Black legend review how to#
Black legend review full#

On the one hand, this is a strategic system. The only way to efficiently defeat an enemy is to get some big stacks happening, and then wipe off big chunks of their health in one go. Different “regular” attacks will have different effects, as is normal for tactics RPGs (some cause poison, blindness, etc), but that effect is relatively minor, as is the damage done from these attacks. The larger the stack, the more damage one specific, special attack will do. In this game, the system means that there are four alchemic elements, and your goal is to inflict “stacks” of two separate alchemic elements on an enemy. It’s the “humour” system, which, historically, was a medical concept that existed before germ theory modernised how we understand people get sick.

Black legend review full#

You compare this to Fire Emblem – which typically focuses on bands of mercenaries itself and gives each character a unique person with a full story – and Black Legend is left far in the dust as a narrative experience.īlack Legend has one unique gameplay mechanic going for it, and it’s both a blessing and a curse.

In Black Legend, you can change your character’s class, but each character with that class behaves in an identical way. Mercenaries and militia are interesting subjects for stories about battle because, unlike with regular armies, these bands can be colourfully diverse. When I think about games where you play as mercenaries, what I want to see is a wide variety of eclectic soldiers and heroes that have only banded together out of a single common interest: profit. This is particularly disappointing because you’re meant to be building up a mercenary band. They all have stories to share (you recruit people by running into the few “good” people that haven’t yet been tainted by the fog and hell-cults) but those stories are so wafer-thin that you never get a sense of who they are as individuals. None of them express any personality in the way they move or fight, and your interactions with them are incredibly limited. On the other hand, the location only achieves the distinction of being the best character because the actual characters are such empty shells. You do start to learn your way around the city, and building up that organic relationship to it actually makes it the most effective character in the game. There’s no map to trace where you are in the city of Black Legend, and that is a compromise that does affect the ease of playing and quality of life, but also enhances the game’s thematic strength. The game immediately conjures up images of Jekyll and Hyde, Jack the Ripper, and other nightmares of the dark hiding around each little corner, and backs it up with a labyrinthine level design of tight corners and claustrophobic alleyways. The entire game takes place in a city infested with a perpetual, poisonous fog, manifested through an evil alchemist named Mephisto – as in, Mephistopheles from the Faust legend – and while it lends the game a permanent grimness that can be exhausting, it’s also a perfect take on the “pea soup fog” from the early industrial era, which approximates the historical period that the game is set. It definitely tries hard to crib the atmosphere and aesthetics we commonly associate with Dark Souls though.

Black legend review how to#

Once you’ve figured out how to play (which isn’t as straightforward as it should be thanks to a poor onboarding process), Black Legend isn’t so difficult. Interestingly, though, that’s not because it’s necessarily hard. Black Legend is an effort to be the Dark Souls of tactics RPGs. I know it’s a kitschy joke these days, but developers do continue to be inspired to create “the Dark Souls of XXXX.” So influential is that masterpiece that it has become a reference point across the entire industry.