DESIRING ANALOG STICKS IN HALCYON DAYS
So I first played this game as MegaMan 64, way back when I was plugging anything and everything into Project 64 on my crappy Compaq laptop. I knew absolutely nothing about it, but I did like Mega Man, so there wasn't much of a reason not to give it a try, right?
It was... Weird. I know I beat it back then, but even though I was kind of obsessed with MegaMan (or Rock) Volnutt and Roll Caskett for a while there, I recall not being terrifically enthused about the experience as a whole. Why, exactly? Well, that's what I'm here to find out.
The game follows the aforementioned duo along with Roll's grandfather Barrell, and a robotic monkey named Data. They earn their living as Diggers, an occupation that entails delving into ruins in search of quantum refractors, an energy source that doubles as a globally-accepted currency. It's a dangerous job, and after a near scrape, they soon find that their airship (dubbed the "Flutter") is having some trouble staying afloat. Roll crash-lands the ship on the nearby Kattleox Island, and after being welcomed in by the small settlement's friendly citizens, they start work on getting the Flutter airborne again. It's not long after that a family of pirates, known as the Bonnes, suddenly start attacking the island in search of a legendary treasure rumored to be hidden underground. Mega steps up to fight off these thieves, but along the way stumbles headlong into the truth behind this legend - a secret that might have been patiently waiting for him to discover it.
I don't think it's reasonable to say that Mega Man Legends doesn't look its age - it's unquestionably a product of the upper 90's. Amongst its peers, though, it's one of the better looking 3D games of that era. It's bright and colorful and makes good use of baked-in shadows to help the flat shading pop. You might not like it, but this is what peak 3D looks like. It's telling that when the game was ported over to the N64 in late 2000(!), it looked right at home on the system. I think it's fair to say the graphics are one of the first things that come to mind for most people when the topic of Legends is brought up, if all of those "Mega Man Legends-inspired" 3D games (not that one), animations and models out in the wild are any indication. Of course, they probably wouldn't be quite so fondly remembered if the art style and the characters they're applied to weren't also rock-solid. The main and supporting cast have iconic designs and they translate very well into 3D. These may very well be my favorite designs for Rock and Roll in the entirety of Mega Man's history. And I need to give big props to whoever was in charge of designing the character's faces during cutscenes. You'll see a lot of cool tricks being used, like textures that are obviously custom made for the scene they're being used in, giving a pseudo-3D perspective. A lot of effort and love clearly went into making the cast look as good as possible.
On the audio end, Legends simultaneously surprises and disappoints. To wit, the voice acting is actually quite good for its time. It's nothing mind-blowing by any means - no Oscar-worthy displays here - but all of the voiced characters sound exactly how you might expect them to. Not only do I think there are no bad performances in the game, I think some of them really nail the delivery. In particular, Mega Man, Roll, Tron and the Servbots sound downright adorable. Teisel Bonne chews it up in every scene where he appears, and he's my favorite character as a result (just don't look too deep into what his actor had been up to in the intervening years). On the other hand, the music is just decent, with a few catchy standout pieces. The OST on the whole isn't anything to write home about, which might be acceptable for other franchises - but c'mon. This is Mega Man we're talking about, here. It really ought to be bangers from top to bottom. But what's here does suit the tone of Legends well, and perhaps it's simply a trade for how broad the soundscape is, with plenty of short one-off pieces to match every scene and location. Very few recycled tracks.
So how about the story? It's fun! Some good worldbuilding, and it doesn't dwell on any particular note for too long. Legends does a great job of building its own identity and not relying on what had already been established in the franchise up to this point. Mega is here, and so is Roll. You jump and you shoot. You can get new weapons. That's about it. It's telling that one of the only other familiar elements that appears here is Wily, who has gone from being a mad scientist to... A rad old seafaring dude. This game's story supposedly takes place a few thousand years after the other games and boy does it show. As to the story beats themselves, everything is paced well and the Bonnes serve as entertaining antagonists. Things predictably start getting real just before the final showdown and it's all capped off with a pleasant, feel-good ending, while also leaving plenty up in the air for the inevitable sequel. The only downside I could possibly level at the narrative is that you don't get more of it. Legends is rather short and leaves enough on the table that it's hard to imagine what it must have been like not being able to jump into the second game right after the first. Hopefully that game doesn't have the same problem!
