Legion: The Legend of Excalibur
7 Studios' Arthurian hack and slash offers plenty of solid story ground work, but can the rest of the game hold up?
Published: May 28, 2002
Arthurian legend isn't exactly a heavily tapped mythos. Most know bits and pieces, like the Lady of the Lake or the Sword in the Stone, but for the most part, the average person probably couldn't rattle off more than two or three Knights of the Round Table. Perhaps that's why I was so excited about the prospect of 7 Studios' Legion: The Legend of Excalibur when I first heard about it quite a few years back (we actually interviewed 7 Studios long before they'd even announced their entire staff; the interview can still be found – albeit in flashback form – here); after all, I wouldn't consider myself exceptionally learned in the legends of Arthur and his ascension to the throne, but I knew more than the average Joe, and I found the storyline interesting. Shortly first hearing about Legion, however, it dropped off the map, and didn't resurface for quite a few years.
In those years, the game underwent a number of major changes and redesigns, the most notable being the change from a real-time strategy game (something the founders of the development house knew more than a little about, since a good chunk of them departed from Westwood during the heyday of Command & Conquer) to a more action-heavy game with role-playing and adventure elements tossed in. Unfortunately, all these changes and setbacks not only stunted the game's development progress, it shattered the final product into a hodgepodge of half-assed genres that never really come together to deliver a full game experience. There's bits of role-playing, lots of button mashing action, a few story elements borrowed from character-driven adventure games, a smattering of RTS commands for your knights in tow, but all these parts don't really add up to a whole game. Legion is left without a real identity, with conflicts over what it really is in just about every way – including the dialogue that often sets the tone for the game as a whole.
Arthurian legend is complicated, and being legend is open to plenty of interpretation, but the work 7 Studios did securing a firm base of story is well-executed. Their history leading up to the game states that Arthur was the first child born to Uther Pendragon and his recently-wooed wife Igraine (recently impregnated by Uther while under the guise of her then-current husband the Duke of Cornwall, who is later killed in battle). Merlin, seeing the danger that would befall the throne and Arthur if he were near it, made a deal with Uther to disguise him as the Duke so he could have his way with Igraine, but only if he would give his first born to Merlin for safe keeping. Uther agreed and when Arthur was born, Merlin took him away to be raised as a commoner. Uther's second child, Morgan Le Fay grew at her father's side and eventually killed him, never knowing of Arthur. When Merlin learned of the king's death, and Uther's decree that his son would be the right king, he thrust the king's sword into a stone and marked it with the statement that the man who could pull the sword from the stone would be King of Britain.
You no doubt know the rest, as a young Arthur mistakenly pulls the sword from the stone after losing his adopted older brother's sword at a tournament, and thus starts Legion, where it becomes Arthur's job to destroy Morgan, gather knights and generally rule the whole of Britain for ever and ever – or at least until he's betrayed by Mordred, but that's another game entirely. The problem is, as good and rich a basis as Legion's back story is, it's never really continued on in the game. Sure, you recruit knights and retake Camelot, but they don't feel like significant events, perhaps because the more RTS-style top down camera is so detached from the action, or maybe the voice acted cut scenes just aren't injected as an enticing narrative device. Whatever the reason, the game starts with plenty of promise, but quickly delves into a button mashing hack and slack game.
While you start out alone, you'll quickly pick up a handful of knights of legend; Lancelot, Percival, Galahad, and even Gwenevere and Merlin are on hand to use. Through twelve missions, you'll make your way to Morgan's castle, smiting her generals, slaying her armies and blah blah blah. To be honest, the missions largely feel the same. You run from point a to point b, lopping off the heads of anything in sight (unless you want to run, at which case you'll never build up your characters and you'll quickly bite the big one at the hands of the stunted combat system – but more on that later), eventually coming upon a boss battle that usually offers no real strategy or inventiveness. By the time I was half way through the game, I was just running around mashing the X button until there was nothing left on screen. The only other activity that took up the rest of my game time was herding the moronic AI around trees and forcing them to heal me when I was critically injured.
