Seems rushed, unfinished
GRAPHICS: 6 out of 10. I was expecting a lot more, especially considering what the Nintendo Gamecube is capable of. The game features what some video game nerds call "cel shading," but I just call it comic book style cartoon graphics.
All of the characters are intended to look much like they would in a comic book, and this approach is effective. The characters themselves look great. They're very colorful and move similar to the way a real human would move, which is impressive since you always have a team of four X-men on the screen fighting a group of enemies.
However, the other graphical areas of the game are not great. The backgrounds are not very creative, such as those found in Champions of Norrath on the PS2. They're rather repetitive, and it's difficult to remember where you are when exploring because many of the levels in a specific chapter appear exactly the same. It's obvious not a lot of work went into this.
Also, the game is very dark. By that I mean, I tried changing the brightness setting of my T.V. because I thought something was wrong. But nothing is wrong. The game simply has some contrast problems which, in an espionage or horror game, would be fine.
PLAYABILITY: If you've ever played Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, you know exactly how X-men legends II plays. You must defeat enemies and reach goals to earn XP, and gain levels. The more levels you gain, the more powerful you become.
The controls are very similar to other RPGs like Diablo and C of N, although the Gamecube controller is awkward and it's difficult to do melee combos properly.
There are a lot of load screens in this game. Even just to power on the console and load your game file, there has to be about 6 or 8 load screens. I think that's ridiculous. In my opinion that's bad, lazy programming.
Also, I found problems with glitches in this game. The game seems to have slow-down issues when there's many characters fighting, bad camera angles which are not strangers to this genre and freeze up. I've found the game freezing up on load screens on a regular basis. Sounds like C of N all over again.
STORY: 5 out of 10. The X-men must save the world from (insert name of villain here). The story is pedestrian, just an off-the-shelf plot featuring the mutant villain Apocalypse. The one redeeming feature of the story is the writers included many characters and settings from Marvel Comics lore.
REPLAY VALUE: 7 out of 10. I give X-men legends II a fairly high score in this area because the game offers many different characters to play with. You can choose simply to play through with Wolverine and three buddies, or you can choose to use the more subtle Scarlet Witch, for instance. And there's many others you can choose, including villains. Also, there's three hidden characters that make the game more interesting, including the Invincible Iron Man.
OVERALL: 7 out of 10. I really feel this is a good rating for a sequel, especially a sequel like this. The graphics are no better than the first game, there are more glitches, the game is poorly lit and dark and it has a rather mundane plot.
Considering the price tag on this game, I would recommend only those hard core fans of the first game buy X-men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse.