This game is... interesting to say the least. It has an interesting mechanic, decent story, decent gameplay. That's the problem, though - it doesn't do anything badly, but its also just painfully average.

The gameplay is good. Good, not great, just average. It has an undeniable amount of jank to it too. Animations are janky at times, and the parkour system is just broken - rather than character doing parkour animations when jumping off of objects, the character just stutters & falls.

There are also way too many loading screens. Sure, I played this cross-gen game on PS4, but I still cannot understand why they didn't just take the Watch Dogs 2 approach of masking loading screens behind animations & pseudo-cutscenes (like Naughty Dogs style, for example - which Watch Dogs 2 also did).

Its odd just how janky, slow, & unfinished in places that this feels, considering the level of polish Watch Dogs 2 had (both in general, and in terms of the parkour system). It feels undercooked to the say the least.

Visually, the game also looks really ugly at times, but it is a cross-gen game, so thats kind of a-given. Is it though? The assumption is that this game is using the same engine as Watch Dogs 2? Sure, the Legion map is probably thrice the size of WD2's map - but does that excuse the game looking visually ugly? I guess it comes at the expense of optimising for older hardware... buuuut the PS4 was also able to run The Last of Us Part 2 with no issues, and thats a visually stunning game; so there really is no excuse for how visually muddy & messy Legion looks on PS4.

Ubisoft have always seemed to have issues with optimising their games, so it's not so surprising - but I would've also sooner chose to have a two-disc PS4 version of Legion that looked good, rather than this visually muddy mess. It's kind of poetic & ironic that a game about advanced technology, has some pretty bad technology built into it.

The "play as anyone" feature is cool, because certain recruits do have their own defined personality; my personal favourite recruit is Gloria - a loud-mouth, says-it-like-it-is protester. That being said, a lot of the recruits do just feel generic & samey; but thats what happens when you play as an NPC, because NPC's are suppose to be generic in a sense anyway. Some of the A.I modulated voices sound like ass too.

The game is begging to be an RPG, which would fix these tonal, pacing, character, & mechanical issues - because as is, it just feels a bit smoke-and-mirrors surface level.

That's not to mention that the "play as anyone" mechanical inadvertently makes the story tonally inconsistent. The story takes itself seriously this time around - a dark action drama - but when you have a generic playable character responding in cutscenes like "Aight bruv, Imma deal with this twat innit" - it just breaks the whole tone & aesthetic.

Speaking of which, the story. It has it's moments, and is structured akin to Saints Row 2 - which I thought was cool (taking down sub-groups before confronting the main baddie lurking in the shadows). Tonally, it takes itself way too self-seriously though, which is it's ultimate flaw.

That climax (much like the original Watch Dogs game), just feels like it comes out of nowhere. It feels like the story is building up to something more, but certain plot-twists are handled piss-poorly - and we barely spend any time with our main villain (we encounter them once before confronting & killing them). "Okay villains dead, threat resolved, roll credits" without even wrapping anything up, and the game just sort of ends on a whimper. It feels so anti-climatic. The epilogue side-mission had more intrigue than the finale mission, which is... problematic. By the way, are Dedsed just gonna hold Malik hostage for the rest of his life? It is never resolved what happens/happened to him after the conclusion of the main plot.

It's also worth noting that because the game lacks a "main character" (since the "play as anyone" mechanic is at play), the game does also feel like it is lacking, well... character. Characters like Aiden Pearce (for better or worse) or Marcus Holloway (also for better or worse) feel so well defined as main characters, that it drives the tone & plot forward. Legion not having that driving force of a main character, makes the game feel... aimless, both in terms of plot & tone, because if I don't have a main character to get attached too, then it kind of falls apart. There are a lot of elements that just don't mesh together because of this.

They try to have a few supporting (non-recruitable) characters to compensate for this, but they're mostly just kinda bland. Corrupt Richard Malik reminds me of Rishi Sunak, so he gets brownie points, & Nowt tries to fill the Wrench/T-Bone roles; they're both highlights, but still average at best.

It's telling that, Bagley, our resident A.I, is the character with the most personality in the game - given that he is a fucking A.I. He's not a person, but he has the most personality of the lot. Bagley feels like he is the element that either makes or breaks the tone; a cynical, darkly comedic, dramatic entity that drives our generic NPC playable character forward.

Like I said, the game is just begging to be an RPG - or a game with a traditional main character at least - to allow these elements to mesh together.

It really makes me question why Ubisoft abandoned the Watch Dogs 2 aesthetic & tone. If it ain't broke than don't fix it, as they say. It felt like they had struck gold with WD2, but then they just threw it away. That being said, I do enjoy the uniqueness of the Watch Dogs trilogy, because each game feels tonally different from the other - which allows them all to stand on their own.

So yeah, this is the quintessential average game! Nothing bad in here - though there is jank - but nothing special either. If you're able to get it on the cheap, I'd recommend it for the sheer fact of being able to faff about with the recruitment system. Don't expect anything special from the elements surrounding the recruitment system, though!