it was aight. the only thing anyone can say about this game is that it's cute and looks good and both of those things are true but overall im just very unimpressed with this game. i didnt feel anything from the townspeople, i didnt feel anything from the town itself or the world or the story it tried to tell at the end. gameplay wise it was fun to upgrade my weapons and get stronger and minmax my favourite stats on my gun but the whole thing was also pretty slow and clunky, but that's something i got used to anyways. idk. i dont feel very motivated to play the next games in the series.

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.

Eu acho que tenho jogado muita coisa fofa e agradável ultimamente. Preciso ir atrás de alguma coisa mais podre, fedida e ruim. Coisa malvada. Algo pra botar fogo no espírito, sabe? Não posso ficar mole assim não!

Quem tem paixão por esse jogo provavelmente ama ele por motivos bem parecidos que os meus, e quem acha ele uma baguncinha esquisita e travada tem meio que o direito de achar isso mesmo. Mas eu preciso firmar que Kattelox é um dos ambientes mais bem realizados que eu já vi em um videogame. Quase que uma Kamurochō em miniatura. Todas as casinhas, os prédiozinhos municipais, as pessoinhas. É tudo muito precioso.

É inevitável criar um certo apego, principalmente pela cidade reagir tanto ao MegaMan e suas ações. E é até meio que impressionante pra um joguinho tão modesto e remendado na silver tape como esse, onde muitas de suas ambições as vezes não parecem tão bem realizadas. E eu gosto desse tipo de coisa! Acho difícil não apreciar essa geração tão cheia de ideias, mas que tinha que sempre lidar com hardware limitado e tempos de desenvolvimento tão curtinhos.

E apesar do dungeon crawling as vezes meio entendiante e do combate bem travado, gosto muito das setpieces e dos chefes que o jogo taca pra cima de você. Nesses momentos o gameplay quase brilha! Quase. Mas é meio que o suficiente pra elevar um pouquinho mais o conjunto da obra.

Eu dou 5 ★ pra quase tudo. Não costumo pensar muito a respeito das minhas notas, e geralmente só questiono se há algum motivo pra eu não só tacar um 5 ★ de vez. Eu gosto muito de videogames! Mas nesse caso, teria alguns motivos. As dungeons poderiam ser mais vivas e terem menos inimigos irritantes, a historinha poderia ser um pouquinho mais bem amarrada, o gameplay um pouquinho mais lisinho. Pouquinha coisa mesmo.

Mas acho que nada disso importa tanto assim. Ainda adoro esse jogo, Kattelox e seus personagens! Fora que eu tenho bastante paciência com controles esquisitos de jogo 3D velho, o que dá uma ajudada.

Mal posso esperar pra jogar MegaMan Legends 2 e The Adventures of Tron Bonne! Se tiverem metade do charme aqui já vão valer a pena.

This game might have the best art direction of all time. It looks absolutely incredible at both 240p and upscaled. The characters and backgrounds and cutscenes are just dripping with appeal. However, it's also a 3D action-platformer that predates the DualShock so the controls are insanely bad: running and strafing with the d-pad, turning with L1 and R1. I guess I can't fault it for being too ambitious. The plot is very anime-esque, and the writing is pretty funny. You can tell they really wanted this open-world city to feel like a real place.

Despite the terrible controllers, it aged like a fine wine...
The story is lighthearted and funny. The graphics are pretty good to the point of inumerous indie games still taking inspiration until now.
The characters are adorable, the scenarios are welcoming and relaxing, and the interconnected "metroidvania like" map makes this game an underrated gem. You can even make your own builds in this game. Definitely a unique game...
I am happy to finally played it and finished it. This already makes me sad that Capcom abandoned this franchise...
Looking forward the sequel.

The charm and charisma of this game hold the rest of it up like how Altus holds the weight of the world on his back.

