X-Men Legends Review

As for characters leveling up, that can only be done in the actual Character menu accessed through the pause menu. Then you access the “details” of each individual member and you can either assign the points that you received through the level up manually depending on how you want that member to be or you can simply hit Y for an auto level up which the computer handles for you. It’s really best to do it manually as tedious as it can be simply so you have the party like you want it to be. Plus it can be fun to choose which particular power or power boosting stat will receive the upgrades and experiment with it a little bit!

Then depending upon whether you’re playing by yourself or with friends, the characters’ heads will be displayed on a HUD in the bottom left of the screen. If you are playing by yourself, you can actually take control of whoever you wish by simply pressing the D pad direction of the character’s respective position on the HUD. But if you have others playing with you it doesn’t really matter since you only control your own character.

Now as for the combos that was briefly mentioned before, these are actually very important to focus on during battle. Combos are done between two members of your team, and it can be any of them. Now it actually isn’t as difficult as it might seem as first. All you really have to do is perform one of your powers while another member performs his or hers around the same time on one particular enemy and the damage inflicted by both will combine into one massive attack that is given a cool name with extra damage and bonus experience! Some of the best combos in the game come from the work of Wolverine and Storm. Metal and electricity is a deadly combination for just about anything!

Now each character also had a set number of health points and energy points available to him or her. The health is obviously drained when you are attacked and the energy points are drained when you use a particular power of that character. When you are low on health and don’t have Regeneration like Wolverine, you simply hit Z to use a health pack. You can hold as many as ten at the beginning of the game and as many as 25 near the end of it. Then if you need to replenish some of your energy because you’re in a tight fight with a good number of enemies, you simply hold X and press Z to use an energy pack. Your health is noted with a red bar, your energy with a blue bar and the experience you have with a thin gray bar underneath both.

As for any downsides, there are a couple. One is that depending on how much you torture your enemies, especially with Storm’s tornado powers, they can end up caught on a wall or something like that which almost makes it impossible hit them with melee attacks. That can be annoying when it happens but thankfully it’s not very often since they quickly fall back down more often than not. Another is that the intelligence of your computer controlled players if you’re playing by yourself can be rather stupid at times. They like to stand in doorways preventing you from walking through them at times so you have to hit L to call them back. They also like to go off by themselves to fight enemies even if they have spit for health left and that can make you rather aggravated if you don’t have many health packs left. However, they do tend to be helpful more than not and it’s actually impressive at times when you thought they wouldn’t do what you would want them to.

One thing that makes all RPGs great is to have a pretty tough and memorable final boss. Well, X-Men Legends may actually surprise you with who the actual final boss is. Because the second you think you know who it is, you are actually incorrect. The final boss of this game can be quite tough if you’re not careful and don’t have the right people fighting alongside you. It also doesn’t help that you have to fight off about 20 of the toughest enemies in the game to actually even get it to show up first. Then by the time that happens you’re down to your last few health packs and energy packs so you’re already in a tight knit. But the final boss does bring a nice, hefty challenge while not being ridiculously difficult. The ending cutscene is always pretty cool although a little short, but at least it provides insight into the sequel of this game, Rise of Apocalypse!

The X-Men universe is quite expansive, and so is this game. There are plenty of things that can make you want to play this game over again. One is the fact that it’s just so darn fun to play either by yourself or with your friends who love RPGs and the X-Men! Another is that there is an area in the X Mansion called the Danger Room that was briefly mentioned in the gameplay section. This is where you can train your team in various scenarios that you unlock by finding “Danger Room Discs” that are hidden throughout each mission. They each bring their own challenge and you are awarded not only experience for your efforts, but you can get your health and energy packs back since they drop quite frequently in these scenarios! This area can be accessed either in the mansion, through the various Extraction Points or even the main start menu of the game! There are also features you can unlock like the Extreme Costumes for each member of the X-Men and that’s downright cool! So there are things that should motivate you to go through the game at least twice if not more, and therefore it’s a great RPG because of that!

Raven Software is probably the first developer to finally get the formula for a quality X-Men game correct. They are to be commended for their efforts and this goes in hoping their sequel Rise of Apocalypse will be even better than this game! The cel-shaded look that gives this game the comic book look it was intended for is jaw droppingly detailed in virtually every aspect possible. The characters and environments are simply awesome to look at and there’s no arguing that. The music, while repetitive, suits the entire game and really helps keep the action going. The voiceovers are absolutely incredible with each character having awesome people backing up their role. The sound effects are very nice to listen to, and the explosions will always put a smile on your face. The gameplay, while some of it can be tedious, is really rather intuitive and experiencing every X-Man is as entertaining as can be! All this combined with great replay value makes this to be a must own RPG for all fans of the genre and fans of the X-Men!