Rayman Legends is an example of a game that will never age. There's a beautiful painterly art style to everything with backdrops that look like they were taken straight from the concept art. The music is incredibly unique and varied, and the gameplay, though introduced with Origins, is very satisfying and quick.

Lots of my memories with this game has kinda left me since first playing it back in 2013. It's crazy to think it has been 11 years since it first released, and even crazier is the fact that Origins had only released 2 years prior. While I think Origins still holds up as well, I think the art style with the characters, doesn't seamlessly integrate with the environments. Don't get me wrong, I think this was a deliberate choice, in order to make the interactive elements and characters stand out from the background. But I believe this choice hindered the art style, making looking back at Origins feel almost a little dated. For a while throughout my life I vastly preferred the cartoony cel shaded characters of Origins, but my mind has changed.

Disregarding my feelings on the art style, Legends isn't just all style and no substance. Legends has a meaty main game where collecting every Teensie and getting enough lums has you looking through every nook and cranny in the game. There's a lot of challenge to this, but not too much to where I was frustrated. Each character has a moveset of standing and running punches and kicks, with the running punch almost acting like a roll attack from Donkey Kong Country, wherein you are thrust forward with momentum after using it. This is a very "risk or reward" type of move; sometimes you want to use it to get faster or carry your momentum through a jump, which the game encourages, but other times you might use it and not be aware of the danger that is just a few feet ahead. There's also an expected ground pound move, but it can destroy enemies within a short radius, which helps if you hadn't have aimed right on top of an enemy.

What I think really carries the movement in this game is the animations. Rayman and friends feel like they're almost like a slingshot. One example of this is when you're at top speed, you can quickly turn around after immediately using a dash attack (Running punch), which causes Rayman to not lose his momentum from turning around, which is something I found out very late into this game. The animations and the length of them allow the characters to feel weighty and natural. One thing I think is not really used in conjunction with the main moveset and this philosophy of "speed" is the glide, or Rayman's helicopter hair. You tend to lose all momentum here, which I think is purposeful for sections that have wind elements or sections where you are expected to carefully maneuver through the air. But I think they could've done a bit more with the glide without making it too overpowered.

Something that really stood out to me in this game is just the amount of content. You're constantly bombarded with new levels to play, and throughout the game you can unlock "Back to Origins" levels which is basically just that: levels brought over and touched up from Origins. Not every level is included here, but it just about is. There's 5 worlds with 8 levels each, and each level has a few tweaks with enemy placement and such. I didn't want to bother with this mode, since I want to go back and replay Origins here soon, but damn this is such a cool option for those who maybe missed out on Origins, and one that I'm still shocked was included.

There's a plethora of unlockable costumes, unlockable stages, and creatures to collect that increase your Lum count (which you will need if you want all the costumes, dear god). Included in the Switch version is "Murphy's touch" which is pretty much just a bundle of levels that took advantage of the wii u gamepad in fun ways, that you weren't able to play in other ports, due to there being no touch screen. Kinda a weird addition, since the main game includes a perfectly usable button prompt version of Murphy throughout the game, but I'm cool with it being an option I guess.

Something that I know will stick with me for months after replaying this is the music levels, in which the game almost becomes an autorunner with button presses timed with the music. I think most everyone remembers the heavily marketed "Black Betty" level, which is really good, depending on if you like the song or not (its an ok song). But I truly forgot about the remixes and new songs included with later music levels. These levels were so satisfying and including them at the end of a world really felt like a reward after getting through tough levels. There's also 8-bit versions of some of these levels after getting about 400 Teensies, and these were fairly difficult with screen interruptions that varied depending on the song. I loved these levels because they weren't too difficult and they provided a unique challenge, being that you had to almost rely on the music more than the visuals at times. There are also probably some of the most difficult levels in the game, which are time attack challenges. These are fairly manageable but I would be lying if some of them weren't very tight with the gold trophy requirements.

I think my only main complaint with this game is the hub world. The paintings and the vibe is a neat idea, and I dig how it implements with the levels, but I think using paintings for the rest of the modes and for the costume selection makes it a little tiresome to navigate. I kept thinking to myself, "why couldn't they have relegated costumes to a menu, where you can access it at any point"? But I suppose that's a minor nitpick. I would have just rather preferred a linear world map or something of the sort that gives me a sense of how much progress I have made.

Needless to say I think if someone wants to get into Rayman games this is probably one of the most accessible with it being on near every platform at this point, and it's very cheap. You won't regret it!

MEUS AMIGOS, ESSE JOGO É O ÁPICE DOS JOGOS DE PLATAFORMA 2D!

A gameplay flui muito bem, os visuais são muitos lindos, e a trilha sonora simplesmente dispensa comentários.
Ela é tão maravilhosa que tem até fases musicais!

Esse jogo é bem generoso na questão de dificuldade, tem bastante checkpoints e MUITO conteúdo! Eu simplesmente zerei ele e ainda falta muita coisa para fazer. Ainda pretendo fazer depois.

Meus únicos pontos negativos a destacar são coisas bem bobas, tipo o fato da interface desse jogo ser bem poluída. Por exemplo, você passa de uma fase e já sai ganhando um monte de coisa parecendo um jogo mobile, mas depois de um tempo você se acostuma.

Se você é fã de plataformas, eu não sei o que você ainda tá fazendo aqui! VÁ JOGAR AS LENDAS DO RAYMUNDO AGORA!

Well, I certainly gave it some time to find my thoughts on this but I will try to convey it the best way I can.