I really like Mega Man Legends. It has a passive peacefulness that could trick you into thinking you’re playing an island life simulator. You run errands for the townspeople of Kattlelox island, you play game shows on tv, you become a local legend for donating money to get better medical equipment at the hospital. Cutely designed characters have funny dialogue, you can tell the lady who runs the junk shop that your name is Hippopotamus. Hippopotamus can look at a magazine rack full of dirty magazines and contemplates reading one. The music that plays while you avoid oncoming traffic downtown sounds like the happiest trip to the mall you’ve ever had. Mega Man Legends is so pleasant.

But then, deep underground beneath the town, lies the Ruins. Eerie mines full of mindless Reaverbots, ready to kill anything they see. Under the silent cover of low draw distance, they wait for you. Some of these robots can drain your health in an instant, while you’re several loading screens away from salvation (and your latest save file). Mega Man Legends can be a little tense. (The hamburger-lookin ass crab Reaverbot, called Kuruguru, was particularly frightening to me and my younger brother when we played this game together.)

The tonal whiplash between the happy town and the harrowing ruins is only further compounded by the hysterical (and I mean that in both that they’re funny and that they’re constantly in hysterics) Bonne family. Between Tron Bonne’s violent and confused feelings towards Mega Man and Tiesel Bonne’s maniacal laughter after he plots a doomed scheme, any time they show up you’re in for a fun time.

That is, when the cutscenes are playing.

Early on, you gradually ease into the combat after a good amount of time hanging out in the town. But then BAM you’re hit with two back to back missions with their own boss fights. I guess the game wanted you to grind in the ruins for a lot longer than I did before starting those missions, because Defending City Hall is a huge difficulty spike.

And that difficulty, of course, comes from the controls.

Everyone hates tank controls. I won’t spend time reiterating what we all know, tank controls aren’t great for 3rd person action adventure games. This game is early enough in the genre’s existence that it was all they could conceive at the time. It’s really hard making two dimensional games as it is, and now you have to make a 3D game work and not completely copy Mario 64.

And besides, it’s not like Mario had a gun he could aim in Mario 64. They had to figure that out with what they had.

It’s a tough job, and I think they did OK with it. Decent enough to play, but not fun enough to where I get excited that a saving issue brought up the possibility of replaying 8 hours worth of the game. I didn’t have to replay those 8 hours, thankfully.

The main problem with Mega Man Legends’ turgid tank controls is half of the game’s loop is long term money grinding for obscenely expensive purchases. If you want to keep up with the dangerous enemies that threaten your life, you’re going to have spend a sickening amount of time grinding for zenny, all while moving around in that awkward and uncomfortable way. You get used to it, but it doesn’t make the grinding fun.

I genuinely recommend looking into cheat codes or something for this game to just give yourself a huge amount of money to mitigate the grinding. I played it “pure” and spent days running around the same spot in the ruins making chump change. Just cheat. Cheat because that half of the game is so lackluster compared to the side quests.

The side quests is what makes this game shine. There’s not enough of them to feel like a substantial Zelda-like adventure, but the amount we get is still satisfying. When you’re not raising money to rebuild the island from collateral damage you could have prevented, you’re helping the citizens with their simple problems. In return, you get an item that goes towards improving Mega Man (which you might need that grinding money to make use of), but more importantly, a fleshed out Kattelox Island. It makes it feel like a real place, and I love it.

However, these side quests have a dark side to them. A problem that could leave a “pure” playthrough completely in the dark.

A lot of these side quests/things to do are not blatantly advertised enough.

Much like the hidden treasures in the ruins beneath Kattlelox Island, Mega Man Legends hides it’s delightful and rewarding supplementary content behind obscurity. While some games with a racing minigame have some kind of eye catching indicator of its existence, or even a cutscene to let you know about it, Mega Man Legends has a nondescript npc in the corner of a building you might not think to go in anymore because you cleared the other two minigames it offered.

There are important npcs who have things for you to do who look like any other npc. Sometimes you have to talk to an obvious quest npc multiple times after you finish their quest to get a second or third quest. And I don’t mean just talk to them again I mean again and again and again. Some of these quests are built around the in-game timer, but it’s never specified exactly how much time it’s built around.

