Defense of the Ancients (DotA)  has always been one of the highest rated Warcraft 3 mods and not just since the collaboration of developer Ice-Frog and Valve. Beneath League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth -
Land of the Chaos Online (Loco) is another one out of  who claim the heritage of one of the most successful mods of the last years.

Gameplay

It is the same procedure in a different game. Like in DotA, two teams are challenging each other on a given map with the focus on destroying the opponents headquarter. In Loco your first task is to create 3 heroes that rotate during the session. This element offers some tactical advance since you can change the hero according to the powers you need at a certain point.

Due to the enemys towers and of course, NPCs it is getting a lot more challenging. The towers are, especially in the beginning , a very serious obstacle, but at the same time, a nice place to find safety if the enemy is kicking your ass.

Killing of the enemys squads and heros get you expierience and gold, that allows you to buy  equipment, lvlup and learn new skills. Loco did in one further step in gameplay issues and is not just a copy of DotA.

One of the major features is the change of the perspective. If you control your character in Loco’s Genre colleagues from the overhead view,  loco makes you look from a MMO like  third person view. This leads to a lack of clearness, specificly in hectic situations but thats a challenge that will seperate the players.

Game facts

Generally, Loco trys to build bridges between MMOs and DotA. Fair enough, if we take a look at Alaplaya’s portfolio (they published  a number of F2P MMOs) and also, reasonable if you consider the hype of DotA and MMOs. So the player keeps his expierience and the items he saved during the play and so he can lvlup  to rank 20. An Ingameshop, auctionhouse, crafting, guilds and Missions mixup wellknown MMO-elements with the basic idea of dota and leads to “actionoriented and exciting  hero-teamplay with RPF elements”

A Gamesession is found pretty quick via the lobb, there is also an quickmatch option, a room list with all running games, the possibility to join manually and creating your own session. The players find each other pretty fast, so the refractory period between two games is quiete short.

Beta status

In the closed Beta of Loco: Land of Chaos, players can choose between twelve different characters and get insight into the annahilation mode, the dota based battle mode on the 3 given, but very different maps. Each map is giving  strategic advantages and disadvantages that can change the game in its progess significant at any time.

Currently there are a few chatbugs and in the lobbychat all people are speaking in their national language which is confusing from time to time. Generally, the game makes a good impresison. we catched some smaller bugs but no significant crashes yet. Loco is acceptable for a game in closed beta status. If the developer keep up their good work, an open beta phase could come up soon. Graphically would an improvement be pretty nice but up to this point you get the usual free to play graphics. Even though it contains some nice effects, the characters and environment looks pretty boring.

Cost

Free2 Play doesn’t mean that its completely free. Like in most F2P MMOs there will be an itemshop but there are no further information on that topic. Thus it is not clear if the items bring notable advantages for the player. Critical for the fun and amusement will also be the balancing on higher levels. We couldn’d check on that yet.

Our impression

Like we expected. Loco is neither a hit nor a sensational discovery but a solid Free 2 Play game. Those who like the dota concept can check it out and will have fun with it. Even if its just for a few minutes and not  for a lifelong addiction.

Footage

See all Screenshots on our gallery

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