Which brings me to the interface, both for battle and otherwise. The basis for Legion's combat is somewhat sound at first; you swing your sword with the X button, and if you can tap it at the moment the sword flashes, you start a combo, link four timed attacks together and the fourth is a powerful blow that staggers any nearby enemies. As you attack in a combo, you slashes grow more powerful, too, so it pays to adhere to a rhythmed attack style. Unfortunately, as you grow in levels, the rate at which you swing increases, and while the system works well for one-on-one encounters, it quckly dissolves once multiple enemies attack from all sides. The circle button will block most attacks from the front and sides, square issues a harder strike at the cost of stamina, and pressing X and square buttons together summons a stamina-gobbling super-attack that blunts all nearby enemies. If you're a magic user, triangle brings up a list of four spells, while circle lets you cast the selected spell.
The combat system seems conceived for a slower, more plodding style of play, but as you'll quickly find out when you take on a single enemy, you're often joined by a dozen more troops all lashing at you from behind, negating any strategy to the attacks. Everything devolves into a scurry to lay down as many attacks as possible, then switch to your healer and have him cast a healing spell while you run and hide. That's not strategy, it's guerilla combat fought in the open. While you can have up to four controllable characters with you, they often don't pay attention to the correct tactics for a given situation. There are times when healers will pick up on your distress, but more often than not, they're either standing around gawking at the ensuing battle, or are trying to combat someone on their own, wasting stamina on spells that don't really help in the first place.
The AI is really one of the major roadblocks for enjoying anything. Until you get into the latter quarter of the game, you'll be babysitting and manually controlling your allies more than letting them do their own thing. I'm not sure what kind of AI routines they're running, but when a character charges into a swarming mass of enemies with a dozen hit points, it doesn't make for enjoyable gameplay. Should you decide to rein them in manually, take them out of battle to recuperate, then switch back to old character, you'll find they just stand around mindlessly unless you call them back into battle. On a couple of occasions, I simply took control of them, ordered them to stay put far from a boss, and then charged into the fray myself so I wouldn't have to constantly switch to them to pull them out of a jam. Other times, NPCs would get caught on trees, leaving them entire minutes of backtracking behind.
The biggest problem with Legion is that it simply doesn't feel complete in almost any aspect. There's very little polish, from the music that resets every time you check a map or player stats to the pitch-shifted voices from the same enemies all throughout the game, to objectives that are often completely unclear. Conversations in the same mission go from being chivalrous to painfully missed comedic deliveries that ruin the mood. If the characters were always cynical, gung-ho, smarmy or sassy, I could handle that, but too often things jump from one context to the next, and all the characters in the conversation often slip from one style to the next. It's annoying, and while I enjoy characters that are far from cookie-cutter, this isn't a game that fleshes out anyone well enough to appreciate nuances in personality.
From the first moment you drop into the world of Legion, it's obvious the game started as an RTS. The isometric or top-down views feel plucked straight from a 3D RTS engine and the textures, objects and maps in the world feel stitched together less for a band of valiant knights and more for swarming masses of troops (hell, the maps even have a familiar fog of war look to 'em). The engine itself has a few nice touches here and there, like the usually intelligent transparency system that either removes or makes objects that would block the camera see through, or the particle effects that explode off characters during spells. Shields and swords glint with polished highlights, and the cloth system that's in place for Arthur's cape and flags flaps realistically.
Unfortunately, for all the nice qualities it offers, there are twice as many undesirables. The framerate usually rests in what looks like the 20's; it's not entirely choppy, but it doesn't feel smooth. That's not to say it doesn't get creamy when there's nothing on screen or chunky when there's too much, but overall it has a less than clean feel. There's a lack of little touches, like splashes when you run across water, or footprints in the snow, it's easy to get caught on elevations that seem on an even plane with your feet but are just a bit higher. Everything just feels thrown together and the textures that are slapped onto the terrain are low-res and clash with some of the more detailed, ornate work on the world objects like castles and troops.
