Reviews of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

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sickhabit

Completed

PlayStation 4

This game is absolutely magnificent, I will start this review off by saying it's not better than Uncharted 4 but it holds up well for being its own game instead of an expansion title. Given that it probably would've worked better as an expansion game, it's pretty impressive it can stand up on its own. That being mentioned though, one of the main faults in this game (to me) is that its wayyy too short. It could've stood to be just a little longer in my opinion, though I can appreciate how it doesn't overstay its welcome like Uncharted 4 kind of did, playing 4 I often found myself thinking "Okay, we're definitely near the end now" and nope, no we were not, but I don't think that knocks off any points for me though, I do like a long video game. Moving on to my next critique, the pacing in this game just seems so slow and off at times to fall under the action category, nonetheless an Uncharted title. The open world chunk of the game is really where you'll spend most of your time, especially because they send you on a fetch quest for the Hoysala tokens needed to get the Queen's Ruby bracelet that assists in finding treasures near by glowing red and vibrating your controller, if you don't care to do this side quest, you'll spend a lot less time in that section than me and many others and the pacing will probably march along to the beat of a normal Uncharted game. Speaking of the Queen's Ruby side quest, I'd like to say I did thoroughly enjoy doing it even though it can be simplified into just driving a ton of places, killing some bad guys and maybe doing some parkour or puzzles (I can't really remember each token's requirement to achieve) and then going onto the next one, I found most of the puzzles quite enjoyable and I will say it did add a nice texture to the world. This brings me to my next point, the Uncharted franchise is consistently breathtaking in the views and world building, Naughty Dog knows how to make a game regardless of what people say about some of their more "scandalous" story telling decisions, which I'm sure we all know what I'm talking about (cough, cough Joel's death) Naughty Dog's games are never anything short of some of the closest games to perfection we'll ever get, every cutscene has something beautiful to appreciate, each view significantly more gorgeous and grandeur than the last. Not even to mention how amazing the views are when Chloe has a photo taking opportunity, just so damn close to perfection it makes you wish it was real and if there are actually places in this world that exist that are so perfect like that. Continuing on, the landscapes in the open world are so cleverly placed and mapped out and fun to explore and traverse, nothing to write home about but they're better than a lot of other "levels" or areas made for combat or puzzles. I will mention, for the first couple hours in the open world portion, I found it so hard to traverse and drive through, I was looking at my map literally every other couple second to make sure I was going the right way because it was so easy to drive in one direction to get to one area and somehow end up in another because of the map connects different corners of the map, this is MOSTLY player error though because I am a tad directionally challenged at times in video games, I am not too mad at this part and it doesn't really matter to me because I feel it fits the thick jungle environment you have going on in the game to get lost or confused. One thing that SEVERELY annoys me about the Uncharted franchise is no dedicated run or stealth button, I absolutely hate that and there isn't too much to say about that in this review because it's self-explanatory, but I feel like in an action game not being able to run especially when you're doing a timed puzzle such as the water fountain jumping puzzle is utterly asinine. However, the combat aspect of the game is, in my humble opinion, superior to the Uncharted 4 combat, I mentioned in my Uncharted 4 review that the hand-to-hand combat feels heavy most of the time and I still 110% stand by that, but the only other game I've personally ever played with melee combat that silky smooth is The Last of Us 2, which TLOU2's is miles better but I digress to say they're somewhat comparable. I really enjoyed Chloe and Nadine's dynamic, they're both such softies for each other, when Nadine was mad at Chloe for working with Sam behind her back and they were fighting was one of the best parts of the game and I sincerely hope their story together gets expanded on in the future and we get to see more of them being little softies for each other, I hope we see more of Nadine, Chloe and Sam together as a trio way more though, I loved that little glimpse we got of them right at the end. I will say the character dynamics and the views are really the backbone for this game for me because the story and Asav, who is supposed to be the "villain", are both just so bland... Maybe it's my attention span, but I really couldn't even tell you Asav's motives for wanting the Tusk or the story of the game, I just found this game substantially harder to follow than 4 which is really disappointing and let me down because the potential of this game was ample, I found a lot of areas of the story to lack creativity and the gameplay to be predictable which is why I say if you've played one Uncharted game, you've played them all. All in all, I think for the amount of time this game takes up (for me, around 12 hours over the span of multiple days), it wouldn't hurt to play it, it's all good exploration and action fun and you can't really go wrong with that. Would I say it's a must play for every gamer? Absolutely not, but if you're someone who likes Naughty Dog or games like Uncharted, I'd totally bring it up as a suggestion. My only genuine advice would be to play Lost Legacy before Uncharted 4 because there's no way you can play 4 before LL and still appreciate LL for all of its good qualities without constant comparison between the two and that's what really put a notch in my experience with this game, knowing how much better it could've been and that the potential of this title was not even close to even a quarter of being maximized for player experience and enjoyment.