The Legend of Legacy

I actually wanted to end the year with a anime review, but since my procrastination skillz have prevented me from finishing Kill la Kill, I guess I'll have to make do with a game review instead ;) Ah, tis life in a nutshell. Wow, it looks like realizing that I'm literally one day away from the new year has made me kind of philosophical. But enough of my wacky musings, and onto the real meat of this post!

I'm always excited about playing Atlus games, especially those that sell themselves on having exploration and adventure. One reason is that I might have been spoiled by Legends of the Titan (Another game with 'legend' in it's name. Coincidence?) and the Persona series. 2015 was a great year for 3DS games in my humble opinion, and though I did not pick up the latest installments of the Etrian Odyssey franchise such as the Untold: The Fafnir Knight or Etrian mystery dungeon, I did however, do myself a favor and picked up The Legend of Legacy instead!

Keep in mind that I have not finished the game since I'm stuck at the final boss (>:|) but after 40 hours or so of dungeon crawling, getting mobbed by various monsters and the like, I think I can safely give my opinion on the game while simultaneously avoiding any sort of spoilers.

I went with Eloise for my first and only playthrough, and I'm glad to say that I quite liked her. I don't know what made me choose her out of the colourful cast of characters, but I normally never chose any sort of 'Mage' type characters in game, so I probably chose her based on her gorgeous character design. I was torn between her and Bianca (the amnesiac) but eventually I jumped the wagon and went with Eloise.

She's a pretty entertaining character, her speeches are sometimes peppered with heart or star emoji's, which I personally find quite hilarious since this contrasts with her true personality. From another review I read of this game, the person admits that Eloise resembles an anti-hero more than your typical goody-two shoes, sacrifice everything hero that you normally take control of. Her motivations are quite selfish, and to see her internal monologue and sarcastic quips is a real treat! We need more characters like this.

I started out with Owen and Lars, but eventually I switched them out for Filma (the frog) and Garnet (the stern looking warrior beside the frog). Your party conists of three characters, including yourself, and is pretty flexible in terms of choosing who want to party up with since you can switch them out at the nearest inn. As with typical Atlus RPG's the gameplay is unforgiving and tough when you first start out. Forgetfulness or overconfidence will prove to be your undoing when you accidentally bump into a pack of monsters or heaven forbid, one of the mini bosses that are littered throughout some maps.

There is not much to say story wise, seeing as most of the information you glean comes from a smattering of flashbacks and finding artifacts to unlocking the mystery of the island. In fact, the real meat of the game is in the details, namely, the gameplay. It can be trying at times, but ultimately The Legend of Legacy proves to be a solid RPG in terms of game play. Anyone who wants to be invested in a good story however, will find this game to be quite disappointing.

Art/Animation is really nice. The backgrounds are beautiful, and the maps you visit all have their own unique atmospheres and obstacles to overcome. The sprites in the game (meaning your characters and enemy monsters) are great as well, but the only thing I found lacking was the lack of variation in the monster sprites. Even though the monsters you fight in each place are different, the sprites that you see or come across when you're not fighting are pretty much the same. It's unfortunate but it doesn't take anything away from the experience so I guess that can be overlooked.

Game play is great. Each character can unlock different skills depending on what weapon they're equipped with/ what you chose to equip them with, and this means that the characters are highly customisable and allow you to mold your team into the most efficient, dungeon explorers you'll ever need. You can speed up battle animations by holding down the 'A' button (something I only discovered 20 hours into the game) and it's hard to go back to slug through battles while waiting for your enemies turn to end.

And with more skills comes the annoying part, to select the skill you want, you need to go through all the other options and this can become tiring, especially when you're engaged in a ridiculously long battle with a boss. It does get boring, and I wished that they had added some sort of shortcut button to save me the effort of clicking the arrow button hundreds of times every time I wanted to select a different skill. But nevertheless, it's something that you'll learn to live with. The minor framerate problems that occur during battles with many enemies at once also show that this game is not perfect.

Music is another superbly done aspect of the game as well! They were a feast for the ears, and two of my favourites include  the battle with the Shadow giants and the last boss. On the flipside, the music you hear can make you scared as well like it did me, I can't tell you how panicked I would be when I accidentally ran into a monster and the battle song started playing. I would compare the soundtracks to each map like a calling card of sorts - easily recognisable and very unique.

Overall, I didn't regret putting in all the hours I did. The Legend of Legacy was pretty good, and I would recommend it to people who like dungeon crawlers and character driven games.

Pros

+Great gameplay
+Characters are very customisable/Character classes are not limited to the skills they start out with
+Beautiful art/animation
+Brilliant music
+Challenging
+Varying enemies both difficulty wise and appearance wise

Cons
-Minor frame rate issues
-Quite grindy
-Attack menus could have been done better
-Fights get boring quickly

Overall score: 7/10