The area probably most unaffected by the switches in game design was sound. The music in particular (well, when it's there, but more on that in a bit) works incredibly well, splashing out triumphant, sweeping scores that feel akin to something you'd see during a well crafted CG sequence from a game's intro. It has that kind of thickness and layered, epic feel that really does help the game out – when it's present. For whatever retarded and frankly aggravating reason, entire levels are missing sound, leaving you to listen to the cringe-inducing effects work, while still others offer something for a bit of the level, then drop out to leave you with nothing. The loss of music, while likely not intentional, actually helps highlight just how effective a mood setter and how important the score really is to keeping Legion playable.
If the music keeps things playable, the effects that creep in when there's a lack of it are just as damaging. It's bad enough that I have to hear the same thing 80 billion times from the same stock of six or so different enemies, but to hear it pitch-shifted into a half-dozen different ranges is just ridiculous. It sounds cheap and makes the game feel even more rushed than it probably was. The voice acting absolutely runs the gamut from fantastic to terrible. Gwen's adorable voice couldn't clash more with the downright atrocious and botched acting job that was Anguish the Dwarf. The phony, half-assed Scot accent had me diving for the remote so quickly I actually got rug burns on my elbows. Luckily, those are pretty much the extremes. The remainder of the voice acting – even from one-liners from farmers and soliders – lean heavily towards the good side. Arthur sounds like a young man with conviction, Merlin gives the impression of age and intelligence and the assorted knights back up their shiny suits and weapons with appropriate faux-British accents. Nothing drips of realism, but it gets the job done.
I suppose that's the perfect description for Legion: it gets the job done. It's not like I didn't enjoy the game at parts. There were moments when the more snippety characters' lines make me laugh out loud, but more often than not, I was struggling the just finish the level, and indeed the game so I could see how it would end. Perhaps appropriately, the ending was neither flashy nor particularly rewarding, but the sense of accomplishment I got once I'd trudged through a good 15-20 or so hours of tiresome combat, eye-wateringly low framerates, and a nonexistent storyline was enough. Legion rewards you not by giving you more at the end, but leaving you with nothing else to worry about.
It's tough to even recommend the game as a rental, but should you want to spark some interest in the legend of King Arthur, the DVD extras and the peek behind the scenes at 7 Studios might be worth the cost of swinging by your local video store to score the game for a couple nights. Otherwise, wait for 7 Studios' next game, Defender, and avoid Legion at all costs.
In those years, the game underwent a number of major changes and redesigns, the most notable being the change from a real-time strategy game (something the founders of the development house knew more than a little about, since a good chunk of them departed from Westwood during the heyday of Command & Conquer) to a more action-heavy game with role-playing and adventure elements tossed in. Unfortunately, all these changes and setbacks not only stunted the game's development progress, it shattered the final product into a hodgepodge of half-assed genres that never really come together to deliver a full game experience. There's bits of role-playing, lots of button mashing action, a few story elements borrowed from character-driven adventure games, a smattering of RTS commands for your knights in tow, but all these parts don't really add up to a whole game. Legion is left without a real identity, with conflicts over what it really is in just about every way – including the dialogue that often sets the tone for the game as a whole.
Arthurian legend is complicated, and being legend is open to plenty of interpretation, but the work 7 Studios did securing a firm base of story is well-executed. Their history leading up to the game states that Arthur was the first child born to Uther Pendragon and his recently-wooed wife Igraine (recently impregnated by Uther while under the guise of her then-current husband the Duke of Cornwall, who is later killed in battle). Merlin, seeing the danger that would befall the throne and Arthur if he were near it, made a deal with Uther to disguise him as the Duke so he could have his way with Igraine, but only if he would give his first born to Merlin for safe keeping. Uther agreed and when Arthur was born, Merlin took him away to be raised as a commoner. Uther's second child, Morgan Le Fay grew at her father's side and eventually killed him, never knowing of Arthur. When Merlin learned of the king's death, and Uther's decree that his son would be the right king, he thrust the king's sword into a stone and marked it with the statement that the man who could pull the sword from the stone would be King of Britain.
