Boy, managing cities was easy back in Ancient China. Large swathes of houses destroyed by rebellion? Royalty fleecing you for more taxes? Governor more interested in desperately trying to find a wife? No prob. To keep the folks happy, just plonk down a nice flower garden. Maybe a grocery store or two, or a smithy if you’re in the mood for something upmarket. Or if you’re really in a bind: courtesans. A courtesan house on every corner should do the trick. That was what House of Legacy taught me, anyway.
Alright, that’s oversimplifying things a bit. House of Legacy is more than a city builder, it’s a journey from a tiny, insignificant clan into a powerhouse, with access to the royal court and a finger in every pie. It’s an intriguing journey, particularly in the early game. Rising from nothing takes work and money. There’s a sense of pride looking at the start of my clan, where we wrote letters for petty cash, to now, where we own most of the farms in the area. Sadly, while this journey is impressive, House of Legacy‘s current mid-game involves a lot of thumb twiddling.
Creating Stories
Let me take you through my clan’s journey in House of Legacy. It all starts with the late Chunye Shu, whose clan was decimated by a serious of rebellions that were sweeping across China. He escaped with a handful of others, but one-by-one they all disappeared, leaving him with the job of rebuilding his clan. Fortunately, he was able to get his hands on a dilapidated estate, and before long other survivors joined up with him, allowing the clan to grow. Thus began the meteoric rise of the Shu Clan, and its terrible estate planning.
The first order of business was money, which meant visiting a nearby city. At first, these are independently governed so you can’t do much more than pick up odd jobs for cash to repair your estate. Once you have some pocket money, you can buy and lease out a house. You’ll then need to assign clan members to collect rent. You can also click on of the many citizens in House of Legacy and marry them, keeping the clan growing. That requires a nice wedding gift, and a house for the lovely couple. With a decent income, you can then buy a farm and begin to rake in some real cash. There’s an almost overwhelming variety of jobs in the early game.
Thus the great spider’s web that is House of Legacy begins to form. At first, you’ll use your clan (and hired retainers) to just keep the cash flowing. Soon though, you’ll notice that each member has their own stats, like ‘writing’ or ‘might’. One of my clan members had very high writing, so I enrolled them into imperial exams and they passed with flying colours. This allowed them to get a high paying government job, eventually steamrolling into the royal court. Another had high might and excelled in battle, becoming a top ranking general. This revelation transformed my clan management.
Weaving Political Webs
Suddenly, I was scouring cities for people with high writing or might and marrying them off to clan members. My second generation was formed by elite statesmen and invincible generals. Anyone who lacked talent would either be collecting rent or appeasing the local clans. It was fun to see the realms of possibility open before me. The problem is, now that I’ve got my clan on every seat in the court, I don’t know what to do next. It’s lacking a clear end game. Cities are largely self-sufficient, so there’s no need to check on them, beyond plonking down the occasional shop. I suppose it could be to liberate every rebellion-controlled region on the map, but the combat is just a glorified text box and timer. Hardly riveting.
It could be to install a clan member as emperor? That’s certainly possible, I just don’t want to do it. That’s ’cause, in the mid-game, the micromanagement becomes grating. When a clan member is civil minister, for instance, you have to appoint to every open position, picking clan members and civilians out of the throngs. Constantly finding teachers for the new clan members grates a bit too. It ends up feeling like a numbers game as you’re watching the clock tick away, awaiting the next set of messages at the start of the new year, where everyone in the world has their birthday. You can keep the emperor job.
Part of this problem is House of Legacy‘s big lack of challenge past the early game. I never found any roadblocks to my progress. Other clans can overthrow your guys, but I just stuck a few spare clan members on ‘buttering up’ duty and never worried about them again. Rebels never attacked me, city discontent went away with a few flower gardens. I was just sitting there watching numbers increase, and doing the same things over and over. One of my clan members is chancellor, I control the other major court positions, I have my own fief and a handful of top generals. This should be a tense time, full of constant political fires. Instead, my only worry seems to be the occasional bout of dyspepsia.
House of Legacy – Potential Depth
House of Legacy is wonderfully presented, mind. The graphics are bright and colourful, the little depictions of citizens are cute, and it’s a great choice of setting. There’s a lot of potential in the systems, too. There’s a good foundation for political intrigue – the other clans just need to play more. At the moment, a lot of the systems are underbaked or easily exploited. Take the combat. Winning depends on troop numbers and morale. To lower the enemy morale, you can send in people to start rumours, based on their ‘cunning’ stat. So I just hired a big batch of retainers and repeatedly sent them into any tight conflict, which always got me the win.
Wars probably shouldn’t be won over a mound of headless retainers. But still, this is just an example of House of Legacy having solid foundations, that aren’t quite there yet. The skills of our clan members are all important (well, except for Arts I guess), and the systems are beginning to interact with each other. It’s just too easy to game, and the challenge completely falls out once you’ve got a good income. There’s a healthy looking roadmap set out, though, so fingers crossed future updates give House of Legacy the depth it deserves.
