DC Legends was a free-to-play online game for iOS and Android devices released in 2015.
Earth has come under attack by mysterious attackers, prompting Zatanna to investigate. The assailants are evil doppelgangers of the superheroes and villains. They must reunite all superheroes and villains to fight off all the doppelgangers and save the world.
The game's server eventually shut down in 2022.
DC Legends includes examples of...
- Action Bomb: Green Arrow's ultimate has him shooting explosive arrows at a group of enemies.
- Adaptational Wimp: As should be expected, several characters have their power levels toned down for the sake of balance.
- Superman, despite being the strongest being in the universe, can be easily taken down by the doppelgangers if he sustains enough damage.
- Batman, despite being the most intelligent character, can be easily outnumbered by multiple hits from enemies, despite one of his abilities being to avoid taking damage.
- The Flash, despite being the fastest being in the universe, refuses to avoid taking damage from enemies, making him more vulnerable than he canonically is.
- Dr. Fate is a Support character and not particularly powerful even in that role, meaning that the majority of the other characters in the game can easily defeat him one-on-one. He has only a limited use as part of the largely outdated team. The same is true of Zatanna, who is a member of the same team.
- Darkseid, despite being the biggest threat in the universe, can be easily taken down.
- In a meta-sense, this is one of the big complaints about the Legendary characters that require certain characters to be at certain levels and ranks: after all the effort put into unlocking them, they're easily destroyed by characters specifically introduced to annihilate them.
- Alternate Universe: A key aspect of the game's premise and story. Multiple superheroes and villains from other universes can be added to the roster. For example, Stargirl, Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, etc.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: The game added a feature where some characters get multiple skins that can be purchased using different in-game currencies. They don't do anything mechanically, but they do give the players the option of dressing their dollies up as their favorite version of the character.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The game features a type of damage called 'True Damage', which ignores armor and resistances.
- Back from the Dead: Some characters can revive themselves after defeat.
- Badass Normal: Most of the characters with the "Skill" origin trait, such as Green Arrow and Arsenal, can easily defeat magic-type enemies. While they struggle fighting science-type enemies, they at least deal some damage to them.
- Bash Brothers: Certain characters will benefit each other when part of the same team, which can sometimes include special attack animations. While often this is a general "team" benefit, some of them require specific characters.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: The doppelgangers are evil, but still retain their character's personality before attacking.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: A common complaint following the introduction of PVP elements is that certain elements needed to strengthen characters are exceedingly rare, such as only occasionally appearing in the in-game shop and only in smallish quantities, but one can purchase a set of 10 or more for some real-world cash...
- Brought to You by the Letter "S": Some characters' logo forms a single letter, the most obvious one being Superman's 'S' on his suit.
- Composite Character: While many characters are based on their comic version, some are versions of the DCEU. Examples include Aquaman's Justice League movie version and Joker's Suicide Squad movie version.
- Decomposite Character: Occasionally, more than one version of a particular character is featured in the roster, usually via there being a mainline version and an alternate version based on a specific portrayal.
- Flat Character: Unfortunately, because of the large roster of the game, several characters don't have much of a personality.
- Fragile Speedster: Flash, Wally West, Impulse, and Reverse Flash have their unique abilities, but not enough to compensate for their low health.
- Lightning Bruiser: The game's strongest characters often fall into this, such as Batman, Superman, Soloman Grundy, Doomsday, etc.
- Mighty Glacier: Characters include Superman, Cyborg Superman, Soloman Grundy, Doomsday, etc.
- Ninja: Ras Al Ghul, Talia Al Ghul, Robin (Damian Wayne)
- Power Creep: As is standard for mobile/freemium games.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat:
- Status Effects: These are an essential part of the gameplay, with virtually every character applying status buffs or debuffs somewhere in their abilities, and many of the most powerful characters able to manipulate many status effects at once. At high levels it is not uncommon for characters to have 5+ status effects active on them at any given time. The game's set of green-colored positive status buffs is matched by a similar-but-opposite set of red negative debuffs; keeping your team covered in green and/or the enemy team smothered in red is usually vital to winning a battle. Many effects that make an appearance:
- Bleed: Characters will lose a portion of their health every turn. Its positive twin which restores HP over time is called "Regeneration."
- Attack/Defense reduction: Both present as "Offense Up" and "Defense Up," which have their mirror debuffs of "Offense Down" and "Defense Down." Each status either increases or reduces the character's corresponding capabilities by 50%, and includes both damage dealt/taken as well as the chance to apply or resist debuffs. This means that damage output and buff/debuff application can vary massively depending on which characters have these effects on them.
- Stun: A character cannot make a move for at least one turn.
- Healing reduction: The "Heal Block" debuff completely prevents all healing on an affected character and is vital in combating teams that heavily feature such abilities.
- Silence: "Ability Block" prevents characters from using their special or ultimate abilities, instead forcing them to only use their basic attack. This is possibly the second most powerful debuff after Stun, as while the character can still act, many characters are reduced from huge threats to relatively inconsequential by this.
- Accuracy reduction: Appears in the "Blind" ability which, barring any other factors, will cause any attacks the character performs to miss and do nothing. Affected characters can still take actions that affect themselves or their teammates without issue (such as using an ability that heals their team). Some characters (those with higher than 100% base accuracy) and abilities (usually marked as "unavoidable") can get around this.
- Slow: Appears in the Speed Up/Speed Down effects, which either increase or reduce the rate at which a character gains turn meter. There is a second form of this, different from other status effects, which directly reduces the amount of turn meter another character has. Characters must build up 1000 turn meter in order to get an action, so a turn meter reduction ability may deduct 200 points from that 1000 point gauge, for instance (the specific amount varies). This is one of the more potent forms of control along with Stun and Ability Block, as if enough of these turn meter reduction effects are stacked, a character can be effectively locked out of ever being able to act. There are likewise abilities that directly add turn meter to your own side, and these are frequently among the more powerful abilities in the game as well.
- Anti-Debuff: The "Immunity" effect gives you this, making it impossible to place debuffs on the character so long as they have Immunity active. Its inverse, "Disrupted," prevents any buffs from being applied to the character, and the recently introduced "Safeguard" effect prevents any buffs the character has from being removed.
- Revive-on-Death: A variation called "Deathproof" which prevents a character from dying when hit with a fatal amount of damage. Instead, they are reduced to 1 HP and one instance of Deathproof is consumed. The played-straight version (in which the character does die, but immediately returns to life with some HP restored) has now been officially introduced as a status effect with its own indicator, as the number of characters in the game who had this ability in their kit kept growing and growing.
- Overheal: A healing ability can give another character health beyond their max health if their health is already full.
- True Companions: Several team bonuses are meant to reflect how close-knit they are.
- Weak, but Skilled: Several Controller characters (especially the ones portrayed as martial artists) are portrayed as this, as they rely on their ability to inflict debuffs on their enemies in order to survive. Examples of this include Green Arrow, Two-Face, and Penguin.
- Most of the characters with the "Skill" origin trait qualify for this, as this category tends to include any character without any superhuman abilities or overly fantastical technology, such as Green Arrow, Arsenal, Two-Face, etc. These characters are able to compete and contribute on an even playing field alongside cosmic and even multi-dimensional power players such as Darkseid, Doctor Fate, etc.
- Unwinnable: This can happen if both sides are reduced to characters with powerful defense/healing but little offensive power, to such an extent that neither one can actually damage the other faster than they recover health. Some game modes have a timer which will eventually count down and end the match, but others don't (most notably Blitz, where a player who finds himself in this situation has no choice but to retreat from the match).