You no doubt know the rest, as a young Arthur mistakenly pulls the sword from the stone after losing his adopted older brother's sword at a tournament, and thus starts Legion, where it becomes Arthur's job to destroy Morgan, gather knights and generally rule the whole of Britain for ever and ever – or at least until he's betrayed by Mordred, but that's another game entirely. The problem is, as good and rich a basis as Legion's back story is, it's never really continued on in the game. Sure, you recruit knights and retake Camelot, but they don't feel like significant events, perhaps because the more RTS-style top down camera is so detached from the action, or maybe the voice acted cut scenes just aren't injected as an enticing narrative device. Whatever the reason, the game starts with plenty of promise, but quickly delves into a button mashing hack and slack game.
While you start out alone, you'll quickly pick up a handful of knights of legend; Lancelot, Percival, Galahad, and even Gwenevere and Merlin are on hand to use. Through twelve missions, you'll make your way to Morgan's castle, smiting her generals, slaying her armies and blah blah blah. To be honest, the missions largely feel the same. You run from point a to point b, lopping off the heads of anything in sight (unless you want to run, at which case you'll never build up your characters and you'll quickly bite the big one at the hands of the stunted combat system – but more on that later), eventually coming upon a boss battle that usually offers no real strategy or inventiveness. By the time I was half way through the game, I was just running around mashing the X button until there was nothing left on screen. The only other activity that took up the rest of my game time was herding the moronic AI around trees and forcing them to heal me when I was critically injured.
Which brings me to the interface, both for battle and otherwise. The basis for Legion's combat is somewhat sound at first; you swing your sword with the X button, and if you can tap it at the moment the sword flashes, you start a combo, link four timed attacks together and the fourth is a powerful blow that staggers any nearby enemies. As you attack in a combo, you slashes grow more powerful, too, so it pays to adhere to a rhythmed attack style. Unfortunately, as you grow in levels, the rate at which you swing increases, and while the system works well for one-on-one encounters, it quckly dissolves once multiple enemies attack from all sides. The circle button will block most attacks from the front and sides, square issues a harder strike at the cost of stamina, and pressing X and square buttons together summons a stamina-gobbling super-attack that blunts all nearby enemies. If you're a magic user, triangle brings up a list of four spells, while circle lets you cast the selected spell.
The combat system seems conceived for a slower, more plodding style of play, but as you'll quickly find out when you take on a single enemy, you're often joined by a dozen more troops all lashing at you from behind, negating any strategy to the attacks. Everything devolves into a scurry to lay down as many attacks as possible, then switch to your healer and have him cast a healing spell while you run and hide. That's not strategy, it's guerilla combat fought in the open. While you can have up to four controllable characters with you, they often don't pay attention to the correct tactics for a given situation. There are times when healers will pick up on your distress, but more often than not, they're either standing around gawking at the ensuing battle, or are trying to combat someone on their own, wasting stamina on spells that don't really help in the first place.
The AI is really one of the major roadblocks for enjoying anything. Until you get into the latter quarter of the game, you'll be babysitting and manually controlling your allies more than letting them do their own thing. I'm not sure what kind of AI routines they're running, but when a character charges into a swarming mass of enemies with a dozen hit points, it doesn't make for enjoyable gameplay. Should you decide to rein them in manually, take them out of battle to recuperate, then switch back to old character, you'll find they just stand around mindlessly unless you call them back into battle. On a couple of occasions, I simply took control of them, ordered them to stay put far from a boss, and then charged into the fray myself so I wouldn't have to constantly switch to them to pull them out of a jam. Other times, NPCs would get caught on trees, leaving them entire minutes of backtracking behind.
