Better known as Mega Man Legends, this marked the tail end of my incredible month-ish long Mega Man binge, and was the 26th game in the series that I played over the course of April to May this year. This is a game I very briefly tried when I was younger, but I never ended up going back to it for some reason or another. Japanese PSN doesn't have the PS1 versions of the Legends games, but it does have their native PSP ports! They seemed to be pretty straight-up ports with very little change, so I decided to give it a whirl via my PSTV to see mostly how the controls had been changed, if at all. It took me about 8 hours to do just about everything in the Japanese version of the game under the helpful guidance of my resident Mega Man Legends fan, DogStrong~.

Mega Man Legends tells the story of a far flung future's Mega Man. Sure, his name may be Rock (at least in the Japanese version), but this is many many years after even the Mega Man X games end (and likely the Zero games too). The world has been flooded, and the last remnants of humanity survive on their tiny islands by scavenging parts from old technology, and the people who do that scavenging are called "Digouters" (which is, yes, a VERY silly name X3). Rock, his adoptive sister Roll, their grandpa Barrel, and their robotic monkey assistant Data are one such Digouter team, but they find themselves stranded on a small island after their ship breaks down. Rock's quest begins as just one to repair their ship so they can leave, but it quickly evolves into a mission to protect the island from the vicious bandits attacking it and finding the island's hidden treasure before they can!

The story isn't going for any super huge message, ultimately, but it's super engagingly told. The Japanese voice acting is excellent, and it's helped a ton by the cast of colorful characters that inhabit the island. Rock and friends are of course quite memorable, but the same goes for the ever charismatic antagonists of the Bonne family, who are the bandits trying to foil you at every turn. They are a very endearing Team Rocket-kind of bad guys, and their big machines and braggadocios natures make them steal every scene they're in. This is helped a TON by the art style and graphics of the game, which take on a kind of "anime but 3D"-style. The cutscenes are directed in such a way that the faces never look uncanny or weird, and the piles and piles of face textures in the game's files can attest to just how much work went into making every shot look just the way it was intended. For a 3D game from 1998, the graphics hold up super well even now, and that's something not many stylized graphics from that generation can too easily boast about.

The gameplay is very much like a somewhat short Zelda-like experience. The game has an overworld, three main dungeons, and a final dungeon each hiding different objectives you'll need on your quest to uncover the island's biggest secret. On the way, you'll fight tons of ancient Reaverbots guarding these ruins, as well as big boss Reaverbots and the big boss bots the Bonne's pilot. You can help even the odds a bit by finding money to buy extra upgrades for defense and upgrade your special weapons, and you can also buy and find parts you can equip to boost your attack power, rate of fire, special weapon damage, and how many bullets you can fire at once. The game isn't the hardest game I've played of the era, but it's definitely on the tougher side for a Zelda-style game.

Part of that is due to the weird, gimmicky vehicle defense sections the game sometimes throws at you (which aren't impossible, sure, but they're easily the hardest parts of the game), part of that is down to the often hazy signposting, but part of that is also down to the controls. I mentioned earlier that I bought the PSP version very curious about how it controlled, and while the control with the joypad (or joystick in my case, as I used a PS3 controller), they're actually still not very good compared to the original controls. My friend tells me this game controls a lot like the PS1 Armored Core games (which they also really like), as the default controls use tank controls on the D-pad and then use R1 and L1 to strafe back and forth. Circle-strafing is your best friend for the boss encounters in this game, and the main reason the other control methods (one swapping the function of right and left on the D-pad with the L1 and R1 buttons, and the other giving you something resembling analog control instead of the D-pad, but no camera control on the right stick as the PSP of course doesn't have one) are bad is because circle strafing doesn't work with them.

