Developed by meta-mega, Levistone Story brings back the traditional dungeon exploration notable in many retro fantasy games, where a party of adventures delves into the unknown in search of treasure and fame. Combining a retro pixel aesthetic with modern QoL systems and a pick-up-and-go combat system, this particular title will transport its players back to one of the roots of video gaming history in an MMO-like medium.
Putting together a balanced trio of characters to take on dungeons and resolve quests is the bread and butter of this mobile game, and each Hero brings a skill to support allies or clear away foes. By exploring dungeons and completing quests you can grow your own adventure camp from the ground up, creating a thriving home base while learning the mysteries held within the enigmatic world of Levistone Story.
▍Simple Dungeons to Explore With Strategic Opportunities
The dungeon system of Levistone Story uses 2D maps and four-directional movement, bringing to mind early dungeon crawlers with similar controls. Enemies prowl different chambers, rewarding powerful Relics and Levistone Altars that provide strong blessings to any adventurers who can defeat these foes.
Exploration is done by the player, leading their team down different paths to make their way to the end of the level. Any monsters that need to be defeated idle around until the player moves their team toward them, starting the fight.
In Levistone Story, the player’s role in battle is to activate Hero Skills to assist their party. You can choose between manually targeting skills by aiming a cursor or tapping the skill icon itself to automatically select a target, which is a helpful alternative in heated battles, and timing your skills is much more important. Alternatively, you can set each skill to activate automatically without any player input, allowing you to coast through easier dungeons through sheer strength.
Levistone Energy is accumulated in battle and through Levistone Pillars; with enough energy, you can activate powerful Levistone Skills that can turn the tide in battle, like stunning a powerful enemy or launching a powerful AoE attack!
Making the most of what’s in the environment of Levistone Story is the key to clearing dungeons, especially if your adventurers are at a disadvantage. Whether it is leaving Health Orbs alone to replenish your team’s HP later or immediately obtaining a Levistone Blessing early on to blitz through weaker enemies.
These choices can make dungeon crawling a rough crawl or a walk-in-the-park. Most of the dungeons in Levistone Story are simple to traverse, making gameplay accessible for on-and-off playing or new players who aren’t used to the genre.
▍Grow Your Camp to Empower Your Team
Simply farming out quests from the Task Board can only help your characters to a certain extent; the player will need to collect Levicores, Levidust, and a myriad of Resources to unlock and level up their Camp facilities!
The Task Board will be your friend in accumulating materials to build Camp facilities, providing you with Hero Experience and materials to help your characters grow. You’re limited to several Tasks per day, but it’s well worth the effort to complete each request as resources accumulate at a slow rate outside of these quests.
Not all Heroes are made equal, so the Tavern will be there for you to replace characters with stronger ones. Though you’ll only have access to low-rarity Heroes at the beginning, investing enough materials into the facility will yield strong characters with significantly higher stats.
Finishing this trio of important buildings is the Furnace, which allows you to upgrade your gear and provide stronger benefits to its user. Weak or low-level gear is still useful in Levistone Story instead of just being vendor fodder, as they can be used as fuel to make equipment stronger.
Though there are many facilities that can be unlocked by exploring the Abyss, they’ll need some investment to show some returns. By successfully challenging different locations on the World Map the player will be able to obtain camp resources over time, so it is extremely important to check the World frequently, as these locations are locked behind your progress into the Abyss.
You won’t have much to work with starting out, which is why the game heavily encourages the player to progress through the Abyss as quickly as possible to improve their Camp.
▍A Blend of Traditional and MMO-Like Character-Building Elements
Keeping your heroes up to date is an important habit, as you’ll be relying on potions and Rune Mannaz to keep your adventuring trio alive if a healer is unavailable. Not only will you need to enhance your gear, but the characteristics of your Heroes play a significant role in how you’ll tackle enemies; do you try to blow up enemies with powerful AoE spells before they can reach you, or whittle each foe down with a slow and steady approach?
Heroes are recruited at the Tavern with a little bit of Gold, and each character comes with a randomly generated appearance, name, job, stats, and skill. Though you won’t have the opportunity to customize a Hero to your tastes, almost any combination of a job, stats, and skill is viable in exploring the Abyss. Check often to see if a character with a desirable skill or a Rare Hero shows up at the Tavern!
▍The Choice of Gear and Cards Makes Everything Interesting
Gear can make or break a hero in the making, and the Abyss provides plenty of opportunities for the player to create a trio of powerhouses. Though each piece of equipment comes with a randomized set of attributes, most equipment can be used in all classes; you’ll rarely have a piece of equipment that is useless for all classes.
Cards are Levistone Story’s form of Gacha and provide unique benefits that can drastically improve a character’s offensive power or support skills. The only catch is that a Hero will need to have initiated Job Transfer at least once in order to equip a Card.
Once a character reaches the level cap for their current Job, you can initiate Job Transfer to increase their stats and improve their Skill! Consider carefully which upgrade you want for that Hero’s Skill, as you will need to reset the character’s job and grind out their levels again if you change your mind.
A neat feature of Levistone Story’s character system is that you can effectively ‘recycle’ characters, converting any experience invested into the recycled Hero as Food and returning any equipment to the player’s inventory. There’s no downside to investing in weaker characters, so there isn’t any issue with recruiting characters with certain skills or an appearance you might like!
▍Levistone Story Has All the Potential for Casual Gaming
Levistone Story needs some polishing in its current state especially as its English translation is rough around the edges, but meta-mega’s game won’t overstay its welcome in the RPG genre. Despite the title’s MMO-like presentation, Levistone Story can be easily played solo, and as the game auto-saves progress between floors you can close the app and return at any time to continue exploration.
The pixel graphics and chibi characters might turn away players who are looking for sleeker visuals or 3D models, but the game is a homage to early video games with all the traditional game features that are sure to remind older players of their gaming history. If you’re looking for a simple mobile game to pass the time and are a fan of retro graphics, then Levistone Story is definitely worth the try!
