Gauntlet Dark Legacy is the follow-up to Gauntlet Legends and another installment in the long-running Gauntlet series of hack-and-slash action games. As with all the Gauntlet games, you play a medieval fantasy character who, along with allies if you have them, fights his or her way through hordes of evil creatures on the never ending quest for more gold and perhaps even an eventual goal. This version contains the characters and levels from Gauntlet Legends, plus the new characters and levels from the Dark Legacy arcade game, with a few extra levels thrown in. There are eight characters to initially choose from: the mighty Warrior, the deadly Valkyrie, the quick-footed Archer, the powerful Wizard, the spellcasting Sorceress, the stalwart Knight, the valiant Dwarf, and the chaotic Jester. Although there are similarities between characters from the two games, each character looks and plays differently. In addition, there are eight alternative-modes for these characters to unlock, plus dozens of secret characters to obtain. With a multi-tap, up to four players can play, with rules governing how much they can hurt each other. Unlike the original Gauntlets, the levels you'll face take place in various terrain from forests to mountains to volcanic plains. Many of the monsters are familiar to old fans of the series, but there are some new blood among the ranks of evil, including some rather large foes.
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It's one of the grindiest games ever made, but if played like an arcade game, in bursts separated by a few days per realm, it doesn't feel quite as long. And throughout, classic arcade design like rotating power ups and having multiple unlockable character classes, make the repetitive levels feel more exciting. Only the last two or three realms really feel boring due to their level length, but the challenging boss fights at their ends make up for it quite a bit.
I recommend whole heartedly if you can get some friends together to play as a team. It's a fun night!
The game is pretty economical. There are different enemy models for each world, but there are only a few different character classes that have more damaging tiers—rushing enemies that blow up, long range enemies, short range melee enemies, commander style enemies, and small type enemies that can be overwhelming in large numbers. Then there are unique minibosses like golems, grim reapers, and dragons that take and do more damage than the usual enemies.
The basic loop is working your way through a series of themed levels finding collectibles and keys. You unlock different worlds through finding colored stones, and can move between worlds at any time from the hub area. Each world will have a special item in it that will do major damage to the boss of another world, so you're incentivized to explore the available worlds before taking on the each world's bosses. My favorite levels were the jester levels, which are all fantastical and dreamlike, EC Escher inspired. I also liked the Doom-inspired flesh-wall/blood level.
The game is mindless fun, but I wish there was just one more layer of something to it. What I really felt was missing was a way to avoid damage. Taking damage in regular levels is usually pretty harmless, but since boss fights have a ton of moves you can't dodge, they mostly feel like rote HP checks—can you dish out enough damage before dying? Usually, you can. But I would have liked a dodge roll or a stronger block move or something like that, which could have made the boss fights feel a little more active.
I had a good time playing through this—it took about 11 hours. It made me curious about the earlier Gauntlet games.