All in all, the presentation layers are well-constructed and have definitely conferred a kind of timeless coolness to the world of Mega Man Legends. It stands out from other iterations of Mega Man, both past and present, and inspires a lot of imagined scenarios in me of other stories that could be happening in other parts of its world.
But games have gameplay! So how's that?
Well!
Let's start off by discussing the elephant in the room, which is the fact this is a 3D adventure game that predates Sony's first dual-analog controller (from a development standpoint, anyways - the Dual Analog was released a few months before Rockman DASH's debut, although the game doesn't make any use of analog controls). Predictably, it's got some quirks. Press the D-pad to make Mega move or strafe in the indicated direction. Press L1 and R1 to turn, R2 to lock onto an enemy. Square and Triangle to fire your weapons, Cross to jump, Circle to interact and do other walking-related activities. There's a couple other fancy tricks you can perform, like a dodge roll, but all of them feel a bit cumbersome in practice. The biggest issue for me is the way the targeting system works. It's not unlike the 3D Zeldas insofar as you press down the button to lock onto the nearest enemy. That can be a problem. Unless I missed it, there's no easy way to switch targets. Once you're locked on to a foe, that's it, until something else moves in a bit closer. You're also rooted to the spot while targeting, and it's tricky to perform any kind of evasive maneuver while in this stance. What's more, you can free-aim so long as there's no target close enough to lock onto. Shame when there might be something you'd prefer to target, but can't because whatever's closer takes precedence - there's no way to force free aiming. So maybe circle strafing is the way to go? The game does have a sort of soft lock-on where your buster shots naturally gravitate towards whatever's in the center of your camera, and you can fire while strafing... As long as you don't try to walk backwards. Mega circles around pretty fast so trying to shoot smaller, more mobile targets means a high possibility of over adjusting. Either way, precision means standing stock still, and mobility means a distinct lack of control over shooting. The more dynamic fights really make you wish for a more fine-tuned movement scheme. The game really isn't too difficult on the whole, so it's not a game-killer, but it is very clunky and can sap some of the enjoyment out of the experience.
Legends follows a very familiar gameplay structure of event, dungeon, event, dungeon. You'll delve into one of the several gates that dot Kattleox with the intention of blasting bad guys and scooping up treasure. Once you're done, it's typically capped off with a boss. Between each engagement you can spend time exploring the island, collecting gear or interacting with and helping out the various NPCs. Kattleox is deceptively large, having a reasonably expansive map to gallivant about but only so much to see and to do. Some buildings will be host to one or two sidequests, or perhaps a minigame, but otherwise don't serve much of a purpose. At least one area is conspicuously altogether unused. Meanwhile, the great outdoors are sparse and largely just serve as connectors between dungeon entrances. The dungeons themselves are also something of a letdown. When I first dove in, I was excited by the prospect of plumbing the depths for whatever secrets I could find. Every now and again I would encounter cracked walls I couldn't proceed past, or ledges I couldn't reach, and recognized I would probably need upgrades to proceed further. Once I finally had them, I broke through these barriers to find... Largely more of the same. There really isn't anything noteworthy or exciting about the dungeons in Legends. Most of the environments are bland and same-y and the enemy types aren't diverse, either. There are no gimmicks to speak of and not a whole lot of "hidden areas" - just parts of the dungeon that you can't access until the plot demands. Hell, most of the areas I unlocked mostly served as bridges to other parts of the dungeon, maybe with an item tucked in, but nothing worth getting worked up over. What's more, there's a lot of hallways, and maneuvering those with the given camera and aiming controls could be a real pain in my rear at times.