If your Saiyan Pride doesn’t let you cheat or use a guide, I respect that, but understand just how much of your precious time will be spent grinding zenny and talking to every npc multiple times. It is not weakness to save yourself an hour because you know where you have to go.

At the very least, I recommend having a guide handy while you play this game, just so you can give yourself everything it can offer. My first full playthrough was without a guide and I missed half the game and it really felt like it.

That full playthrough completely missed all the quests that went into the most powerful weapon in the game, maybe the entire Mega Man Series: the Shining Laser. The incredibly expensive culmination of several quests and mountains of money, the Shining Laser turns the already easy final boss into a seconds long joke.

Normally I’d be upset at the prospect of being robbed of a good fight, but I think it thematically works. The Shining Laser is everyone you helped on Kattelox returning the favor. It’s the final episode of the anime where everyone opens their hearts to send their energy to the hero. I like it. It’s a reward for players who aren’t good at combat but love the side quests, and it’s a reward for people like me who put too much thought into it.

But anyways,

I’ve played this game three times and rolled credits twice. I got every item on the second full playthrough, but I didn’t upgrade the weapons all the way because I didn’t cheat this time lmao. I fully upgraded the Shining Laser though, which is more than enough for me.

I recommend Mega Man Legends to anyone willing to put up with the few drawbacks it has. They are certainly drawbacks, (though I think the controls are much less of an issue) but the characters and world this game creates are vibrant and endearing and maybe the strongest in the entire Mega Man franchise.

There’s a reason why Tron Bonne shows up in more games as a cameo appearance than Mega Man Volnutt. It’s because she’s the best character in the game.

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

Don’t worry, Tron. If anyone can do it, he can.

I mean… Mega Man Legends should probably, at the very least, be mentioned in the same conversation as Super Mario 64 when we talk about positive 2D-to-3D conversions. It’s an unbelievably confident, interesting game that shakes up the Mega Man IP with good voice acting (!), a robust and surprisingly dark story, open exploration, can kicking, stat-altering equipment, and dungeon crawling. Oh, and Tron Bonne, of course. Gone are the days of Robot Masters, Mavericks, boss weapons, and stages (for now). The game even has things like an optional morality system, lots of items to find, and, I suspect, sidequests that most players will never even be privy to. Legends also has this low-poly, 90s anime aesthetic that is utterly to die for, and it’s unthinkable that nobody has tried to ape this exact look in the years since. It’s certainly not perfect, but, for Capcom’s first stab (and, unfortunately, one of their only stabs) at a 3D Mega Man title, it’s not terribly far off.

This game has immaculate vibes and by far my favorite artstyle for a video game. The presentation hasn't aged a bit, and I love how well the cutscenes are animated. Every member of the cast is likeable and it feels like watching a 90's anime. Gives me nostalgia even though I never played this game before.

Gameplay-wise, it's a bit heh. Definitely serviceable but most of the time it's just hold square and circle-strafe to win. Didn't expect it to be a MetroidVania but I welcome it. Exploring was fun. I hope MM Legends 2 is more of the same but with a refined take on the gameplay so it doesn't stay samey the entire way through.

In my opinion, the Megaman series is at its best when it has RPG elements and Legends does that and so much more. Sure, for today's standards a lot of this game might not impress many, the controls might irritate others but look aside those petty grievances and put yourself in the shoes of a kid from the late 90's / early 00's. This was / is the SHIT! the level of detail, the beautiful poly models, THE MUSIC! the sound font is so damn iconic, I mean listen to that damn bass. the fact so many buildings are enterable, the expressive and loveable cast, so many little secret interactions and items to make powerful side weapons. The voice acting in this game is charming as hell and whoever voices Tiesel deserves an AWARD. They really took a chance with this game and really wish more people appreciated it. Anyone looking for a fun throwback game to put some time into, look no further!