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Right before I started playing the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance, I discovered that it’s the successor to the X-Men Legends games. They’re from the same developer and share a similar gameplay style and since I really enjoyed the Alliance games, I figured I should check out Legends. Developed by Raven Software and published by Activision, X-Men Legends was released for GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in September, 2004. It was also ported to the N-Gage by Barking Lizards Technologies in 2005. For this review, I played the Xbox version.
The story opens with Alison Crestmere being abducted by the Brotherhood of Mutants upon discovering her powers. She is rescued by the X-Men and brought to the Xavier Institute to train, eventually taking the codename Magma. The Brotherhood proceeds to free Magneto from his prison and the X-Men discover that General Kincaid is building Sentinels to hunt Mutants. It took me a little bit to get into the plot because it seems to bounce from one thing to another but it all comes together towards the end. The writing is okay and is accompanied by some decent voice acting. The voice cast includes some notable talent like Steve Blum, Dee Bradley Baker, John DiMaggio, and Patrick Stewart reprises his role as Professor Xavier.
X-Men Legends is an action RPG that can be played solo or cooperatively with up to four players. Throughout most of the game, you’ll get to control a team of four X-Men and can switch between them freely if playing solo. They can all move around, jump, grab and throw enemies and objects, perform light and heavy attacks, and chain attacks together to perform form special attacks. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock new playable characters and earn experience. When a character earns enough, they level up which allows you to put points into their stats, powers, and even unlock special abilities, making them more powerful. Each hero can unleash three powers that drain through energy which will regenerate over time. Their fourth power is an extreme power and these are simply super powerful and consume Xtreme icons that are filled by collecting Xtreme tokens.
The combat has its ups and downs but, overall, I like it. For one thing, every strike feels impactful and each upgrade feels like it makes a difference. You can launch enemies, send them flying, and the visual effects accompanying the impacts make the combat satisfying. The team of heroes you choose is important and finding which set of heroes works best together is all part of the fun. X-Men Legends is a button masher but just mashing buttons mindlessly doesn’t always guarantee you’ll win fights. You should learn the button combos to stun, trip, and perform other special attacks. There’s a couple of things I don’t like. For one thing, you can’t block or dodge which can make getting close to certain enemies not ideal. I also don’t like the power combo system. If you unleash a power at the same time as another teammate, it will result in a combo. But if playing solo, you have to time your power with the AI and you can’t really coordinate with them. However, they seem to unleash powers frequently as did I so I was constantly pulling off combos.
The in-game currency is tech-bits and you’ll need them to buy things and revive any fallen team members. You can swap out characters at Xtraction Points which can be found throughout the environments. This is also where you can save your game, access the Forge, and visit the Healer and Danger Room. Defeating enemies and destroying things in the environments will often reveal pickups like health and energy packs, tech-bits, Xtreme tokens, and Gear. Each character can equip Gear which offers bonuses. You can buy and sell Gear at the Forge and they come in different rarities. You can also sell Gear at the Healer and he offers health and energy packs and more importantly, Simulator Discs.
Luckily, your roster seems to level up with you so even if you haven’t used a character in a while, they will have points that can be distributed the next time you select them. There are hidden items scattered throughout the environments and I would advise anyone to explore every nook and cranny for Comic Books and Simulator Discs. The Comic Books add permanent stat bonuses to the X-Men and the Simulator Discs unlock challenges in the Danger Room. The Danger Room is where you can grind for experience and I would recommend doing so because it will make things much easier. You can repeat any unlocked challenge as many times as you want. Unfortunately, you cannot replay previous missions so if you miss a disc, you have to visit the Healer and buy them from him. Of course, you’ll have to wait until they become available first. The worst part is that the Danger Room challenges are split up into different tiers and each tier has a challenge you must complete to unlock the next tier. And if you miss the what I’ll call “graduation discs”, you’ll have to keep grinding lower tier challenges until you can buy one from the Healer. This can suck if you’re characters are at a much higher level than the challenge recommends.
As mentioned earlier, the team of characters you select can be important. But the gameplay remains accessible so you can bring your favorite X-Men and still progress even if there’s a better combination. The game does encourage you to swap out characters often. One reason the characters you select is important is because many enemies have resistances to certain types of attacks so having a well rounded team is beneficial. Another reason is that there are often objectives and obstacles that can only be completed and overcome by certain characters. What does get annoying is missions with spaced out Xtraction Points. I would sometimes come across obstacles I didn’t have the appropriate character for. There’s often more than one way to get around an obstacle but if you want to overcome it, you’ll need a specific character so I would trek through previous areas just get to the last Xtraction Point only to find out later that if I kept going, there was one just ahead. But since I never played this before I had no way of knowing that. I didn’t want to progress and risk all my team members falling, forcing me to load a previous save and have to fight my way through lengthy sections again which I had to do on more than one occasion in the beginning so I figured hiking all the way back was usually a safer option. Missions often take place in locations split up into multiple areas by load points and I think it would have been better if an Xtraction Point was located in each area. I like to save often and it would make navigating around certain areas a little easier.