Sure, those control styles are more familiar, but you're going to have a MUCH harder time playing that way because of your inability to circle strafe properly. The game has a kind of lock-on feature, but it locks you in place, so it's very useful if you wanna shoot above or below you, but it's not very useful if a giant robot dog is about to charge you to death and eat your face. This is definitely one of those old games where it simply controls the way it does, and doesn't have any sort of conventions to stick to (in fairness, 3D was still fairly new), and the controls definitely take some getting used to for most players. Once you get the controls down, though, the game has some really fun dungeons and bosses awaiting you, even if there isn't much in the way of puzzles like the dungeons in Zelda tend to have. In true Mega Man fashion, this is an action game first and a platformer second, so fighting stuff is the main mechanical thing on display here more than pushing switches or block puzzles.

As mentioned before, the presentation graphically is absolutely excellent in how it compliments the story as well as creates a timeless graphical style. The music is also quite good, fitting the mood nicely and making battles intense and dramatic. The last thing I'll mention about the graphics is specifically how they are in this PSP port of the game, as they're probably the biggest thing you'll notice that're different from the original. The game isn't a PS1 classic or anything emulated. This is a proper native port to PSP, and so they've had to recreate that old graphical style on the PSP's architecture, and for the most part they've done a pretty darn good job. The only real shortcoming is how a lot of scenery fits together. Stand too close to a wall and you'll likely find its texture hovering slightly in front of where the wall actually stops, and Mega Man clipping into walls slightly or one wall's texture overcoming the one next to it slightly are pretty common graphical hiccups that the PS1 version doesn't really have in the same way (so I'm told). It's honestly barely significant enough to be worth mentioning, but given how little there seems to be online about these versions of the game in English, I thought it was worth at least a passing mention.


Verdict: Highly Recommended. This was still the baby steps of 3D for Capcom, but even without Ocarina of Time laying the groundwork yet (as this came out that same year), they managed to make a really compelling and competent action/adventure game in 3D! Sure, the controls aren't perfect and it's a bit short, but if you can get over the short length and adapt to the controls, there is a ton to fall in love with here. If you think you can grapple with those weird tank controls and can find it for a price that's right, this is definitely a game you don't wanna miss if 3D action/adventure games are at all something you like.

what a delightful little game! not without its flaws, but i had a great time with this one. actually, it mainly has one giant flaw. the camera is so monumentally shit. look, i get it, its a ps1 game and the developers have never made a 3d game before, yada yada, i don't really care. i'm not playing this game in 1997, its 20XX now and the camera is so bad i almost dropped this game entirely. i got better at handling it over time, sure, but even by the final boss battle, after about 8 hours of playtime, it still felt like i was fighting more against the camera than the boss itself.

but other than the camera, i really loved this game. interestingly, if you analyse each element of mega man legends individually, you'll find that it doesn't excel at anything at all. as stated, the camera is dogshit, but also the voice acting is terrible and combat is mediocre and the music is repetitive and the dungeons are very uninspiring. the exception is the art direction, this game is absolutely gorgeous and everyone knows it. but i feel that mega man legends is a textbook example of a game that is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

sure, the voice acting sucks, but it's also kind of charmingly bad and the cutscenes were always a joy to sit through. the combat is nothing special, but there's a decent level of depth to trying out different combinations of buster parts and special weapons, and learning the attack patterns of each enemy so you know how to avoid getting hit is pretty rewarding. the dungeons consist of narrow hallways and tunnels, occasionally throwing in a large arena-type room for some variety, and it all kind of feels like they were built by one of capcom's interns, but they're still a lot of fun to run-and-gun through. there's just something really cozy about the atmosphere, i'm not sure how to explain it. it's the vibe of the thing.

the last thing i want to comment on is the narrative. no spoilers, but it took a really strange twist at the very last second that i was not expecting at all, but then that twist is promptly resolved by an unexpected character and i loved it. there's lots of humour sprinkled throughout the game, you'd do well to speak to all the npcs just so you can experience all of the dialogue boxes. i only wish i got some more tron bonne, she was my favourite character. they should make a spin-off based on tron bonne, i think.

anyway, great game, i highly recommend it, it's not long so you might as well play it especially if you like cozy comfy ps1 games and shooting and robots