. Because it’s better to be feared than forgotten, right?

The titular goddess in all her glory

Return of the Goddess is a DLC that adds one new master, Toeris, an ancient goddess awaken from her long slumber, ten new monsters, all of which are mummified creatures, new artifacts, traps and maybe most important, the Sarcophagi, which occupies a room of its own and is used to unnerve any foolish heroes who encroach on your domain. And you get to use all of this in a new campaign, that’s of a similar length to the campaigns for the previously existing masters.

Toeris enjoys seeing heroes run away in fear. In fact that’s her specialty, forcing heroes to flee, and she’s further encouraged to do so by a few different bonuses she can get from fleeing heroes. Most of the new creatures, all of which are unique to her campaign, also have efficient morale breaking attacks, that further plays into the whole fear thing. Not that you can’t kill heroes when you play as Toeris, but focusing on breaking the resolve of the heroes is heavily encouraged. She is also really tanky, being able to take quite a beating in combat, but on the other hand she’s slower than past masters.

You get to pick one of these at the start of each new run

The new creatures are all mummified beasts, some human, some animal, and as they’re mummies it’s pretty common for them to be weak against fire. Not every single one is weak to fire, but it’s a common theme. The vast majority of them, though not all of them, also have some way of hitting the enemy morale, either directly, or by adding negative status effects that make the enemies more likely to flee in the future, be it terrified (increases future morale damage) or demoralized (takes morale damage at the start of every turn). There’s also a new positive status effect, wraps, that creatures can get that makes it so that any creature that is killed will hurt the morale of the hero that killed them. Heroes do gain morale from killing creatures, so this is a handy way of offsetting this.

The sarcophagi are probably the most interesting new addition to the game. Once unlocked one room will always be occupied by one of these. There are three different variants, but they specialize in, like most other things in the arsenal of the goddess, scaring heroes. Sarcophagi are invulnerable for a few turns and during this time they can freely use their abilities, though their HP starts at 1 so once their invulnerability wears off they’ll get destroyed by the next attack. As for their abilities, they have different ways of dealing morale damage to enemies, and one also has the ability to summon mummies at the cost of tears, which you conveniently get by scaring heroes.

The skill tree is shaped like a pyramid because egypt?

The skill tree of Toeris is fittingly enough shaped like a pyramid, where you start at the bottom and work yourself up towards the top. Her upgrades are pretty varied, but one of the most significant ones is one that gives you money when heroes run away. This really adds up after just a few encounters.

If you liked the pixel art of the core game you’ll like what this DLC has to offer. The new creatures are cool looking and varied and Toeris herself is big and imposing. There’s also a new background theme for when heroes invade, which is Egyptian themed (store page says pyramid themed, but since when does pyramids have windows?) and quite good looking. Toeris could use some more voice lines though, as they get repeated quite often.

The pixel art is as great as always!

Closing Thoughts

Return of the Goddess is a DLC that mostly adds more of the same. Toeris does bring with her a slightly different playstyle, but I always thought that the morale system worked better as a backup rather than as the main way of defeating enemies. The new monsters are at least cool, and the sarcophagi is an interesting new room, but none of these things ultimately changes the game all that much. If you loved Legend of Keepers and crave more, then this DLC is well worth getting, but if you did not care much for the game to begin with then this DLC won’t change your mind.

Written by
Fnord
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