Other gripes... The weapon system was a bit underutilized. You have a remarkable selection of sub-weapons at your disposal, some of which are quite powerful and require rare parts to build, a lot of money to upgrade, or both. With that being said, your armament grows at a reasonable pace, but there just aren't enough meaningful fights between start and finish to give you much of a reason to invest time into working on them. This is especially noteworthy during the last section of the game when you need to start going out of your way to complete sidequests for access to the last few weapon components. Once you've spent all this time getting your hands on them, you're still asked to grind out some cash to upgrade their statistics. Of course, you also have maybe one or two bosses left to fight, and then you're done. Standard enemies go down just fine to an augmented buster and so there's no real reason to invest or diversify your sub-weapons for general combat. Bosses are where they really shine due to their higher damage output and limited ammo. At least a couple of your special weapons are fairly broken to start with and get even better after you drop some cash into them, so you're better off just picking one and dumping your resources into it. Assuming you're playing on the Normal difficulty, the big bads will drop easily enough. If there were some fun ways of earning zenny I might have been more inclined to do the grinding anyways, but the most efficient means you have is to leverage respawning enemies to rake in cash. Also, this is just a personal note, but it's a little disappointing that the Blue Bomber's trademark ability-stealing isn't represented in any way here. Not that any of the boss designs really support the concept anyways, but it would have been cool if at least a portion of your weapons were gained from ripping the bits off of baddies and grafting them to your arm. C'est la vie.
Also, there's actually a "karma" system built into the game! It's keeping score on how heroic or naughty you are, though it doesn't go out of its way to tell you this is happening. Helping people out or choosing to be kind instead of a jerk will make you... Gooder. On the other hand, vandalizing the island, attacking friendlies or just generally not being very nice will make you the opposite of that. The key issue is that there's really no meaningful difference to whether or not you're heroic or anti-heroic. No plot changes or shop modifiers or optional events. Some dialogue changes and you might impact a couple of very small details on the island. Otherwise, the only noteworthy difference is that Mega's armor darkens when you're a really nasty dude... But good luck ever seeing that organically. As you might anticipate, there are far and away more opportunities to be a goody two-shoes than there are chances to act up, and there are actually even less ways to net negative karma in the international version of the game (because somebody determined assaulting pets and wildlife might have been just a step too mean-spirited for a kid-friendly game in the English-speaking world). There's a singular event towards the end of the game where you can make your karma plummet to rock-bottom by being a particularly greedy little bastard, but there's basically no repercussions so... Y'know. I actually think this system had a lot of potential. For instance, there are artifacts you can donate to the museum in this game. Donating them all gets you a step further to the best weapon in the game - not that you'd be aware of that. Alternatively, you can sell them for profit, but the amounts you earn are fairly negligible. I'd wager most would be inclined to donate them on principle (if they even know they can, but that's its own problem). What if there was some shady back alley dealer who'd buy them off of you for a mint, but doing so would hurt your reputation? What if the trade off for more funds in your pocket would then mean higher prices at shops, somewhat undermining your efforts? Maybe you could even cut a deal with the pirates? More circumstances where you could be evil for fun or profit would have added a lot to this, as would having real consequences for your actions. As it is, all being a bad dude does is make Volnutt look like he dropped through somebody's chimney. I will say, though, if nothing else, that the denizens of Kattleox all make it abundantly clear how much they admire and appreciate MegaMan for his efforts. If you get that warm fuzzy feeling when your favorite bundle of polygons thanks you for giving them a ring, then maybe being the goodest guy to ever good will serve as its own reward.
Oh, and the few available minigames were just not much fun, except for maybe the "racing" one. Honestly, zipping around with the jet upgrade was one of the more enjoyable parts of the game. They should have expanded on that some.
The more I played, the more I felt that Legends was just kind of missing that X-factor (no pun intended). The combat worked in a pinch but wasn't especially enjoyable. The dungeon crawling was mundane as could be. The game was big in charm but low in character, if that makes any sense at all. Even though Legends shines like a big golden refractor aesthetically and conceptually, it largely smacks of mediocre fifth-generation 3D adventure game... Because once you dig beneath the surface, that's exactly what it is. All the pitfalls of this era and genre are present, which is a bit hard to swallow given the franchise's history of simple, tight gameplay. What's more, it never truly capitalizes on the strengths of its setting. It falls into that oh-so-familiar territory of "cool concept, middling execution" that managed to win its fair share of hearts but obviously still had a lot of maturing to do. MegaMan Volnutt's first story is one that I'll happily retell, but not one that I have any particular desire to relive.
Of course, this wasn't the end - Rock and friends would make yet another outing a few years later on the same system. I'm eager to see if they'd grown from their experiences.
