‘The Legend of Legacy’ game review
By Lauren Paulsen, Senior Columnist
3/5
The Legend of Legacy is a Japanese role playing game for the Nintendo 3DS. It is the spiritual successor to the SaGa series, and many of the staff that worked on that series also worked on this game. Some gamers might recognize these people, or more likely, the games they worked on, including Masato Kato, the writer of Chrono Trigger; Masashi Hamauzu, the composer for Final Fantasy XIII; and the illustrator and the designer for the SaGa series, Tomomi Kobayashi and Kyoji Koizumi, respectively.
To begin with, the player can choose to play as one of seven different adventurers. Meurs, the last elementalist alive, is travelling to the island to find out why all of the elementals are gathering there. Bianca is a very optimistic girl who wakes up on the island with no memory of who she is. Liber is a young treasure hunter and thrill seeker searching for a legendary treasure called the Star Graal. Garnet is a Templar sent by her church to prove that there are no heretic gods on Avalon. Owen is an experienced bounty hunter sent by Garnet’s church to eliminate those claiming to be the gods. Eloise is an alchemist searching for the Star Graal, hoping to use it to obtain eternal youth. Lastly, Filmia, the heir to a lost kingdom, is a frog prince who likes to randomly burst into song and the only non-human playable character.
Choosing your character determines the reason you are on the island, and therefore the opening scene, as well as who the other two characters in your party will be in the beginning. It isn’t necessarily a big deal, because aside from the slight dialogue differences, the plot ends up being the same. You can still gather the other four characters to switch out your party, albeit not your main character.
Plot-wise, the game really doesn’t have much of one. You are only given a vague goal at the beginning, and you spend the rest of the time exploring various areas in whatever order you like to collect elemental shards and defeat monsters. Mapping out the areas is interesting, as you can actually sell the maps. After you sell the maps—hopefully after thoroughly exploring, because you can only sell them once each—you can find NPCs and the other characters who are not in your party roaming around the areas you’ve mapped.
Even though it may not be very rich in plot, The Legend of Legacy has two major strengths going for it. The first is that the art is gorgeous. Each area is hand-drawn, like an artistic pop-up book. When you move around, the trees, boulders, and whatnot literally pop up from the ground. The characters are also quite cute: the chibi style is similar to that of Bravely Default.
The second boon the game has to offer is that it is really hard. A lot of time needs to be spent grinding to level up your characters, particularly in the beginning, to avoid constantly dying. It doesn’t help that you often come across really tough foes without meaning to. Unfortunately, this could also be seen as a problem, as those with short attention spans will likely get tired of grinding or frustrated with constantly dying.
So, depending on what type of gamer you are, you’ll probably either love The Legend of Legacy and spend hours playing it, or you’ll hate it and move on to another game.
