Legendary Legend

Legendary Legend! What a cool name!
This game, made by Sibhod, is another classic Rm2k3 game I suggest.

There's only one problem... the title should be "Chapter 1 of the Legendary Legend" since this is an adventure that sadly ends before the end of the story, promising a second half that never came. Pity, really!

Legendary Legend begins in an unusual way: our three protagonists (Steve, Nick and Brian) are three normal students that are mysteriously teleported to a fantasy world. Here each one becomes a character of an adventurer class (respectively a rogue, a warrior and a sorcerer) and, as you can probably expect, are involved in several quests against the forces of evil. Soon they are also joined by the ranger Rixis and Ruli the druid, two elven half-sisters (in this game elves have a horn on the forehead, that's weird!).


A real master of the secret techniques!

Ok, so how is this game? Well 60% funny dialogues and cutscenes, 20% exploration and 20% combat. and luckily the 60% part is the best part, don't expect one of these low quality rmk games with crass humor. It's far better than those, there was a lot of work put on the animations and dialogues.
But let's see the rest.

Exploration: games is about travelling for the most part. Or finding a precise person/object. In both cases there's a map that has to be explored, with some chests with loot here and there, and save points (but it's possible to save on the world map, of course). Yes, there are save points AND random encounters, a usually deadly combination, that it's not so deadly thanks to rather easy and avoidable combat encounters, but I'll discuss about that later.
Mapping and graphics are ok, the wilderness areas and dungeons are a bit dull, but I cannot say that mapping is bad. It's simple and effective, I liked the city and the forest village, and the fact that the castle guards are all different and even named (unnecessary but funny detail)! There are also some interesting choices, like the forest part, towards the ending, in which the vision is obscured by the tree tops and you have to guess the path. It's not that difficult as you can see the party through some small clearings (and you will also witness a chase totally unrelated to the story!) and it's a rather short part, so I liked that. Graphics is a mix of rtp and edited charsets, while facesets are custom. The game as an overall charming comic-book style that mixes well with the rm2k3 graphics, to create a nice lighthearted fantasy setting.


Hey hey, why that little creepy guy is hiding on the left?

Combat. This is probably the weakest part of the game. Battlers are edits and that's ok, monsters instead are just the usual Rtp already seen one million times (the only funny and original things is the placement of some enemies, with goblin hiding behind other monsters, or even inside them (well to tell the truth it's just one sprite under the other, but being smaller they cannot be seen at first!). The monsters are boring and attack in a boring way, in rare cases they use extremely powerful blows like the "Shock attacks". This stuns the character hit, but it seems that there is no way to recover since the stunned characters weren't usable for the rest of combat! That was too much, I think! The weird thing is that bosses are instead rather weak and easy to defeat (also because unlike wandering monsters they fight alone).

Character too have their special moves: Steve the thief attacks twice and can cause status conditions, Brian the sorcerer has the usual elemental spells, Nick the warrior hits hard but misses most of the time, and he's probably the worst of the three. So nothing original here too, the two other characters are much better, since Rixis can summon animals to attack the opponents, and Ruli is a dark healer. But I won't explain, play the game and see!
Last thing, even if the choice to escape from the enemy appears deactivated at first, you CAN escape from combat selecting that option from the character's action menu. And given the quantity of random encounters (and the no need of grinding) it will become soon useful, especially because you get the (much needed) healer only after the first half of the game.

The game is all here, there are no puzzles (well there is one but it's just a comedic scene) besides maybe finding and activating switches in dungeons, but I do not think that these can be called puzzles or side activities.


Ok, so here there are not only horned elves... but catgirls too? (no, the faceset is not an error, the six members party is compressed into Nick, but Brian is speaking here)

Verdict
Legendary Legend is a great comedy game. Combat is a bit annoying and could have been totally removed from the game (or be reduced to boss fights only) and this game would have been pretty cool anyway. Writing is really good, the story isn't particularly original but being a parody of the fantasy tropes it's exactly what I could expect. What I did not expect were the great characters, heroes and villains that makes this a pleasant and entertaining experience, despite the initial plain appearance and plot of this game.

This game gets a 3.5, I just wish that there were less and better combat encounters, and maybe a second part with a real conclusion to the story (also to understand WHO is the mysaterious purple haired girl that seems to place and restock the loot chests on the various maps!). It's not a bad game at all, I had a lot of fun with the brilliant cutscenes, so if you want to play a nice fantasy comedy game, this is your game!