Legion: The Legend of Excalibur

"Unexciting and a bit dull"

Legion: The Legend of Excalibur is one of those games that's content to just sort of ''be.'' It's not great, it's not totally crap, it just is. As an exercise in mechanics, Legion is more hack-and-slash than even the most hack-and-slash games out there, but the rewards are so little and few. Starting at the beginning, the game's premise is seriously flawed. It intends to base itself in the Arthurian myths, yet it gets them all wrong. In the REAL Arthurian myths, Arthur pulls the sword from the stone, becomes king, then later is tricked into having sex with his half-sister, Morgana (Morgan La Fey), which produces his son, Mordred, who wages war on Camelot. For some bizarre reason, the plot in Legion is this: Morgana is somehow in existence when Uther Pendragon still rules Britain, she kills him, them takes over the countryside with her evil army. Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone (in a sequence that doesn't fit at all in Arthurian lore) and instantly transforms into some decked-out superhero and goes forth to combat Morgana. The plot alone will make anyone who knows anything about the myths wince in pain, especially the ridiculous costumes everyone wears (I especially liked Gueneviere's slut-leather costume, as she goes forth to kick-butt with a crossbow; where'd that come from?). The game itself is very similar to Record Of Lodoss War on the Dreamcast or, to a lesser extent, Baldur's Gate on the PS2. Except here, the game goes level by level, is totally linear, and very self contained. You also have party members on many levels which you can give individual commands to in order to control their behavior. Ultimately, what makes Legion so mediocre is that it tries to ''improve'' the simplicity of most dungeon hacks by adding in a pointlessly complicated combat system and specific goals for each level. The combat is designed to be more ''Realistic'' requiring you to slash the average enemy about 50 times using a combo based system that does very little amounts of damage unless you actually time the combos right. You and your opponents can also block with shields, which ensures another 10 minutes tacked on to the average fight with a baddie. The game likes to swarm you with enemies all Diablo-style, yet this combat system ensures you'll get your butt kicked while you play around with one guy at a time. You do have a strong slash with can hit multiple enemies and do more damage, but it takes about 4 seconds to charge, during which you get hacked to pieces. Also, you cannot move while blocking. Some have called this ''Strategic'' battling, but it really isn't. It's just a gimmicky way of inflating the game's tactics into something that APPEARS deeper than the average hack-em-up, but adds very little, especially since it's not very rewarding. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that you're supposed to be playing Arthur, yet he's a lousy fighter and Excalibur might as well be a K-Mart plastic sword, because it has no real ''power'' in this game. Arthur is reduced to being the level 1 adventurer in some poor D&D campaign, rather than a mighty warrior. Legion does use an experience system, but it's ill-concieved. Since every level has a set number of enemies and there's NO way to go back to a previous level really, your experience is seriously limited and player growth will barely vary at all between games. Baldur's Gate had a limited EXP problem as well, but no where NEAR as tighly corked as in Legion. In this day and age of modern technology, I still do not understand the insistence on game developers to antiquated save systems like the one in Legion. You can only save between levels, which wouldn't be a problem were it not for the fact that some level will take 45-minutes, or maybe more, to complete. There's nothing I like more than replaying a 30-40 minute level when I get taken out by a cheap-shot 1 minute before finishing it. I'll admit, one mildly good thing in Legion is the goal-based system of levels, which includes main goals and optional goals. Your rewards for completing all the goals are never all that great, but it makes for an interesting challenge, and sometime the game can get a bit creative about it. As players join up that have magic and such, some things do get interesting, but still amazingly repetitive and uninspired. Like most of Midway's games, this is just another example of a game that needed to seriously cook in the oven awhile longer before being released. It's a functional game, but there's no spirit of adventure, no sense of creating a character, and no sense of exploration. It's just ''hurry up! Do this! Beat this guy!'' over and over again, limiting your strategic options and rushing into fights you're usually ill-prepared for. Ultimately, a playable game, but really disappointing.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/02, Updated 06/26/02