Mega Man Legends

"An interesting shift from the typical Mega Man..."

When looking upon the gaming world, you may see that it is gifted with tons of Mega Man games. There were the original six Mega Man games on NES, the Mega Man X 1-7 games, various other games on different consoles, Mega Man 7 and 8 on SNES and PSX, and the Mega Man Legends games on the PlayStation. The original Mega Man Legends was one of the most unique Mega Man games that hardcore gamers had ever seen. For one thing, Mega Man was originally in total 2D, and it was rather unusual to finally get a chance to see the Blue Bomber in 3D, so as you can see it took a good deal of people by total surprise.

It also surprised them that Mega Man Legends was almost entirely different from other Mega Man games, with a totally different storyline and most of all, the genre. Mega Man Legends can hardly be considered the same genre as other Mega Man games, mostly because Mega Man himself has tons of different equipment and Zenny as currency, and he even buys items and equipment with this money! Seeing as this is put to effect, Mega Man Legends is not a shooter or adventure like other games in the huge series, but rather it is an action-RPG! Who would have thought.

Mega Man Legends focuses upon four characters: Mega Man himself of course, his, well... sister Roll, her grandfather Professor Barrell, and a weird monkey named Data, who doesn't really play much role in the game. They live in a ship called the Flutter and generally do good things around the world and get zenny from large Refractors. Refractors are the world's source of energy and power, and so it's obvious that a lot of people would want them. People like pirates, for example. Mega Man Legends focuses strongly upon pirates, seeing as how the story unfolds...

The game starts out in a dungeon, while Mega Man is looking for a huge refractor. When he finds it and manages to get out, he brings it to the Flutter, but then the engine overheats and the Flutter suffers severe damage, and crashes down at an island called Kattelox. And it's also a coincidence that currently pirates are around the island causing mischief. Mega Man goes to the city, only to find out that the city has been overrun by pirates. The pirates are going around the town looking for a mysterious treasure. It's obviously Mega Man's job to stop them.

In this game, these pirates are extremely persistent, and the game is just full of fights with them! The three pirates are the Bonnes: Tron, Teisel, and Bon. They also have 40 cute-as-a-button robots called the Servbots with them, and they aren't exactly fond of Mega Man. Throughout the game, Mega Man goes through a huge number of fights with them and goes through many dungeons for some Refractors. Overall, the storyline in Mega Man Legends is excellent. With lots of great characters and a nice theme of pirates to it, there really aren't any storyline problems.

As I stated above, Mega Man Legends is more of an action RPG than the typical Mega Man games we know and love. For one thing, there are tons of pieces of equipment for Mega Man to put on. Guns, equipment, shoes, you name it. Also, there are items that you can buy with the money you collect (called Zenny), which means that Mega Man Legends is an action-RPG, simply put. Now as you can see, not everyone is going to love this new change on Mega Man. That's also not to mention that the game is in 3D instead of 2D this time around.

The controls are good, but there are a couple flaws that I'll have to input here. For one - Mega Man Legends does not use the Analog Sticks. This gets really annoying after a while, and the second one is that you'll have to use the D-Pad _far_ too often. It really makes your thumbs hurt after a while. Besides that, the controls are easy to learn and are pretty simple... it's X to jump, [] to shoot, /\ to zoom, and O to use the Jet Skates. Overall the controls are good except for those two points.

Mega Man Legends is not a very long game at all, but it is littered with side quests. The game itself should probably take around 10-12 hours to complete, but you can fully enjoy the fact it has side quests. There are tons of weapons to collect for Mega Man, tons of caves and dungeons to explore, and a good deal of other stuff here and there, like helping to rebuild a base, and destroying a pirate car that stole money from the bank. There's also the Easy and Hard modes that can be unlocked, so it takes quite a while to run out of stuff to do in this game.

It isn't exactly a very challenging game either. In the Easy mode, you start out with the best adjustments to your gun, and the bosses have much less health and die in just a couple hits. In the Normal mode, in which I'll judge the most, there are some tough robots here and there, and tons of the bosses related to the Bonnes are difficult, but besides that the game is pretty much a breeze. In Hard mode, it takes forever to gain money, and some bosses can take a long amount of time to shoot down. But an experienced gamer shouldn't really have much trouble.

Although for its time, Mega Man Legends looked pretty good, it's not really that much above average today. For one thing, it's quite pixilated, although it's not so pixilated that it makes you want to shut the game off. Most of the characters are pretty good-looking, although they really could have improved Barrell's design quite a bit. That beard of his is just... way too long, and it just makes him look downright weird. But besides that, the graphics aren't that bad, and still not anything that'd hinder you from playing the game or something.

Most of the music in the game is great, especially those that play against bosses. The one against the Frog Bot is one of the best that I have ever heard in an action/adventure game. Bruno's one has a nice edge to it, and I really love the one that plays against the Gesselschaft. However, some of the music is really tedious. For example, some of the dungeon themes make you think that Capcom was trying to bore us half to death. The one in Kattelox's town is also an extreme snooze. But besides the occasional lame ones, the music is awesome.

The sound isn't really as good as most of the music is, but it's still highly above average. To start out with, Mega Man's buster has a good rhythm to its sound and has the proper sound of something going off. A lot of the character voices are great as well, and I have to say that Mega Man's voice in the original Mega Man Legends is quite a bit better than it was in Mega Man Legends 2. Other voices, such as Roll and Barrell, perfectly fit the characters, although both can get somewhat annoying after a while. Still, I enjoyed most of the sound. Especially Tron's voice. =P

Overall, Mega Man Legends is well worth a purchase, although it has somewhat become a rare find nowadays. Still, if you find it at a good store then I definitely recommend that you pick it up. It shouldn't be any more than $20 at most stores, although I think you should pass it up if it's any more than that, however.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/08/03