So I first played this game as MegaMan 64, way back when I was plugging anything and everything into Project 64 on my crappy Compaq laptop. I knew absolutely nothing about it, but I did like Mega Man, so there wasn't much of a reason not to give it a try, right?
It was... Weird. I know I beat it back then, but even though I was kind of obsessed with MegaMan (or Rock) Volnutt and Roll Caskett for a while there, I recall not being terrifically enthused about the experience as a whole. Why, exactly? Well, that's what I'm here to find out.
The game follows the aforementioned duo along with Roll's grandfather Barrell, and a robotic monkey named Data. They earn their living as Diggers, an occupation that entails delving into ruins in search of quantum refractors, an energy source that doubles as a globally-accepted currency. It's a dangerous job, and after a near scrape, they soon find that their airship (dubbed the "Flutter") is having some trouble staying afloat. Roll crash-lands the ship on the nearby Kattleox Island, and after being welcomed in by the small settlement's friendly citizens, they start work on getting the Flutter airborne again. It's not long after that a family of pirates, known as the Bonnes, suddenly start attacking the island in search of a legendary treasure rumored to be hidden underground. Mega steps up to fight off these thieves, but along the way stumbles headlong into the truth behind this legend - a secret that might have been patiently waiting for him to discover it.
I don't think it's reasonable to say that Mega Man Legends doesn't look its age - it's unquestionably a product of the upper 90's. Amongst its peers, though, it's one of the better looking 3D games of that era. It's bright and colorful and makes good use of baked-in shadows to help the flat shading pop. You might not like it, but this is what peak 3D looks like. It's telling that when the game was ported over to the N64 in late 2000(!), it looked right at home on the system. I think it's fair to say the graphics are one of the first things that come to mind for most people when the topic of Legends is brought up, if all of those "Mega Man Legends-inspired" 3D games (not that one), animations and models out in the wild are any indication. Of course, they probably wouldn't be quite so fondly remembered if the art style and the characters they're applied to weren't also rock-solid. The main and supporting cast have iconic designs and they translate very well into 3D. These may very well be my favorite designs for Rock and Roll in the entirety of Mega Man's history. And I need to give big props to whoever was in charge of designing the character's faces during cutscenes. You'll see a lot of cool tricks being used, like textures that are obviously custom made for the scene they're being used in, giving a pseudo-3D perspective. A lot of effort and love clearly went into making the cast look as good as possible.
On the audio end, Legends simultaneously surprises and disappoints. To wit, the voice acting is actually quite good for its time. It's nothing mind-blowing by any means - no Oscar-worthy displays here - but all of the voiced characters sound exactly how you might expect them to. Not only do I think there are no bad performances in the game, I think some of them really nail the delivery. In particular, Mega Man, Roll, Tron and the Servbots sound downright adorable. Teisel Bonne chews it up in every scene where he appears, and he's my favorite character as a result (just don't look too deep into what his actor had been up to in the intervening years). On the other hand, the music is just decent, with a few catchy standout pieces. The OST on the whole isn't anything to write home about, which might be acceptable for other franchises - but c'mon. This is Mega Man we're talking about, here. It really ought to be bangers from top to bottom. But what's here does suit the tone of Legends well, and perhaps it's simply a trade for how broad the soundscape is, with plenty of short one-off pieces to match every scene and location. Very few recycled tracks.
So how about the story? It's fun! Some good worldbuilding, and it doesn't dwell on any particular note for too long. Legends does a great job of building its own identity and not relying on what had already been established in the franchise up to this point. Mega is here, and so is Roll. You jump and you shoot. You can get new weapons. That's about it. It's telling that one of the only other familiar elements that appears here is Wily, who has gone from being a mad scientist to... A rad old seafaring dude. This game's story supposedly takes place a few thousand years after the other games and boy does it show. As to the story beats themselves, everything is paced well and the Bonnes serve as entertaining antagonists. Things predictably start getting real just before the final showdown and it's all capped off with a pleasant, feel-good ending, while also leaving plenty up in the air for the inevitable sequel. The only downside I could possibly level at the narrative is that you don't get more of it. Legends is rather short and leaves enough on the table that it's hard to imagine what it must have been like not being able to jump into the second game right after the first. Hopefully that game doesn't have the same problem!
