Hi, everyone! Welcome to the Hobby Haven! This isn't a review, exactly, (because I haven't been able to play much of it), but I wanted to gush about the latest game I picked up: The Legend of Legacy. Silly Engrish-y name aside, this has been one of the games I've been most stoked about (besides Persona 5, of course) this year.
For those unfamiliar with it, this is a spiritual successor to Square Enix's lesser-known SaGa series. Constantly overlooked by everyone due to its popular older sibling Final Fantasy, it's nevertheless an interesting and challenging series focusing on player independence and nonlinear storytelling. Most SaGa games let you explore as you will, letting you uncover story elements as you go. Of course, the other side of the coin is that it can be difficult and time-consuming to figure out what to do and where to go in order to advance the story. Combined with its unique approach to character-building (there is no leveling-up; your characters get stat bonuses at random after battles), it's a series that definitely is anything but traditional.
With that said, LoL is not *actually* a SaGa game; it was developed and produced not by Square Enix, but another company called FuRyu. However, FuRyu brought a significant amount of staff on board who had previously worked on Square Enix games, including SaGa illustrator Tomomi Kobayashi, SaGa designer Kyoji Koizumi, and the legendary Masato Kato, who wrote Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. So you can see where the "spiritual successor" comes from.
It's very much in the vein of Square Enix's Bravely Default. It plays like a classic, old-school JRPG, and utilizes the super-deformed "chibi" art style also found in BD as well as SE's remakes of some Final Fantasy games. I admit that I pre-ordered this mostly out of 1. The pedigree of the staff working on it, 2. The generally positive reviews from the Japanese release, and 3. The assurances from Atlus that the "rough spots" would be improved upon for the NA release. And also 4. Atlus creates and publishes awesome games, so even if they didn't make it, the fact that they're localizing it is good in my book.
I haven't played much of it so far, so I don't feel qualified to talk much about the gameplay and the story, but if you like classic, old-school turn-based JRPGS (and especially if you like the SaGa series), I suggest checking it out. Atlus USA had offered a free demo on the eShop that might or might not still be up, so why not give it a shot? (But here is a Let's Play of the first hour or so if you want an idea.)
But mostly I just want to gush over the physical release a bit, because it seems that I purchase less and less physical releases these days...and when I do, I generally want them to be interesting or look nice or have something fun packed with it.
This is a first-print copy, so it comes with some bonus collectibles, which you can see advertised at the bottom of the box. I love the cream and gold color scheme and the main graphic used.
And here's the back of the box, featuring Tomomi Kobayashi's stunning character artwork for our main cast. Her work is simply beautiful, with vivid color and flowing lines. I especially love the ornate detailwork and the beautiful and expressive faces.
The graphic on the box is reused for the actual game case itself, which is whatevs, but here we have the artbook and the CD sampler, smothered in more lush Kobayashi-penned goodness. The book's cover glows with soft watercolors while the CD slipcover is bolder and richer with dark and bright colors juxtaposed.
The back of the CD slipcover is decidedly less exciting than the front. It's some of the less-cool background art and character drawings slapped together. Yawn.
The artbook has 40 pages devoted to artwork of the main cast, some of the monsters encountered, and some backgrounds and areas of the game. I really love the cast artwork, because you get not just the full portrait-style Kobayashi artwork, but also sketches of them from every angle, their weapons, they ways that they move while fighting...
And here's the back. Just lovely, and I really love the geometric shapes used.
So...yeah. Not really a review, more like I felt like talking about this a bit. Hope it entertained you! Miss Scarlett, signing out!
