X-Men Legends

[jminnis]

The game is pretty simple to play. I'm guessing that it's built on the Balder's Gate: Dark Alliance engine, but I don't know that for sure. If not, it definitely takes a lot of elements from it. It's an action game with a nicely comic book story, with the X-Men going up against Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants (Where'd the Evil go in that name? Ah, never mind...) and anti-mutant organizations. If you like classic X-Men stories and lots of bad guys getting the beat-down from your X-Men, it's a good buy. Especially if you get it used, when it's about $10.

The Good:

• The basic gameplay is simple.
  
• The characters I'm familiar with generally stick with their comic powersets. There are some liberties taken, but most of those are to make the characters play well in a game.
  
• Equipment with a given name is always the same, so you don't have (or want) to screw around with it too often.
  
• Your characters' abilities determine what they can smash and/or pick up and throw.
  
• You often use your special abilities to get past puzzles in the game. These are clearly marked, other than a few 'oopses'.
  
• You can tag in characters at most 'X-Traction' points. The characters outside your party get a percentage of XP earned, so they stay within 2 or 3 levels of your primary characters. The only exception to this is when plot dictates one or more party members.
  

The Bad:

• Your X-Men start out at level 1. This makes them pretty lame for a while. For example, Wolverine starts our with claws but no regeneration.
  
• You can't redo areas you have already been to. This is especially annoying because of the 'only exist in one place' items which build up your characters or unlock danger room missions. I recommend playing the game with an item location check list at hand.
  
• You cannot respec your skills if you don't like how a character is playing. This generally isn't a huge deal because you level up fairly quickly (~45 levels in ~25 hours of game), but it's still a bit annoying.
  

The Ugly:

• The characters in the pre-rendered cut scenes look really out of place. They just look wonky. I'm not sure if it is the differences from the game rendered characters, the fact that they are going for photo-realism but failing, or something else.