For a $30 price tag, it was a somewhat entertaining game but still obviously derivative of every FPS out there.
At a $30 price point, saying Legendary flat out sucks would be far too harsh of a statement, but I'm sure that description will be tossed around quite a bit by people who have paid full price for the game. $30 seems perfect for an average game, a discount game in which Legendary definitely is. It may reach Half Life action proportions occasionally during the eight hour play through but this game isn't even close to a blockbuster title.
The graphics are merely serviceable and they do most of what someone would expect. There's no slowdown, really no clipping but on the positive side there's really nothing beyond that to say. On the bad side there are some collision detection issues, some floppy physics and just all around okay quality to textures and character designs. Shots may be lined up perfectly with the sight of the gun but may not register on the target because they are hitting an invisible portion of a wall. Werewolves, the main thing Legendary likes to toss at the player, sometimes get caught in walls after death or just seizure on the ground. Take into a count that the werewolves in Legendary look hairless and way too elastic, and the twitching effect just looks poor. The developers of this game didn't take too much creative license with the creatures they borrowed from different mythologies and I think that was a major flaw.
Speaking of creatures, there's simply not enough of them to make a mythology geek excited. There are Firedrakes, Werewolves, Golem, Gryphon, Kraken, Minotaur, Blood Spiders and the rest of the game is padded by a large amount of special ops soldiers. The writers seemed to have taken a little bit of liberty with the Pandora's Box legend but again, the copy and paste design on most of these creatures just show a lack of creativity. That's not to say that fighting these creatures aren't exciting the first few times you encounter them. Werewolves tend to be the largest crowd and are implemented fairly well in the game but there comes a point that they just feel overused. Gryphon and Minotaur serve as minibosses and a decent challenge but I found their AI patterns and number of animated attacks rather limited. The Golem and Kraken are bosses proper and are actually the ones most different from their legends.
The story is mostly TV miniseries quality in that everything is quite predictable, most of the characters are forgettable and the voice acting is of bargain quality. The lead character is a master thief that is sent on a job to open Pandora's Box, which just shows how unintelligent the main character is, and then double crosses, destruction and ancient warring military factions come into play. It's all a race to find out to control Pandora's Box and save the world.
The story starts in New York City, goes to London and back again with the only major difference in environment is some landmarks. Actually the best parts of the game are far away from the city portions and in places like underground bases and ancient church grounds. It's at these parts that the game achieves frantic and exciting proportions but these adrenaline rushes and changes of gameplay are dispersed too far apart to be nothing more that high lights of the game. The Golem fight, the science lab, the fight with the Kraken and some werewolf encounters are encounters that stick out far more than anything else in this game.
This is a First Person Shooter so there has to be talk about the weapons and all I have to say about them is that they aren't that good. There are two pistols, a shotgun, a SMG, an assault rifle with zoom capabilities, a flamethrower, a bazooka and some Molotov Cocktails and grenades with the most useful weapon being, and get this, a fireman's axe. Yes. A melee weapon is by far the most useful item in the game when you're not running into bosses or minibosses.
Health in the game is handled by a life bar and health replenishment is done by killing beasts and absorbing their life force. It's a nice little ability that the player character gets for being dumb enough to open the box. My problem with this is that absorbing and replenishing health is done with the same button. There were a few occasions while playing the game that I found myself low on life and trying to recover some only to find out that there was a life force too close to me and I ended up absorbing it rather than recovering health. Pointless death occurred and some swearing at the game followed my reloading of the game. It's a poor design and the only other use of this life force is a radial blast that pushes enemies away. Overall this gameplay element is broken and hardly useful.
The only other variations of gameplay come in to play by interacting with glowing keypads, levers or other aura encrusted objects that direct game traffic. Legendary's level design reminds me of the days when level design wasn't taken into consideration. There's simply just one way, one route, to do everything in this game just like in First Person Shooters of the mid 90's and ends up supporting the feeling that this is just an average game and nothing more.
Strangely there's also something wrong with turning that I almost forgot to mention. It seems that turning the character to the right goes at a slow pace but turning to the left gives the fluid response one would come to expect. I thought that maybe I had the analogue sticks pressed to the side which would give the game a false default but that wasn't the case, so I tried another controller and still had the same experience.
The music is probably the only other part of the game that has hints of excellence but those are also dashed on the rocks of monotony on occasion. There were a few portions where the music stuck out because the tune was kind of catchy while the opposite can be said when some songs seemed nothing more than four second drum and guitar loops.
So at the $30 price tag I found this game at, it was a decent and somewhat entertaining game but still obviously derivative of everything in the FPS market. At a $60 price tag this game surely would deserve a little bit more hate and disgust so I would be understanding of that. I guess I just have to wait for a game that actually uses mythology and is mind blowing.