After procrastinating on it for almost dead-on a year, I finally got back to finish off my Mega Man Mega Marathon from last year and play the second Mega Man Legends game. It took a little while to get back into the swing of things in both the narrative and the controls, but I was hoping and blasting again in no time~. I played the Japanese PSP port via my PSTV with a PS3 controller, and it took me around 14 hours to complete.
Continuing from a little bit after where the last game left off, this game has Rock and the crew of the Digouters on a quest to try and find the mysterious Mother Lode by assisting the crew of the giant Sulpher Bottom ship. There’s a beautiful in-game cutscene to open the action with, and that combined with the first brief mission introduce a ton of new hooks to old questions about the history of the world, the nature of the Mother Lode treasure, and just what happened to Roll’s parents. However, as Rock goes off on his quest to find the four keys to unlock the Mother Lode, this original setup isn’t really touched much at all, as each of the four locations involve fairly self-contained stories (or at least ones only distantly related to that initial premise) until we get to revealing and expositioning everything else after our some 10 hour long key hunt. The story isn’t bad, but I definitely preferred how the original game told its story. This game doesn’t seem to be able to decide if it wants to be one longer story or a more episodic adventure, and that indecision of the parts harms the pacing and quality of the whole. This is best exemplified in how the game is just drowning in relatively flat side-antagonists compared to how involved and detailed an experience you got fighting the Bonne family in the first game. Again, I wanna stress that I don’t think it’s a bad story. I just think that the first game’s story is better.
The gameplay is a significant evolution on the gameplay of the previous game. Where we still have dungeons to explore, puzzles to solves, and bosses, now you have a world map where you can fly around in your airship between different hubs. There are a fair few more mini-games in this game, and some fairly annoying bosses at times, but on the whole I think the gameplay, very similarly to the story, isn’t so much “better” than the first game so much as it is very differently focused. We have a much more linear approach to the design here compared to the last game’s bigger emphasis on exploring more and more of one location. Again, I personally prefer the approach the first game takes, but I’d still say that on the whole this game’s dungeon and boss design is more solid than its predecessor’s.
The presentation is once again very good. The way the game’s painstaking use of all sorts of 2D sprites on 3D models once more brings forth that feeling of “playing an anime” that the first game did so well. The music is also once again quite good, but that isn’t a surprise either given the quality of the first game’s tracks.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. As much as I may prefer its predecessor, this is still an excellent game still worth playing. It is a great Zelda-like action/adventure game on the PS1, and if you like that sort of thing, this is definitely not a game to sleep on.
Continuing from a little bit after where the last game left off, this game has Rock and the crew of the Digouters on a quest to try and find the mysterious Mother Lode by assisting the crew of the giant Sulpher Bottom ship. There’s a beautiful in-game cutscene to open the action with, and that combined with the first brief mission introduce a ton of new hooks to old questions about the history of the world, the nature of the Mother Lode treasure, and just what happened to Roll’s parents. However, as Rock goes off on his quest to find the four keys to unlock the Mother Lode, this original setup isn’t really touched much at all, as each of the four locations involve fairly self-contained stories (or at least ones only distantly related to that initial premise) until we get to revealing and expositioning everything else after our some 10 hour long key hunt. The story isn’t bad, but I definitely preferred how the original game told its story. This game doesn’t seem to be able to decide if it wants to be one longer story or a more episodic adventure, and that indecision of the parts harms the pacing and quality of the whole. This is best exemplified in how the game is just drowning in relatively flat side-antagonists compared to how involved and detailed an experience you got fighting the Bonne family in the first game. Again, I wanna stress that I don’t think it’s a bad story. I just think that the first game’s story is better.
The gameplay is a significant evolution on the gameplay of the previous game. Where we still have dungeons to explore, puzzles to solves, and bosses, now you have a world map where you can fly around in your airship between different hubs. There are a fair few more mini-games in this game, and some fairly annoying bosses at times, but on the whole I think the gameplay, very similarly to the story, isn’t so much “better” than the first game so much as it is very differently focused. We have a much more linear approach to the design here compared to the last game’s bigger emphasis on exploring more and more of one location. Again, I personally prefer the approach the first game takes, but I’d still say that on the whole this game’s dungeon and boss design is more solid than its predecessor’s.
The presentation is once again very good. The way the game’s painstaking use of all sorts of 2D sprites on 3D models once more brings forth that feeling of “playing an anime” that the first game did so well. The music is also once again quite good, but that isn’t a surprise either given the quality of the first game’s tracks.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. As much as I may prefer its predecessor, this is still an excellent game still worth playing. It is a great Zelda-like action/adventure game on the PS1, and if you like that sort of thing, this is definitely not a game to sleep on.