The Legend of Legacy

I don't know if I hate it or love it

The Legend of Legacy, a game I picked up the demo for and played around a bit and thought it was a funny concept. Basically you pick one of seven characters and for different reasons arrive at the island Avalon that rose from the sea some time ago. I choose Meurs, one of the elementalist that hails from Avalon and feel the calls from the elementals from the island. Joining me on an excursion to a forest is Bianca, an amnesiac trying to find out who she is and Garnet, the paladin working for the church to fight of "false gods". While walking in the forest we discover a "singing stone", a stone singing that gives us a singing shard that allows us to adjust the elements during battle, awaken certain pedestals that gives us a bonus for battle near it or even affects the environment. After that you are dragged back to Initium, the only city in the game where the Lord-Mayor lives in his castle that pays you for for progressing while you have a shop that sells most of the equipment (at random intervals), an inn to sleep and save in as well as a bar for some gossip (well hardly anything at all). Sometimes some of the other adventurers appear in the city so you can recruit them if you want (but I find it rather worthless and I will return for that later). And your off. The demo actually goes on for a bit longer, but I've had already ordered the game and waited for it. Which was a big mistake since I actually forgot how to play the game so instead of transferring over and continue from the last point I restarted. Oh goody!

Be prepared to see these words a lot

So how do you play this RPG? Mostly standard turn-based RPG. Await your turn, use a skill and wait. What's more unique is the use of singing shards (which you need to equip taking up one of two item slots) which allows you to make a contract with that element that gives you a bonus depending on which element it is (water a HP-regen ability, wind a SP-regen and fire an heighten success rate on status effects) and I think water is preferred since mostly does most damage with it compared to when fire, wind or evil (yes, the fourth element is evil or darkness and only enemies can use it). And now to the "unique" gimmick of this game, you don't level up like normal, instead you "level up" skills, but it's completely random when you do. I mean you can hit the same monster with the same attack for thousand times and you can't predict if the stat boost will be in the first attack or the last, or if you unlock a new weapon attack by random. On one hand, I really like the idea on the surface since I had a weak spot for Final Fantasy II that used something similar, but it was not random or the Quest for Glory-series that also adhere to boosting skills by use, but again, not randomly. It's a bit more realistic than random boosts each level up, but the main problem after a while is its randomness. Since I can't reliably grind the characters I just stick with the first three characters since why bother trying to keep everyone even levelled? And then we have main stats, Attack, Guard and Support... which each receives boost up randomly and if you use them with a corresponding stance. Yes, we also have to choose stances for the characters, where we have 8 customisable slots and one attack all and one flee (that works 99 % of the time, the last percent is when you either enter a boss battle or a battle you stumbled in and therefore can't flee from). You also can find different versions of the main stances that enhances different stats or abilities. Fine and dandy. Also your HP and SP randomly get a boost after finishing a battle, maybe. And what is the best strategy to prepare for a hard boss fight? Find an almost as strong enemy and attack, or guard, support until you feel ready. Fighting harder enemies gives you a higher chance of getting the boost or acquiring new skills for weapons so that is nice I guess, but be aware that if you fall it's game over. All progress lost and you are thrown back to your latest save. And I'm now gonna give you the best tips on playing this game, hold R + X makes a quick save which you can do all over the place and restart with L + R + Start + Select. It almost drove me insane fighting through a map and just before leaving back to town be attacked by an unescapable ambush and it causes a game over.

The main seven

So that's a bit of the gameplay, the rest of the story is finding 3 hidden ruins, each designed for one of the three elements. Find the corresponding golem, defeat it and put its core into the corresponding sphere. After that you unlock the rest of the continent as you raise it from the seas. And then you travel the new places until you reaches the hidden waterfall where you refight the three golems and bring their cores to a transporter that brings you to the unseen city, the home of the god-people. Fight the bosses and game is over. That if you didn't listen to the singing stones as you gathered all the shards. Apparently Avalon sank after a civil war occurred when the big bad guy banished Queen Lilith from the world and the elementals was captured by the Star Graal that gave eternal life to the god-people, but also caused the shadow giants and stole the stars from the night sky (as I gathered by the ending). By destroying the Star Graal the stars are back and Initium is on the verge of becoming a new regional power of trade and diplomacy governed by the Lord-Mayor, another descendant of the elementalist that originated from Avalon, finally coming home. And then you are supposed to play the game 6 more times to unlock the secret ending when the save figure cat that was taken by one of the shadow giants in the bottomless pit returns to the inn. And as frustrating as the game was I won't play it. Maybe if I'm ever curious again I might play another character, but I'm not gonna do it now.

Initium

So why is it so frustrating? The randomness, for me, mean I can't expect the same outcome for doing the same action. I can sometimes get the boost and new skills for doing one battle and sometimes it can take forever, and often the boosts happen during a boss fight that I can't win since I'm under prepared, there is no item use as I found, and the bastard bosses can steal my contract and get a free 999 regan when I needed it to cure the poison attack that kills my main healer at the end since stealing a contract makes it impossible to use magic. Which forces the end game strategy to keep making water contract since losing that is a death sentence. Also, of only keeping two accessory slots which I need both for magic (one for the singing shard and the other for the wishing shard) until I learn it permanently, but as with everything else, it's random. Also, it feels like the game cheats at times. At the wind ruins there are flying griffins. I met them earlier, black and red and they beat me every single fight. But here the game has hatchling and I think, maybe I can fight them and after a hard battle which I won by the neck of my hair, what does the game do? Sending in a grey parent that proceeds killing me after one round and booting me to the game over screen. And if that wasn't enough I'm waking up at the start of the level due to already sold the map in town and other adventurers walking around and they sometimes can drag you out after falling. The thing is... my gains during those two fights don't stay. The game tricked me and this was before I figured out the quick save functionality. Basically the game burnt me enough to not care, and since the story isn't more than paper thin excuses for the different characters what is the point? You play this for the gameplay, getting new skills and each playthrough is unique since everything as stated is random. Even some maps are random. There is a desert level where you can find mirages that teleports you to other maps, doesn't work at all or takes you to secret area of the desert, one being where the cat clan lives which the already save cat comes from. The thing is I found this place after already gone through the Bottomless Pit segment meaning he wasn't there when I came there making it just being cats that ran after me and disappeared if I tried to talk to them. Leaving me totally confused. But there are apparently interesting story bits, like who Bianca is. Which is pretty much the only one people on the internet is talking about, I knew I should have played the amnesiac girl. Those are usually important characters in RPG's. For people who like those kind of games, try it out, but if story is important (and I mean character story, since it is much lore hidden around the game and it is interesting, but I want some character development and not just one at a time, but between characters as well) this isn't the game for you. I'm tired of RPG's for a while after this.

I know I hate you!

And to add insult to injury, there is a New Game + future where they give you a higher drop rate and allow you to keep your accumulated money which you can use to kickstart sending out ships for new equipment and maybe luck out on getting decent stuff. But your skill progress is reset. The one thing that maybe have made the game fun to replay with a maxed out skill set... and yet some of these futures where enhanced for the western market. So we were lucky in my opinion. I know why they didn't do that and it's obviously the fact that if you can't try out a different setup due to chance the games randomness is pointless, but the option for us who don't like the grind would be welcome.