X-Men Legends (Nintendo GameCube, 2004)

This game takes the beloved world of Marvel's X-Men and let's them shine in a unique RPG which just blows others out of the water. This game is great because you will be able to select from a large number of characters to play as and to accompany you in your group. When you're playing the different missions, you'll be in a group of four mutants that you can pick and choose, you can be any of the four at any time. I like this variety because you can set up certain combinations to make the fighting more effective and you can be whoever you want. The way the game plays is that you have an overhead shot of the world and you'll progress through different areas, trying to accomplish menial tasks such as destroying a computer or finding someone, etc. Of course, along the way, you run into a ton of baddies. It's mainly a hack-n-slash game. What's nice is that each character has the standard punching attacking, but they also have attacks that are unique to them and their mutant abilities. As you progress through the missions and story, you will earn points and level up. With a level up, you can choose the attributes you want increased on your characters - this is the RPG aspect of the game. You can increase certain attributes like strength or speed, but you can also pick and choose the mutant abilities. You can give Storm a whirlwind attack or make it stronger if she already has it. You can give Wolverine an accelerated healing factor or a giant slash attack, or make this even more powerful if you've already added them. The game works like this for all the mutants. Plus, along the way, you'll find power ups to add on to your characters - items like gauntlets or body armor, etc. You can build your characters the way you want, to customize their fighting abilities the way you want. The story is pretty much linear, although you can do certain things at certain times, there really isn't a web of choices or directions to go. You'll face a lot of bosses and villains you've come to know and love. During the fighting, some of the characters can interact and pull of some pretty interesting combo moves - the possibilities seem endless! The game is fairly long, as are the levels within. The story is pretty basic, but it does the job to keep you playing and get as many villains as it can involved. There are a lot of extras involved as well, such as the trivia machine. After each new level the trivia machine will have new questions that you can answer to earn level points - it's a great little boost, especially if you know a lot about the X-Men comics/lore. There's also unlockables during the missions, like comic covers and special items that are meant for only one character. You can wander around the mansion and interact with some of the different characters and through out many points, you find danger room discs to let you train. The only downsides are that the characters are a little too comic looking and that can turn off somem people. The other is that you are forced to play as Magma quite often and many scenes revolve around her...perhaps too many. Also, there are a few short missions where you don't get to choose who you be; you'll get stuck at one point playing just as Wolverine and just as Havok. It's still a great RPG that any X-Men fans will love...even those who hate RPGs!

I bought this game because it had great reviews. The AI in the game is pretty bad, so it might be a bit hard without extra hands. The games strengths are that it is similar to secret of mana in the way that you can have 4 players on the screen cooperatively completing objectives and such...but the weaknesses really bring the game down from a 5 to a 3.

To start, the game is way too easy with multiplayer. This could possibly be due to a bug in the game granting too much damage to certain traits and skills (none that I will name so that perhaps you can play through without encountering them or being attracted to using them). Some skills are too good in that they hit pretty much every enemy on the screen with very little effort. This would not be a problem if the enemy could withstand multiple attacks of this type, however, we found that most died before we could be touched.

Other things that make the game too easy is that there are way too many melee combat enemies meaning that they need to get near us to even do damage. This proved to be a problem because of the previously stated issue (high damage, screen clearing attacks). In general, the enemies were far too weak to present any challenge in the mid-later game.

A few more weaknesses that brought the game down were things such as the xtreme powers being too weak. The truth to that is that some other skills well overshadowed the extreme attacks damage wise, making them nearly pointless to use. In addition, the extreme attacks were all pretty much the same (hit all enemies for a certain amount of damage). Also, there are too many playable characters that are almost identical. For example, there are probably 5 characters that have a "shard" attack which launches 3, 5, or 7 projectiles in an arc which do very little damage per shard, and therefore makes it useless unless the player wants to get right up to the enemy while using a projectile move. In addition to the shard, there is the shield skill which is present on probably 80% of the characters making these different characters not so unique.

One more weakness: The unique items really sucked. We ended up using DNA generators for almost all of characters.


To conclude, this game would have been a LOT more fun if it was more challenging. Similar characters didn't really bring the game down as seriously as it sounds, but the fact that I just wanted the game to end 70% of the way through is just an indicator that it was not at all challenging after the first 20% or so. All of this could've been avoided had it not been for a possible bug...

I would like to plug the second Legends game, though, because they made a lot of improvements. First, I think they did diversify the characters a lot more. The game is a bit more challenging (and has 3 difficulty settings) as it has more ranged enemies dishing out decent damage. There are many bugs in the second game as well, and it is frighteningly reminiscent of the game Diablo 2 (5 acts, central base, "waypoints" or Xtraction points in this game, attack rating, defense rating, and many more), but in the end it is a better game overall.

This game is awesome! I haven't played the second one yet because i am still playing the first one, but it is great because you can play story mode with up to 3 of your friends. There are a bunch of characters too,I already have unlocked 12 characters. In this game you get to customize your characters skills to your personal liking as it levels. This is really good because it can go to your fighting preferences. This game is definatly a game that is a must have, and is not a waste of money.

Really great game! Many levels, many hard ones too! Its the perfect four player game! Suitable for all ages kids, teens, and even Adults! Basically its many abilities four players one team. Some characters are Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Rouge, even Collossus, Beast and many more! Highly recommended!

The game and story are pretty good, and you get lots of characters to play around with. Trouble with the GameCube version is that it tends to slow down when too many enemies are fighting at the same time. Also, the overhead view doesn't allow for the best graphics detail. That said, the game is fun to plan and probably worth a try.