Legion: The Legend of Excalibur

"A Great Medieval Game"

GAMEPLAY(10/10)

If you are a fan of Real-Time-Strategy, you will love this game. Always in a heat of battle, you will have to issue commands to other knights quickly. This can be difficult at first ,but once if you muster this skill, it will help you a lot in battle.

The strategy factors do not only come from issuing out commands but the ability to use your magic or Merlin's power to burn bridges so as to stop enemy's reinforcements are just so classic and fantastic.

There are also stages where you can capture enemies catapults and use their weapons against them.

The battle system is a direct approach one. This is what i have always wanted and preferred .You can block with your shield using circle ,execute the light damage sword slash using x or greater slash using square.

To damage enemy further, you must muster the timing combos which is cool to look at, as Arthur will do a cool sword spin to injure and repel enemies surrounding him.

These fighting techniques demand some skills to play and if you position yourself together with allied soldiers, the enemy will have a hard time hurting you.To sum up,the battles are amazingly realistic.

Furthermore the gameplay do not only revolve around fighting,you still can interact with townspeople and receive special items if you fulfill their request.If you feel like your allies’numbers are dwelling ,you can get fresh archers and swordsmen in the center of town.

GRAPHICS (9/10)

The animations are nicely done and at a detailed level. This is important when you are anticipating enemies attack, in other words you will know when they are going to strike you with that axe and when you are going to raise the shield.

In addition to that , you can zoom the camera and focus at Arthur only ,pan the camera so that you can see your troops and what ‘s going on ahead or the top view.

The environments are done with a lot of effort for there are waterfalls, massive castle forts and walls, beautiful fountains and green pastries. Transparent effects will be present on structures when they are blocking your view.

The character’s clothing and arts design are marvelous. Arthur’s golden armor with the cloak is the most elegant looking character. Lancelot and Perceival looks cool too. All the characters are made up of polygons ,everything is in 3D.

SOUND (10/10)

This game has the best orchestra music ever. If you watched the 1980s 'Conan The Barbarian' movie , 'Gladiator', 'Willow' or any of those medieval swordplay movies, expect the same music. The music in this game is the ‘driving force’ to complete the ‘medieval’
atmosphere.

The speeches are done well, Arthur’s voice portray heroic elements. The English and Irish accent help the game to be realistic and engaging.
For example , soldiers acknowledging will say “Aye!” or “yes milord” or “my liege”.

I always love to blast the music high through my amplifier and enjoy listening to the music mix with the ‘clang’ of swords and the sound of arrows wheezing by.

By the way my sound settings are Music 100% Voice 40% Effect 40 %.This will make the overall game sound optimized just like in those movies I mentioned.

REPLAY FACTOR (8/10)

After completing the game, I found myself playing Excalibur again because
I want to try the other characters which I have not played in the previous game and also I would love to listen to the music of battle and glory.

The game however will be much better if there a level selection option is available.
The use of autosave restrict a player’s chance to get items which they failed to get in previous missions.

However all these limitations do not affect me that much because as I said, this is a ‘Great Medieval Game’ which I enjoy playing over and over again.

Hopefully , 7-studios will do a dynamic saving system and add an Ilink 2 player option for Excalibur2.More characters to choose from the start will be appreciated as I know that there are around 12 knights in the round table,I can remember one of the knights not in the game was Sir Geoffrey .

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/03/02, Updated 07/03/02