The biggest problem with Legion is that it simply doesn't feel complete in almost any aspect. There's very little polish, from the music that resets every time you check a map or player stats to the pitch-shifted voices from the same enemies all throughout the game, to objectives that are often completely unclear. Conversations in the same mission go from being chivalrous to painfully missed comedic deliveries that ruin the mood. If the characters were always cynical, gung-ho, smarmy or sassy, I could handle that, but too often things jump from one context to the next, and all the characters in the conversation often slip from one style to the next. It's annoying, and while I enjoy characters that are far from cookie-cutter, this isn't a game that fleshes out anyone well enough to appreciate nuances in personality.
From the first moment you drop into the world of Legion, it's obvious the game started as an RTS. The isometric or top-down views feel plucked straight from a 3D RTS engine and the textures, objects and maps in the world feel stitched together less for a band of valiant knights and more for swarming masses of troops (hell, the maps even have a familiar fog of war look to 'em). The engine itself has a few nice touches here and there, like the usually intelligent transparency system that either removes or makes objects that would block the camera see through, or the particle effects that explode off characters during spells. Shields and swords glint with polished highlights, and the cloth system that's in place for Arthur's cape and flags flaps realistically.
Unfortunately, for all the nice qualities it offers, there are twice as many undesirables. The framerate usually rests in what looks like the 20's; it's not entirely choppy, but it doesn't feel smooth. That's not to say it doesn't get creamy when there's nothing on screen or chunky when there's too much, but overall it has a less than clean feel. There's a lack of little touches, like splashes when you run across water, or footprints in the snow, it's easy to get caught on elevations that seem on an even plane with your feet but are just a bit higher. Everything just feels thrown together and the textures that are slapped onto the terrain are low-res and clash with some of the more detailed, ornate work on the world objects like castles and troops.
The area probably most unaffected by the switches in game design was sound. The music in particular (well, when it's there, but more on that in a bit) works incredibly well, splashing out triumphant, sweeping scores that feel akin to something you'd see during a well crafted CG sequence from a game's intro. It has that kind of thickness and layered, epic feel that really does help the game out – when it's present. For whatever retarded and frankly aggravating reason, entire levels are missing sound, leaving you to listen to the cringe-inducing effects work, while still others offer something for a bit of the level, then drop out to leave you with nothing. The loss of music, while likely not intentional, actually helps highlight just how effective a mood setter and how important the score really is to keeping Legion playable.
If the music keeps things playable, the effects that creep in when there's a lack of it are just as damaging. It's bad enough that I have to hear the same thing 80 billion times from the same stock of six or so different enemies, but to hear it pitch-shifted into a half-dozen different ranges is just ridiculous. It sounds cheap and makes the game feel even more rushed than it probably was. The voice acting absolutely runs the gamut from fantastic to terrible. Gwen's adorable voice couldn't clash more with the downright atrocious and botched acting job that was Anguish the Dwarf. The phony, half-assed Scot accent had me diving for the remote so quickly I actually got rug burns on my elbows. Luckily, those are pretty much the extremes. The remainder of the voice acting – even from one-liners from farmers and soliders – lean heavily towards the good side. Arthur sounds like a young man with conviction, Merlin gives the impression of age and intelligence and the assorted knights back up their shiny suits and weapons with appropriate faux-British accents. Nothing drips of realism, but it gets the job done.
I suppose that's the perfect description for Legion: it gets the job done. It's not like I didn't enjoy the game at parts. There were moments when the more snippety characters' lines make me laugh out loud, but more often than not, I was struggling the just finish the level, and indeed the game so I could see how it would end. Perhaps appropriately, the ending was neither flashy nor particularly rewarding, but the sense of accomplishment I got once I'd trudged through a good 15-20 or so hours of tiresome combat, eye-wateringly low framerates, and a nonexistent storyline was enough. Legion rewards you not by giving you more at the end, but leaving you with nothing else to worry about.
It's tough to even recommend the game as a rental, but should you want to spark some interest in the legend of King Arthur, the DVD extras and the peek behind the scenes at 7 Studios might be worth the cost of swinging by your local video store to score the game for a couple nights. Otherwise, wait for 7 Studios' next game, Defender, and avoid Legion at all costs.
