Shape-Sorting has Rarely Felt so Pointless
I have an admission that probably should have disqualified me from reviewing Legends Aligned: Land of Order. I don’t really get much enjoyment from this small subgenre of shape-sorting puzzles. Appropriately for a jigsaw style of game, I don’t feel like I fit.
My issue is that I don’t really know where the enjoyment is meant to come from. Perhaps someone can tell me. There are probably a dozen ways – maybe more – of solving each puzzle in these shape-sorting games, so there’s no singular solution that is just out of reach. It’s not serenely satisfying to interact with, so there’s no cozy factor. And each piece looks the same, so there’s no jigsaw-style picture that develops. Every puzzle feels the same as a result.
I’m sorry, Legends Aligned: Land of Order. The relationship was doomed to fail. I feel like you’ve been put on a blind date with a sworn nemesis.
Tesselation Across the Nation
There’s a high chance that you’ve never played a game like Legends Aligned: Land of Order, so I should reverse and describe it. Each puzzle starts with an oddly shaped grid. It’s your first clue to where pieces should be socketed. Jutting bits will probably need a very specific shape to fill them.
Because that’s your task: you are required to cover every last square of this oddly shaped grid with Tetris-like blocks. There can be no gaps. No block can be left behind. You have to cover every square of the grid without once crossing the walls of the puzzle.
The blocks you are given are a mixed bag. There are one-block pieces, Tetris-style long blocks, and even hulking 3x3ers. Each block has been allocated a personality: mermaids, knights, skeletons and minotaurs are all drafted in from your average fantasy settings. It’s why the game has been given a very RPG-baiting title.
Playing a Process More than a Game
We played each level in the same way. The bigger, more nobbly blocks are the pains. They are the ones you need to dump into the grid first. It’s best to wiggle them into the nobbly areas of the grid. Then you work your way down, tesselating the big blocks with the medium-sized blocks. If you’re still looking okay having reached the smaller 1×1 or 1×2 blocks, then you’ve probably won.
I will give Legends Aligned: Land of Order credit: it’s slightly better than most, mainly because it gives you precisely the number of blocks you need to complete the puzzle. I’ve played games in this genre where you are given more blocks than you need, and it’s farcical. It’s almost impossible to fail. With Legends Aligned: Land of Order things can, feasibly, get challenging.
But it’s definitely prone to all the criticism from the opening paragraph. It takes almost no time at all to hit a wall of fatigue. There are only so many grid shapes that the designers can cook up, and considering the pieces all look the same and they have no gameplay effect, things get samey, fast. You start hitting patterns of play. Big blocks first, small blocks last.
There are umpteen ways to solve each puzzle. That’s particularly odd when you start using the Hint feature, which has a very specific puzzle-winning layout in mind, and it might not be the one you’re working towards.
When there are a multitude of solutions, the pressure comes off. Which is not a good thing, I would argue. In most cases you can play mindlessly, vaguely following the big block rule, and you will only have to do some minor shuffling in the endgame. There were two or three puzzles where I had to Reset the grid because my plan wasn’t working, but that was it. These layouts were very much in the minority.
A Little like Sorting the Cutlery Drawer
Which made Legends Aligned: Land of Order something like a cozy game. My mind would almost entirely switch off as I placed each block. But even cozy games need variety, pay-offs or moments of interest. Legends Aligned: Land of Order has none of those things. As a cozy game, it’s too one-note to instill feelings of comfort.
You know those shape-sorting games you had as a very young kid? The ones with hammers and blocks? It’s not too far removed from what you have here. Without challenge and variety, I felt like I was pulling up a seat at pre-school to push star blocks through star holes.
Again, I’m not the target audience. There must be people who enjoy the 30 levels of what is offered here, as they release on the Xbox fairly often. I’d love to know what those players value from the experience – is it the puzzle or the cozy lack of puzzle? – because I can’t find that value. To me, this is gaming at its most benign, verging on pointless.
Most of all, it made me want to play a full-fat RPG. I don’t think any game could have made me more ready for Crimson Desert than the empty, slightly challenge-less Legends Aligned: Land of Order.
Important Links
Legends Aligned Returns With Land Of Order – https://www.thexboxhub.com/legends-aligned-returns-with-land-of-order/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/legends-aligned-land-of-order-xbox-series/9pm99841hc05
Buy an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/legends-aligned-land-of-order-xbox-one/9ng6frqjt87s
Grab a PC version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/legends-aligned-land-of-order-windows/9pjj0glb327w