All in all, the presentation layers are well-constructed and have definitely conferred a kind of timeless coolness to the world of Mega Man Legends. It stands out from other iterations of Mega Man, both past and present, and inspires a lot of imagined scenarios in me of other stories that could be happening in other parts of its world.
But games have gameplay! So how's that?
Well!
Let's start off by discussing the elephant in the room, which is the fact this is a 3D adventure game that predates Sony's first dual-analog controller (from a development standpoint, anyways - the Dual Analog was released a few months before Rockman DASH's debut, although the game doesn't make any use of analog controls). Predictably, it's got some quirks. Press the D-pad to make Mega move or strafe in the indicated direction. Press L1 and R1 to turn, R2 to lock onto an enemy. Square and Triangle to fire your weapons, Cross to jump, Circle to interact and do other walking-related activities. There's a couple other fancy tricks you can perform, like a dodge roll, but all of them feel a bit cumbersome in practice. The biggest issue for me is the way the targeting system works. It's not unlike the 3D Zeldas insofar as you press down the button to lock onto the nearest enemy. That can be a problem. Unless I missed it, there's no easy way to switch targets. Once you're locked on to a foe, that's it, until something else moves in a bit closer. You're also rooted to the spot while targeting, and it's tricky to perform any kind of evasive maneuver while in this stance. What's more, you can free-aim so long as there's no target close enough to lock onto. Shame when there might be something you'd prefer to target, but can't because whatever's closer takes precedence - there's no way to force free aiming. So maybe circle strafing is the way to go? The game does have a sort of soft lock-on where your buster shots naturally gravitate towards whatever's in the center of your camera, and you can fire while strafing... As long as you don't try to walk backwards. Mega circles around pretty fast so trying to shoot smaller, more mobile targets means a high possibility of over adjusting. Either way, precision means standing stock still, and mobility means a distinct lack of control over shooting. The more dynamic fights really make you wish for a more fine-tuned movement scheme. The game really isn't too difficult on the whole, so it's not a game-killer, but it is very clunky and can sap some of the enjoyment out of the experience.
Legends follows a very familiar gameplay structure of event, dungeon, event, dungeon. You'll delve into one of the several gates that dot Kattleox with the intention of blasting bad guys and scooping up treasure. Once you're done, it's typically capped off with a boss. Between each engagement you can spend time exploring the island, collecting gear or interacting with and helping out the various NPCs. Kattleox is deceptively large, having a reasonably expansive map to gallivant about but only so much to see and to do. Some buildings will be host to one or two sidequests, or perhaps a minigame, but otherwise don't serve much of a purpose. At least one area is conspicuously altogether unused. Meanwhile, the great outdoors are sparse and largely just serve as connectors between dungeon entrances. The dungeons themselves are also something of a letdown. When I first dove in, I was excited by the prospect of plumbing the depths for whatever secrets I could find. Every now and again I would encounter cracked walls I couldn't proceed past, or ledges I couldn't reach, and recognized I would probably need upgrades to proceed further. Once I finally had them, I broke through these barriers to find... Largely more of the same. There really isn't anything noteworthy or exciting about the dungeons in Legends. Most of the environments are bland and same-y and the enemy types aren't diverse, either. There are no gimmicks to speak of and not a whole lot of "hidden areas" - just parts of the dungeon that you can't access until the plot demands. Hell, most of the areas I unlocked mostly served as bridges to other parts of the dungeon, maybe with an item tucked in, but nothing worth getting worked up over. What's more, there's a lot of hallways, and maneuvering those with the given camera and aiming controls could be a real pain in my rear at times.
