Legend of Legacy is a 3DS RPG where you play as an adventurer exploring an unchartered island. You go to a new area, you explore it, you fill it in the map. You move to the next area, explore it, map it. And on and on until you finish the game. It’s a simple, unremarkable experience in many ways, but it scratches my exploration itch and that’s good enough for me.
After all, it’s that unscratched itch that made my interest in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 disappear faster than a con man with a fool’s money. Not that I’m accusing Monolithsoft of conning me or anything. It’s still a beautiful game with plenty to do in it and I’m quite eager to get back to it. It’s just… I really really wanted to fill in the maps my self. For all its other flaws, Legend of Legacy lets me do that much with minimal interference, which is why I had a great time playing it over the weekend.
That said, exploring and mapping is pretty much all the game has going for it. The graphics and character designs are so-so. My main character (Liber) has almost no backstory and a very simple personality. The music is unremarkable. There isn’t much of a story, though there’s a bit of lore revealed in drips and drabs. <— This is actually a good thing because I don’t have anyone forcing me to go where I don’t want to go or making me sit through cutscenes when I’d rather be out there fighting. It’s been 5 years, but I’m still lightly traumatized by 7th Dragon 2020.
Normally I love it when a game gives me the freedom and lack of linearity that Legend of Legacy offers. The problem is, if a game doesn’t have much of a story and the characters are generics in all but name then the gameplay needs to be excellent to carry the whole experience. However the gameplay here is neither very good nor very bad. It’s just okay-ish. Let me briefly explain the two biggest issues for anyone who might considering this game.
1. The overabundance of encounters. Because of the Saga-like way the game works where you level up more or less randomly as you fight, you don’t feel the importance of each individual encounter. Since you’re more likely to get stronger fighting strong enemies while weak monsters are just a waste of time, I’d much rather fight one boss-class mook for 10 minutes and than fight 10 weaklings for 1 minute each. Unfortunately the latter are very much more common. You can dodge or outrun encounters, but then an enjoyable JRPG/dungeon-crawler turns into a horrible stealth/racing hybrid where you can’t even take in the sights. My kingdom for an invisibility accessory.
2. Elemental field effects drag battles out. Pointless, annoying gimmick. There are invisible forces called “elementals” floating around. The kind of elemental that’s most common on a battlefield affects all the participants in the battle. For example if Water elementals are most prevalent then magic damage is halved for both enemies and allies. If Wind prevails then physical damage is halved for everyone. For example in the screenshot below, Owen’s fancy attack is only going to hit for puny damage because the field is wind-dominated.
I’m in such an area right now (Roaring Valley) and it’s pretty annoying. “No problem,” you say, “If physical damage is halved then I’ll just use magic!” Not so fast, Gandalf. Before you can cast any spells, you have to waste a turn signing a contract with an elemental. Which would be okay if you did it once a battle and it stuck. But no, elementals are as fickle as an otome game heroine. If an enemy uses a spell of the same color, they’ll break the contract and trot over there with their tails wagging: “You rang, master?” Then you have to waste another turn signing another contract. Oh, and any spells you had queued up before the betrayal will fail, costing you SP. It’s every bit as tedious as it sounds.
In short, you can’t explore freely because of weak encounters dotting the map. And when you get into those encounters, you can’t fight freely because you have to deal with elementals getting in the way. And when you win the encounters, you may or many not get any growths as a a results – most likely you’ll walk away with diddly squat. Put all that together and chances are high that Legend of Legacy will be one of those games where I decide one day that I’ve seen enough and just drop it. Luckily that day hasn’t come yet, so I’m still having a moderate amount of fun with this game. I’ll write about it again when I either finish it or drop it. Until then!
Gosh, I feel your pain; I absolutely hated that elemental gimmick as well. It took me ages to understand how it worked, and I solely used it when the game forced me to do so, i.e. during boss fights. In my opinion, the game would have been better off without these mechanics.
The “field effects” idea was good but everything else about it was bad.
According to an FAQ, I’m halfway through now. Ehhh…
You might want to check out Xenoblade X if it ever comes to the Switch – your primary objective in that game is basically to map out, explore, and discover uncharted territory around a crash landing site, and you’re given a lot of freedom in how you can approach it since story missions are unlocked when you clear rather open-ended objectives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5GMD_-y6Iw
Great blog by the way – just stumbled across it while looking for obscure DS games like Wizman’s World (barely anything has been written about it) and Sakura Note. The DS sure has one heck of a varied library from Japanese developers. I also love how you approach games from different angle depending on the mechanics or genres.
by the way – are you on Twitter perchance?
I’m praying for a XCX port on Switch or PC like you wouldn’t believe. I really love exploring beautiful game worlds. A lot of the obscure games I play are obscure for a reason (i.e. they suck) but Wizman’s World was great. I’m thinking of revisiting and clearing it now that I’ve almost exhausted the DS library. Please try it if you get the chance.
Thank you for visiting. I’m not on Twitter and don’t plan to be either but I hope you’ll visit this little blog again soon.