At its core Re:Legend is an excellent monster farming simulator, however, a slew of performance issues, game-breaking bugs, and poor optimization make it impossible to recommend
Singleplayer.
I must preface this by saying I have reviewed over 400 games in the last five years, and to date, Re:Legend is the buggiest game I have ever played, including early access pre-alphas and proof of concept titles.
During my first few hours of playtime, I encountered no less than three hard lockups, six error screens, multiple alt+f4 exits, and a forced reload after being spawned into a black void under the map.
If not for autosave at first and my compulsive saving, later on, I would have lost multiple hours of progress due to these issues.
After being in early access for 3+ years, the developers have no excuse to release Re:Legend with this many issues.
Thankfully the developers are aware of the poor state Re: Legend is in and have released this statement, which may mean that at least some of the bugs get addressed before the developers are forced to move on to other projects.
We remain fully committed to fixing the game and the 1.0 release is just the beginning of the game so please bear with us a little longer - Magnus Games Studio
I tested Re:Legend on a PC that is at least 3x more powerful than the recommended specifications, yet my GPU fans will not quit spinning loudly, despite the game appearing to be locked at 24-30fps, something I have not encountered in a game this visually unattractive since the Playstation 1.
I understand that dated visuals have their place and have no problem with them. Still, when a game that has dated visuals, dozens of loading screens, and only a handful of enemies on screen at any given time has performance issues, there is often something very wrong behind the scenes. I would hope the developers seek outside help before porting Re:Legend to consoles.
The developers have laid out a compressive post-launch roadmap. However, poor player reception and a dwindling player count may put a premature end to their plans, as even the developers admit that all would need to go according to plan for the entire roadmap to be completed and for development to continue until the end of 2023.
Art is subjective, and there are many different visual aesthetics on the market; however, there is a very good reason why the aesthetic used by Re:Legend was last commonly seen in the mid-2000s and was predominantly utilized by Wii shovelware, its ugly, immersion breaking, and frankly I expect better from even indie developers.
While it is not so bad as to make me want to avoid Re:Legend entirely, it certainly does little to make me want to play it.
While games like Re:Legend do not need cutting-edge combat mechanics, you would think that a game that is based around battling and collecting monsters would have at least decent combat; unfortunately, that is not the case, and when coupled with illogical hitboxes, players will find themselves swinging at air one-minute inflicting critical hits one minute and doing no damage while impaling their foes the next.
Nowhere is this more evident than with boss encounters, which are quite frankly a bizarre mix of good ideas and terrible mechanics, made worse by one of the worst combat systems in gaming, that results in even high-levelled Magnus missing around 90% of their attacks, while bosses thrash around the arena, damaging thin air and doing little to no damage when they manage to hit you.
When combined with lusciously large health bars, boss encounters are more than reason enough to uninstall Re:Legend and not look back.
For some unknown reason, Re:Legend launched with only partial controller support, despite having a custom controller UI active and in-game for most functions.
I will never know why the developers did not “go the final mile” and ensure that controller support was enabled for all mechanics and situations. Still, when looking at how rough the rest of the game is, a premature launch necessitated by dwindling finances is a likely candidate.
While many developers are making strives to be more diverse, it seems Magnus Games Studio did not get the memo and instead opted to include the most stereotypical gay character since Family Guy’s “Harry the Homosexual”, with his bright pink hair, sparkling eyes and thirsty personality that would embarrass even the most flamboyant drag queen, Hugo, the town blacksmith is possibly the most offensive gay stereotype to be seen in aq traditionally published game in well over a decade.
Re:Legend is a management video game developed by Magnus Games and published by 505 Games, it was released on 30 August 2019 and retails for $24.99.
Re:Legend is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.
The average player will spend around 60 hours on Re:Legend, with completionists taking significantly longer to level up variations of each Magnus.
*Partial controller support only.
Re:Legend is rated PEGI 7 and contains:
Re:Legend is rough, unfinished, unpolished and unworthy of a full release, however despite these damning aspects, the core gameplay is pretty good, and the combination of monster collecting and farming works surprisingly well, especially when you consider that most Magnus offers tangible benefits to the farming aspects of the game, such as being able to plough and water fields much faster than by hand.
Befriending villagers, growing crops, levelling and evolving Magnus all help to keep Re:Legend feeling fresh, and with fewer bugs, better performance and better controller support, Re:Legend would be an easy 9/10, unfortunately right now, that is not the case, and as such I cannot recommend Re:Legend at this time.
