Legion: The Legend of Excalibur

"What might have been..."

LEGION: THE LEGEND OF EXCALIBUR

When I first saw this game I immediately had high hopes for it. An avid fan of the Knights of the Roundtable story, I picked it up the first chance I got and dove into the game with grand expectations where I was quickly treated to a great intro and my first mission as a weak and untrained Arthur seeking to prove himself in a harsh and unforgiving world.

It was all downhill from there...

GAMEPLAY
The game play was decent at times but was downright aggravating or boring most of the time. The fact that you can control some of the most memorable Knights of the Roundtable (Arthur, Galahad, Percival, & Lancelot) and others such as Merlin and Gwenevere, automatically give the game a cool factor in my opinion. Unfortunately, if you try to control one of them, Arthur usually ends up dying and you get the game over cinematic (one of the games redeeming qualities). Still some mission require you to keep Arthur and another Knight alive like Lancelot. So even if you manage to keep Arthur alive, Lancelot could die and it's back to the game over screen. This is even more aggravating when Lancelot gets stuck behind a twig and you don't notice he's missing until you are on the other side of the level. Or when it seems like 3 hits seems to kill Gwenevere for some reason...

There is a neat little addition to the combat system that allows you to give orders to specific individuals like flee, attack strongest, etc... Unfortunately it doesn't work that well. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. As far as combat it involves little more than smashing the X button at timed intervals, over and over and over and over again... And with Gauntlet like enemy spawners never ceasing it seems as though you get barely five steps before encountering another group of enemies. This is quite annoying when you are trying to look at something, fix something, shout orders out, get Lancelot unstuck from behind his twig...You see where I am going. If you stop for more than a few moments another group of enemies will be on top of you, again, and again...

No saving within levels, (And some of the later levels take a good hour or two to complete) and one small slip-up gives the game over screen is quite frustrating! Despite that I didn't actually die very often, maybe twice the whole game, so it wasn't that aggravating.

There were basically no towns and the game was 100% linear unless you count being allowed to skip a mission as 1% non-linear...

I expected to be able to walk around Camelot, talk to people, explore, shop, etc... Instead all I get is two levels where I siege/defend it. Once that's over I never see it again. I can't walk around in it or anything. I do however get a character select screen with the roundtable on it and a treasury where I can buy 1 of every item available. Yes, that's right, 1. If you want two ''Tithing Crosses'' you better hope you find another one in a level somewhere. And if you equip it on Lancelot for one level, then use Galahad for another level, you can't equip/de-equip it. Unless you de-equip it quickly at the last second just before you finish the previous level. Of course you may need it on that level at the end to survive or even may not know that you are about to cross that invisible line sending you back to the character select screen, so basically, don't equip something on a character unless you plan on leaving it there forever.

Despite all that I still enjoyed playing the game most of the time. It seemed more like a glorified Gauntlet game within a King Arthur setting (Maybe that's what they were going for) than what I expected it to be which was and Action/RPG/Strategy game. Now that I look back on it I get aggravated because it could have been so much better than it was. But I also remember that at the time I seemed to enjoy playing the game.

GRAPHICS
The graphics are nothing to write home about. Beyond Arthur's cape, nothing is impressive. The camera is about impossible to get within twenty feet of any given character and the environments aren't anything we haven't seen.

SOUND
The sound effects in the game were pretty good although after hearing ''To the death!'' over and over again throughout a battle begins to wear thin. The music was appropriate when it was there and actually quite good for this type of game. Unfortunately there were levels or areas where there wasn't any sound at all. I don't know why, maybe to give it an eerie effect or something but it came off to me like a bug or a rush job again.

Sword clangs, death sounds, and the voice acting are quite realistic and good. Music, good when there.

STORY
I'm not sure what story line from the King Arthur era they were following but I whatever it was, I've never heard it. Now I will give a certain amount of leeway as far as story is concerned but it seems as if the developers pieced the story together from what little bits they could remember, and then filled in the rest with some sort of mystical garbage. Last time I checked Merlin was the only one who could wield magic and Arthur didn't turn from a weakling to a heavily clad knight just by picking up Excalibur...

The story at least makes sense if not actually similar in anyway to the most widely accepted views on the Legend of King Arthur.

The story could have been far better than it was by simply following the common legends we all know today. The way it stands makes the game seem like it was rushed. Arthur goes from zero to hero in about ten minutes.

REPLAY VALUE
None that I can see. When you beat the game it automatically saves unless you pull out your memory card quickly.
Here are your two options:
Let it save: When you load your game you are at the first level again with nothing from your last game. Basically you start the game over from scratch.
Don't let it save: When you load your game you will be able to play ONLY the last mission again. (Repeat cycle...)

That's it. No other options. So in my opinion there is zero replay value unless you like to do exactly the same game (or single mission) over and over again...

OVERALL
While the game had many flaws and was poorly done, somehow I still managed to derive satisfaction and a decent fun factor from the game. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable, but nevertheless...I enjoyed it most of the time. Thus I managed to give it a positive score despite the fact that it had so many negatives against it.

It could have been so much more than it was which leads to me wonder that with some needed improvement, more development time, a stronger bond to timeless King Arthur legends, and a little less Action and a little more RPG/Strategy...what might have been...?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/18/02, Updated 10/18/02