This might be the best game I've ever played but has some particular stupid shit that weighs it down. For the good, all my gripes about the gameplay have been ironed out so now Rayman feels better to control than ever the level design has peaked in both its look and feel.
However (this is the part where I gripe more about the 9/10 game I adore than praising it) The presentation outside the stages has been turned down. In Origins, you pop out of the stage and it's laid out like an actual map like you're going on a massive journey. As for this game, it plops you hop in and out of levels Mario 64 style. Making each level feel disconnected from the other especially when it's Hey you unlocked the next level! Hey, you unlocked the next world would you like to check It out? Then four other notifications when I just want to get to the next level. Oh, and the scratch-offs can we talk about the scratch-offs? I've been dying to talk about the scratch-offs. You could have one of four rewards some lums an animal which gives you more lums a lost teensy and what anyone would want a stage from origins. The lums are pointless just there to make sure you unlock stuff faster. The lost teensy is cool judging if there's a stage with one you're missing but if one of the main rewards for playing your game where the main focus is core gameplay is to play less of it you need to reacess things. The only thing you would want here is the Back To Origins stage but that just adds recycled content to make up for a base game with fewer levels than its predecessor. Especially with... him. Ok so while the base levels of the games are brilliant there are a couple of levels where the main mechanic is having Murphy interact with the environment normally just by pressing a button or something because if you didn't know this was a way to shove in some Wii U functionality when this was supposed to be the new hotness for the console. I'm going to be upfront, I don't like these they mess with the flow of the stage. When you're supposed to be blazing through I don't want any contextual button prompts. Overall Rayman Legends has some of the best platforming I've played in any videogame it is held back by stripping back a lot of the personality that the first three games had and some of Origins. Now the only thing Ubisoft needs to do to make a perfect Rayman game is to take the gameplay and characters of this and pair them with the tone and story of Rayman 2! If Ubisoft could be bothered to do anything with this franchise, but hey with him in that Rabbids DLC and that Blood Dragon show both receiving pretty good feedback who knows?

(Hopefully, Ubisoft gets their crap together first)

Although I never owned this game, I did play this co-op with friends while I was at work at GameStop. It was an absolute blast! One of my favorite aspects of the game are the musical levels, I'm a sucker for any game that has rhythm in it. It was one of those games we played on the switch while at work to show off the co-op capabilities. So it was a decent memory. If I owned it and played more of it it probably rate a little bit higher. Not to mention the graphics and the gameplay itself is also phenomenal. High recommendation for anyone who wants to play a co-op

i dunno. i've heard so much high praise for this game. it's not just good praise, it's like, "this is the best game ever/best 2d platformer ever" and i'm like, REALLY? dont get me wrong there are good levels here and once or twice i thought "i can really see this working" but it was just massively, massively overblown to me. i'll admit to going into this with scepticism because i dont care for rayman as a character and i dont like the artstyle, but i dont think that contributes to my particular feeling too much here. to be fair, i'll say what i did like about this game

rayman moves really fast! and i like the almost combo nature to his attack. i like his charge attack that you can aim, and i particularly like when i get a long range punch gun. i like just how many costumes there are, there's SO many! content generally speaking is something this game has in spades and i think that genuinely owns. it's cool that on top of the costumes, there's multiple characters, and i actually think in a game like this it's better that they all play the same way, as that compliments the level design more. so it's cool you can play the game as multiple characters/costumes! i played as ray-man mario because i like mario :)
but i also played as teensy king and a bunch of the different viking girls. there are SO many levels that you can do, the origins ones, the murphy ones, the daily and weekly challenges, the multiple invasion types, i dont know, thats cool! there's a lot to be played here if you really want to. and it's nice how this game commits to being silly and just wanting to be about having a good, fast paced time. i remember thinking the level Quick Sand right near the start of the game was creative and fun, the way that Rayman is basically staying in the same place for much of the level and just navigating a sinking object. it was neat!

but to be honest, i'd heard that this game was constantly coming up with all these new and crazy and amazing ideas, but nothing ever surprised or interested me beyond that level and maybe a couple others. i liked 20000 lums under the sea at times! the music was good there. but then i just got a bit bored! and most levels i found quite uninspiring just kind of, going along. there were things that were annoying! like every time murphy appears you have this little 3 second animation of him showing up, but if you die after getting him and not reaching a checkpoint you have to watch it each time. and if you die in one of the teensy chambers with a teensy royalty, it spawns you outside the room so you have to go through and load it all again. the level select via menus in rooms is a bit tedious because it's kind of hard to navigate all those rooms, and the notifications being things you cant just dismiss because you have to select each one and have it take you to teh relevant screen is annoying. every lucky ticket needing to be manually scratched becomes tedious. and i know that theres no plot to this game, but it sets up this thing of the evil teensies or whatever capturing all the teensies, then the game just sort of stops when you've finished mount olympus? like it's just over? when i rolled credits i was genuinely just surprised. also, a small thing, but i never didnt find it annoying on levels where a platform would suddenly appear in front of you, like a vine or something, just before you need to jump. even when i jumped on time i just felt like id been lucky, and when i didnt jump on time the death felt cheap.
i did a few levels of living dead party, but then i got to the 8-bit frog orchestra one where the screen kind of cuts out, which is a fun little affect, but after dying twice and it taking me back to the start of the level i thought "nah, not worth it" and was done
i just dont get it! i was told this game is incredible! the endless, limitless creativity and the music levels are so amazing and like... they're just fine? they're certainly not bad! but they're certainly not amazing either. like the gimmick was described to me before, and i felt like having it described to me was enough because it never did anything interesting or surprising in those music levels. it was exactly what was described on the tin, which again, not bad! just fine.

mario is just better in every way :)