Legendary Legend

I downloaded this game after seeing some heated discussion about it spring up on IRC, as well as argument about whether or not it deserved to be a featured game.
The prognosis didn't look good, but I had to see for myself. Unfortunately, we start low and snowball from there.

This is the first thing I saw after downloading the game:


Why anyone would actually use the untranslated RM 'installer' is beyond me, but I am thankful to say that due to this, I didn't start with huge expectations. I would have quit a lot quicker if not for this.

I'm going to forgo the traditional review format in favour of something of a play-by-play of the game. Everything you read from this point on was written as I played the game, so it's my immediate impression of what I experienced playing Legendary Legend.

Right out of the gate, the title screen music is some sort of horribly grating insipid upbeat midi. I'm terrified already, but it's nice to not hear any Final Fantasy music or anything I recognize immediately.
Nice photoshop text FX bro.

Textbox intro with visible blue RTP textbox and everything, then we cut to the dorms at the University of Miami. We're introduced to a group of students- Nick, Brian, and Steve. Is that Polyanna from Mother playing in the background? The scenes in the dorm involve a little tussle that ends in the presumable death of an innocent Dungeons & Dragons loving child and some mediocre banter. Cute, but stale. This looped earthbound music is really starting to get to me. All are shocked at the appearance of a mysterious fat man in a hat wearing some form of burlap sack robe. I think he's offering the characters psychotropic drugs of some kind. Something about "If the trip doesn't kill you." I don't even. The protagonists are proclaimed the "chosen ones" and are sent off on some sort of magical journey with a hearty "SHABONG."
Dude. Bong. He IS offering them drugs.


Cue screen tint transition to idyllic RTP village. The characters come to the conclusion that they have "GONE BACK IN TIME" (direct quote) and that they are "doomed to become lowly serfs in the feudal system!" (direct quote)
You can't make this shit up.



Long story short, the crew meets up with "Rixislennia'Enlokulier-Horalenfilaasimelle, elven ranger!," a green-haired manlady with a horn- yes, like a unicorn- who forms them into an RPG PARTY. It's been a while now, and I'm still just scrolling through text. I'm starting to despair at the thought of ever actually getting to play a game in amidst all these insipid jokes about poking people with sticks and humorously named pubs, like the tee-hee worthy "Fornicating Goblin." Five seconds in RTPworld, and one of the characters has magically set a dog on fire.
You can't make this shit up.

Our heroes join up with Rixis(etc), get outfitted at the local Weapon/Armour shop(both shops share a building, of course) and AT LONG LAST, I get to control my characters! I hit up the local save point so I wouldn't have to sit through all of that shit again. I explored some houses. Judging from the fact the first one I barged into poked fun at the RPG trope referenced in this very sentence, I expected full-on RPG content to be found at every turn. I checked pots, dressers, miscellaneous items of furniture, everything. The two things I found that were actually interactable in the houses I checked were a bookcase with some unfunny fantasy book names and a pot that said "This is a pot!"



One of the (very) few laugh-out-loud moments of the game came when I discovered a statue in town that told me if I started talking to statues, I'd never stop. Some graves in town had some pretty humorous flavour text as well.
Let's skip ahead a bit.
Went to the inn, ninja in my room, party leaves the in. LONG CUTSCENE.
I'm supposed to go invade some noble's house. Okay whatever. Rixis the Manlady goes to infiltrate the noble's house. My party watches through the window. They think they see the noble accosting their Obviously Hermaphroditic acquaintance. Then AWESOME SHIT HAPPENS:


I found myself pausing to reflect at this point- the whole intro would have been a LOT less awful to sit through had it all been done in these comicbook splash screens. I could almost stand to look at that rather than the horrible RM graphics for the extreme period of time each cutscene seems to take.

I digress. Turns out I was breaking into this mansion to save- you guessed it- the princess. Oh, I didn't have to go looking for her or anything. The endless cutscene took care of any exploration I would have had to do, so I don't have to worry my pretty little head. Thus far I've gotten in about a solid minute and a half of actually controlling my characters and about 20 minutes of endless cutscenes and paging through text. Oh look, it's the title card that signals I'm finally into the game and out of the intro. About damn time.




Some other stuff happens, and we're finally introduced to the antagonists. As expected, it's some mysterious asshole in a throne facing away from the player and his evil henchman, some white motherfucker with cornrows or some shit. I don't even care any more, can I fight shit yet? Cut back to my party and I've been joined by Zegi, the Cleric of Raping Little Girl Booty. I wish that was his real title, but the game throws some "goddess of love" bullshit at you that's more creepy than anything else. Oh shit, I'm on a world map!

FIRST EVER RANDOM ENCOUNTER YEAAAH NOW THAT'S MORE LI-

default rm2k3 battlesprites against the default rm2k3 plain backdrop face dangerously close to palm--
Maybe the fight itself won't be so bad. Maybe I have some cool ski- all skills suck just mash attack
Did I mention I can't even RUN from the random encounters? This is the first RM game where I have actually used autobattle. No shit. I do want to call some attention to the actually pretty okay custom/mostly custom battler sprites. If the whole game looked like that, I'd be a lot more interested in... Well, looking at it.



Some other stuff happened, I wound up in a cave. This game gave me a terrible infection in both eyes, because I just couldn't see playing any more.

Legendary Legend is clearly an older RM* game, created by an author with very little knowledge of the programme or good game design in general. After what felt like an eternity of truly terrible cutscenes, I finally got control of my characters for an extended length of time. At that point, the only thing I can compare exploration in this game to is Quest 64 on the N64. In Quest 64, you walk from location to location across pointlessly huge grassy field maps, never stopping to explore anything or search for items or do side quests because there is nothing. You just follow the damn road until you hit the next town or inn or whatever. Add truly bland, uninspired maps using tilesets compiled with no thought toward graphical consistency, and you've got a visual recipe for disaster.

The writing in this game is dreadful. Truly uninspired and sincerely unfunny humour the author seems to feel the need to interject every few moments in the hope of sparking a 'choice catchphrase' that will become INTERNET PHENOM. Every single character in this speaks in the same disgusting 13-year-old-internet-dweeb-speek that all webcomic authors seem to think is just ever so adorable. Occasionally, it all breaks down into the worst type of otaku-ese verbal self-masturbation- read: "Nick = Warrior = Can't possibly take that demon thingie." and "His taint is still upon me. I can feel it!"

At the end of the day, Legendary Legend fails in even the simplest aspects of game design. The writing could be pretty enjoyable if you're 13 or have never read a book in your life, but it's not enough to carry an otherwise really disappointing game. Not only is it disappointing in terms of content and game design, but it's barely a game at all- it's an interactive webcomic with shitty RPG Maker battles. If you're looking for an enjoyable gaming experience, I suggest you seek elsewhere.

If you are looking to read a webcomic, the author of this game has made one! Sibhod should stick to webcomics- it's actually pretty good from what I've seen. You can find that here at his site here: http://www.valsalia.com/llarchive.htm