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Legrand Legacy is a Switch JRPG that makes absolutely no sense

A whistle-stop tour of the game's opening hour

Legrand Legacy is a Switch JRPG that makes absolutely no sense

Legrand Legacy does a lot wrong in a very short amount of time. Within the first hour of this epic JRPG which harks back to the PS1-era, you'll have seen just about every ridiculous idea the developers decided to throw at the game which just don't quite work.

So rather than tear it to shreds in a boring old review, I'd like to instead walk you through the opening hour of the game - much like I did with JCB Pioneer: Mars not too long ago. Self-indulgent? Absolutely, but I'm the boss, so buckle up.

Right from the get-go, you're dropped into a massive arena, fighting an enormous boss. Your attacks do nothing. The only thing you can do is await your untimely death, with no knowledge of what the hell is going on.

Then, suddenly, you start glowing out of your eyes. In a cutscene, you slice through your enemy in one move, and win the unwinnable fight.

Legrand Legacy Switch Screenshot Fighting Pigs And A Sandman

Smash cut to you in the slave pits of the arena, finding out that you're a slave. Then a shadowy man who speaks to you through telepathy buys you to help look after him as he journeys through the desert, a trip everyone advises you against.

He's doing this presumably because he saw you do the glowy-eye thing in the arena. In just a moment, he'll find out what a stupid idea that was.

You go and grab some armour and a sword and set off on your adventure. It turns out that the desert is a really bad idea, because your HP constantly drains as you walk around in it due to the extreme heat. If you've been keeping track, this is the very first dungeon you go to.

You stumble around the pre-rendered open world, getting run into by enemies that you can't dodge because it's impossible to navigate the geography, and falling down the enormous sink holes populating the land.

After a while, you hole up in a cave to sleep, and bandits arrive to steal all your stuff. You're thrown into a battle with them. You cannot win. Your slave owner dies.

Let me just put repeat that - your slave owner dies.

The night before his death, Mr Slave Owner reveals that he has a sick daughter and he wants to go through the desert to save her. So, naturally, when he ends up slipping off his mortal coil, your character decides to go ahead and help. His former slave owner.

Before you can do that, however, a random woman arrives in the desert and starts asking about a giant shadow you saw. So you backtrack to a point in the desert, and oh hey a giant temple is here now!

Legrand Legacy Switch Screenshot First Boos

The temple is nigh-on impossible to navigate, but you do it, and you open some secret walls, and the first real boss of the game arrives, and hoo boy this one's going to take a beating, and just as you're about to strike the final blow, the monster's owner arrives and tells it to sod off.

Again - and I swear, I'm not making this up - this is the very first boss in the game that you actually have a proper, winnable fight with, and just as you're about to win, victory is snatched away from you and taken by someone you've never met before, for story reasons.

By this point, I was basically done with Legrand Legacy. But Legrand Legacy was not done with me. Not by a long shot.

The horrible man who stole my first major victory went on to lore dump on the random woman I'd only just met. And I'm talking about a serious lore dump. Minutes upon minutes of monologue which meant nothing to me fell out of this man's mouth, all while my female companion struggled to understand it. My character just stood to one side and listened.

And this was basically the problem with Legrand Legacy. It just keeps pushing you along, with absolutely no agency over your actions. You're stuck in unwinnable fights, watching the world go by, not understanding a damn thing.

This isn't even touching on the unremarkable graphics and confusing combat. You don't need me to tell you that the rest of the game doesn't make up for its ridiculous plot and progression. I'm sure you can infer that yourself.

I couldn't recommend Legrand Legacy to even the biggest JRPG fan. Just wait for Final Fantasy VII to launch instead. That actually is a PS1-era game that captures the charm of the time.

Ric Cowley
Ric Cowley
Ric was somehow the Editor of Pocket Gamer, having started out as an intern in 2015. He hopes to take over the world the same way.