Other gripes... The weapon system was a bit underutilized. You have a remarkable selection of sub-weapons at your disposal, some of which are quite powerful and require rare parts to build, a lot of money to upgrade, or both. With that being said, your armament grows at a reasonable pace, but there just aren't enough meaningful fights between start and finish to give you much of a reason to invest time into working on them. This is especially noteworthy during the last section of the game when you need to start going out of your way to complete sidequests for access to the last few weapon components. Once you've spent all this time getting your hands on them, you're still asked to grind out some cash to upgrade their statistics. Of course, you also have maybe one or two bosses left to fight, and then you're done. Standard enemies go down just fine to an augmented buster and so there's no real reason to invest or diversify your sub-weapons for general combat. Bosses are where they really shine due to their higher damage output and limited ammo. At least a couple of your special weapons are fairly broken to start with and get even better after you drop some cash into them, so you're better off just picking one and dumping your resources into it. Assuming you're playing on the Normal difficulty, the big bads will drop easily enough. If there were some fun ways of earning zenny I might have been more inclined to do the grinding anyways, but the most efficient means you have is to leverage respawning enemies to rake in cash. Also, this is just a personal note, but it's a little disappointing that the Blue Bomber's trademark ability-stealing isn't represented in any way here. Not that any of the boss designs really support the concept anyways, but it would have been cool if at least a portion of your weapons were gained from ripping the bits off of baddies and grafting them to your arm. C'est la vie.
Also, there's actually a "karma" system built into the game! It's keeping score on how heroic or naughty you are, though it doesn't go out of its way to tell you this is happening. Helping people out or choosing to be kind instead of a jerk will make you... Gooder. On the other hand, vandalizing the island, attacking friendlies or just generally not being very nice will make you the opposite of that. The key issue is that there's really no meaningful difference to whether or not you're heroic or anti-heroic. No plot changes or shop modifiers or optional events. Some dialogue changes and you might impact a couple of very small details on the island. Otherwise, the only noteworthy difference is that Mega's armor darkens when you're a really nasty dude... But good luck ever seeing that organically. As you might anticipate, there are far and away more opportunities to be a goody two-shoes than there are chances to act up, and there are actually even less ways to net negative karma in the international version of the game (because somebody determined assaulting pets and wildlife might have been just a step too mean-spirited for a kid-friendly game in the English-speaking world). There's a singular event towards the end of the game where you can make your karma plummet to rock-bottom by being a particularly greedy little bastard, but there's basically no repercussions so... Y'know. I actually think this system had a lot of potential. For instance, there are artifacts you can donate to the museum in this game. Donating them all gets you a step further to the best weapon in the game - not that you'd be aware of that. Alternatively, you can sell them for profit, but the amounts you earn are fairly negligible. I'd wager most would be inclined to donate them on principle (if they even know they can, but that's its own problem). What if there was some shady back alley dealer who'd buy them off of you for a mint, but doing so would hurt your reputation? What if the trade off for more funds in your pocket would then mean higher prices at shops, somewhat undermining your efforts? Maybe you could even cut a deal with the pirates? More circumstances where you could be evil for fun or profit would have added a lot to this, as would having real consequences for your actions. As it is, all being a bad dude does is make Volnutt look like he dropped through somebody's chimney. I will say, though, if nothing else, that the denizens of Kattleox all make it abundantly clear how much they admire and appreciate MegaMan for his efforts. If you get that warm fuzzy feeling when your favorite bundle of polygons thanks you for giving them a ring, then maybe being the goodest guy to ever good will serve as its own reward.
Oh, and the few available minigames were just not much fun, except for maybe the "racing" one. Honestly, zipping around with the jet upgrade was one of the more enjoyable parts of the game. They should have expanded on that some.
The more I played, the more I felt that Legends was just kind of missing that X-factor (no pun intended). The combat worked in a pinch but wasn't especially enjoyable. The dungeon crawling was mundane as could be. The game was big in charm but low in character, if that makes any sense at all. Even though Legends shines like a big golden refractor aesthetically and conceptually, it largely smacks of mediocre fifth-generation 3D adventure game... Because once you dig beneath the surface, that's exactly what it is. All the pitfalls of this era and genre are present, which is a bit hard to swallow given the franchise's history of simple, tight gameplay. What's more, it never truly capitalizes on the strengths of its setting. It falls into that oh-so-familiar territory of "cool concept, middling execution" that managed to win its fair share of hearts but obviously still had a lot of maturing to do. MegaMan Volnutt's first story is one that I'll happily retell, but not one that I have any particular desire to relive.
Of course, this wasn't the end - Rock and friends would make yet another outing a few years later on the same system. I'm eager to see if they'd grown from their experiences.