For me, there’s nothing worse than defeating a ton of enemies, leveling up a bunch of characters, distributing points into different stats and powers, finding special pickups, only to get annihilated before reaching the next save point and then have to do it all over again. Shit like that can happen here and it drives me up a fucking wall. On the plus side, the difficulty overall felt pretty fair with bosses making up the most difficult battles. I felt the game was more challenging in the beginning than towards the end although you mileage may vary. I would grind in the Danger Room every so often so I typically didn’t have too much trouble getting through missions, minus some select encounters. If you just try to rush through everything, I think the game will be more challenging.
You’re often outnumbered during encounters and enemies can rush you and utilize ranged attacks, some will even resurrect fallen allies so sometimes its best to prioritize certain foes over others. You can control when AI team mates should use health packs, how aggressive they are, and what powers they should use which I thought was pretty cool. AI team mates will attack enemies and consume health packs on their own so you should keep your eye on how many you have. They drop fairly frequently and it’s always good to have plenty on hand for any tough encounters. The AI would sometimes fall off ledges to their what I’ll call “death” which can be frustrating and they also get in your way a lot. AI Team members will often crowd together and block doorways which can get really annoying after a while.
I found that the difficulty of a mission ultimately depends on the level of your characters. After spending some time grinding in the Danger Room, I was able to button mash my way to victory fairly easily. Regardless, I still had to be careful because all it takes is one tough type like a Sentinel or boss to wipe out your entire team. And it’s during these encounters I would have really appreciated a block and/or dodge mechanic. There is a bit of strategy to the combat although I think characters with ranged powers have an advantage. Choosing the right team members, knowing when to attack, and what the enemies are capable of are all important but you can easily exploit certain powers to get through tough encounters like Storm’s lightning strike and Cyclops’ optic beam for example. And because these are ranged attacks, you’re able to keep your distance making them quite useful against almost any threat. Plus, energy packs drop frequently so even when I did spam powers and drain through all my energy, I always had plenty of energy packs to keep going.
The game plays out in missions and you can often begin a mission at the X-Mansion. The X-Mansion is like a hub area that you can explore freely. You get to control Magma and can interact with various characters, view your collected comics and artwork, play Trivia for experience, access the Danger Room, and review character and enemy bios. The mission environments are mostly linear although some areas are more open-ended than others. There’s plenty of objects and structures that can be destroyed, you can destroy certain walls, and there’s often rooms and paths off to the sides that can be explored, sometimes leading to pickups and collectibles. From the streets of New York to the Astral Plane, the game takes you to a good variety of locations. I do think some missions drag on a little because they take you through a bunch of areas that all tend to look and feel the same and you’re going to revisit some locations multiple times like the sewers for example. At certain points in the story, you’ll be presented with multiple missions that you can complete in any order. You’ll have to complete objectives like destroy things, defeat specific enemies, and rescue NPCs but the gameplay does get a bit repetitive because I felt like I was doing the same thing in each mission. No matter what the objective is, you’re always going from point A to B and defeating a bunch of enemies along the way. Luckily, button mashing aside, the satisfying combat, varied enemy roster, and mostly diverse environments keep things interesting.
Visually, the game uses a variation of cel-shading which works out well. The presentation is colorful and the character models have this cartoony comic book look so they stand out and also mesh well with the environments. The visual effects are bright and colorful and the partially destructible environments help make the combat look more exciting. Things will blow up and break, walls will break apart, and many environments showcase neat details. I did notice some pop-in here and there like certain objects and lighting effects popping in but, overall, the visual presentation is great. The music is nothing to write home about. While a few tunes stick out, I found most of the soundtrack to be forgettable. The sound effects on the other hand are just as good as the visuals with loud explosions and strikes having a nice punch to them. On the technical side, I saw some clipping during one cut scene and the frame rate dips whenever there’s a lot of action on-screen but overall the game performed well.
I enjoyed my time with X-Men Legends. I played this after playing through the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games which share a similar gameplay style and in my opinion, improve on some things. I think my biggest issue with this game is not being able to block or dodge. However, I was impressed with the satisfying combat, accessibility, and the strategic elements. It’s often a repetitive button masher but each character upgrade feels like it makes a difference, each strike landed feels impactful, and unleashing powers to decimate foes is a lot of fun. And listening to the guy shout “combo” when you pull one off is just the icing on the cake. I think certain Danger Room challenges should be unlocked from the get-go across all tiers because if you miss specific Simulator Discs, that may screw you over until you can afford to buy them whenever the Healer has them. I also think the game should allow you to replay missions especially considering it basically encourages grinding and at least this way, you could find any items you missed. Ultimately, my issues with the game didn’t ruin the experience for me.
I would recommend X-Men Legends to fans of the comic books and action games. One reason I wanted to play this is because I had read several posts from players online that stated the X-Men Legends games are better than all of the Alliance games. Well after playing this, I wouldn’t go that far. So far I think the first Ultimate Alliance is the best but I have yet to play X-Men Legends II so that could change. One great thing about all these games, including X-Men Legends is you don’t even need to be a familiar with the source material to enjoy them. Although, like the others, X-Men Legends features plenty of fan service so you’ll probably get more out of it if you’re familiar with the comics. Ultimately, X-Men Legends is a great action game that can be played solo or with friends. Definitely check it out.