Summary: Strongly recommended
Legion War is a free round-based strategy game in fantasy setting, very similar to Battle for Wesnoth. Great gameplay without ads. In-game purchases are optional and grinding is only necessary if you want to max- out everything.
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wygame.legionwar&hl=en
Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/legion-war/id1143461119?mt=8
Contents
Gameplay
You can earn money by holding bases and build new units. Destroying enemies to let your units get experience. You can promote experienced units who then learn learn new skills. You receive upgrade points after each successful match which you can use to permanently upgrade unit types.
The available game modes include a campaign (without story).
Additional requirements like using only units of a certain type give the campaign missions a special twist and if you succeed, you receive more upgrade points. You can play many maps in skirmish mode. However, these maps must be unlocked with upgrade points. Also, you can play with and against humans online.
This game shares some elements with Heroes of Might and Magic. It is very similar to Advance Wars and Battle for Wesnoth.
The balancing between units and factions is good. Also, there are many difficulty levels available. So, you can choose between easy matches for beginners and matches that are almost impossible even with all upgrades applied. The UI and graphics are clean and nice. Loading times are very short
Progressing
Unlocking all skirmish maps and unit upgrades requires many matches and with them many hours of playing. You can purchase upgrade points in the store to speed it up. The biggest offer of upgrade points is 31 €, which is roughly enough to unlock everything at once. Normal playing of all campaign missions and many skirmish missions earned me enough points to fully upgrade one faction and partially upgrade all other factions. That means, the game gradually turns into grinding after approximately 20-30 hours of great fun. Multiplayer might preserve the fun though. Another great thing about Legion War is that it never annoys you with ads.
Updates
The same developers have release a similar game “Legion War – Hero Age“. It has a much higher complexity because they added tech trees and upgrades for towns. However, you can only play the human faction for free and need to pay 7.49 USD/EUR for the other factions. There is no campaign or story mode, no unlocks. So, the replayability is unfortunately very limited.