Black Legend Review

Black Legend is a Dark, immersive Turn-Based Strategy RPG. To liberate a city doomed from a bloodthirsty cult based on Mephisto, master tactical combat and the art 17th-century Alchemy.

It doesn't happen often that a local title surprises me with its existence or release date.Black LegendBoth. The title was first announced in September 2020. I didn't know anything about it. This surprised me as I typically find out about new titles in Belgium early. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the title would be available for purchase in March 2021.

The story begins as a mercenary who is enlisted to save the city.Black LegendIt feels like it is happening close to home. Grant was influenced by locations in Belgium and The Netherlands. The whole region is covered in poisonous fog, which can drive anyone insane if they don't have an antidote.

To combat the foetuses, monsters, and heroes made evil by the fog, you must recruit four people to form a group. You have two options: you can avoid their presence or engage them in turn-based combat on the grid. My love of grid-based tactical RPGs is something that many people know.

You'll notice a lack of visual appeal when creating your character, or recruiting new characters on the streets. They have dull appearances and grey and brown outfits. This was a problem for me as none of my characters had any personality. They're also quite silent.

The voice acting of NPCs is quite good. However, don't expect to see any spectacular cutscenes. Instead, you will experience most of them with a distant camera and the same perspective as the rest of the game.

They used several tricks to avoid bad lip-syncing, such as the angle or distance of the camera, helmets on important enemies or talking to many people through doors.

The graphics aren't bad, but they look old and the grey-brown colour scheme doesn't help the game. This could be due to time constraints, but even the fog that is always present has a story reason to exist. Let's be clear, you won't win any new players by sharing random gameplay videos of Black Legend.

Although it is not a beautiful game, I found that it has a charm that was easy to grasp after a few hours of playing.

It was the local legends that attracted me to my area. At one point, you will be up against the "Nekkers", a kind of demon-like dog that is said to drown their victims by dragging them under water. My grandmother's Mechelen hometown legend told me about "Old Red Eyes," a Nekker even more powerful than usual that used to terrorize the area. That bit of urban folklore was a side quest!

You also feel a sense of unease, with all the doom and gloom. Either people are dying of the poisonous fog, or they are being pursued by evil cultists who wish to take their blood. This is especially evident in the street sounds, which can be heard as a scream.

The setting is great. The overall design is fine.

When you move, fix slow-loading textures

To highlight important story moments, introduce a few cutscenes

Font-size is often too small for games designed with PC in mind.

Improve your kill-cam for attacking enemies. (I loved Fire Emblem's approach to this). EDIT: The kill-cam can be turned on after every attack.

It's far from perfect, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Although the beginning of the game was a little rough, I found myself more and more addicted to the game as I continued playing. It makes up for what it lacks in visuals with deep tactical combat.

The basics of gameplay are as follows: Your characters and your enemies move through the grid-based world in a turn-order that is determined by their agility. After they move, they choose an attack to use. Simple right?

It is not. Your default tactics won't get you far. Instead, you will need to rely heavily on afflictions and "bodily humors" against enemies.

These special abilities usually deal less damage but can cause enemies to become poisoned or start bleeding. These special abilities can be used to increase damage by catalyzing regular attacks. This is a fun system. However, the tutorials at the start are terrible. They throw too many keywords at players and expect you to remember them.

You should be familiar with the rules if you play on anything other than easy.

Certain weapons can be used to learn the abilities that you have. Once you use the abilities, you will be able to assign them even if you switch to another weapon of the same class. This is a great mechanic, which I have always enjoyed since Final Fantasy IX was the first time I used it.

This is a great way for players to switch their gear from time to time, rather than sticking with their guns. You'll also spend more time in the menus to check out the stats and the abilities.

Here's a confession: I misunderstoodly believed that opening treasure chests would open up new classes.

It turned out that the new weapons were what allowed me to unlock the ability to change my classes. Once I began to experiment with them, the game truly opened up for me. My crew was also given more visual flair by equipping them with unusual gear and the armour offered by bosses.

It was at this point that I started to have real fun. But it was soon clear why: Two of my characters were becoming more powerful than me. They plowed through opponents like tearing a paper towel. The experience they gain is not shared, but rather given by landing successful attacks.

Two duelists were part of my squad and I noticed their agility. They got more turns, defeated more enemies, and had other benefits such as counter-attacks, increased chances of critical hits, and bonus turns. They were never in danger.

There is no visible level limit (both my rogues grew beyond the normal lvl 99 and 100 limits quickly), but there is a physical attack limit of 999 that they seem to have already reached at about 2/3 of the game. My other characters lag behind and rarely received an attack in.

This overpowered status also had strange side effects. For example, I had to do optional sidequests that required me to catalyze humour stacks. However, the enemies died before I could hit them with the appropriate attack. To achieve those objectives, I deliberately debuffed them with less powerful gear and included some of my weaker members in my squad.

Ironically, all my efforts were in vain. For one sidequest, I had to race around looking for "Male Mad Mercenaries", which took me hours because I first killed them too quickly and then I reached all the necessary steps.

Nothing.

The achievement did not pop because there was no shiny new armour or weapon in the inventory. This seems to be a bug. I hope that it is fixed before Black Legend launches on Xbox. It's frustrating running around for 5-6hrs and not receiving anything back. It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Black Legend is a linear story that takes you through many districts of Grant. Although you may get lost at first, eventually you will be able to find shortcuts and rely on street signs.

You'll be able to travel fast through underground tunnels. This, combined with your painstakingly learned knowledge of the terrain and the option of avoiding some combat (enemies attack only when you spot them), will make the game flow better.

My playthrough revealed that sidequests and achievements were not working correctly. There were also a few bugs that I was unable to resolve by the launch of Black Legend.

I was stuck behind a box

Because the camera wouldn’t allow me to move my cursor onto the tile I wanted, I couldn’t attack an enemy.

Multiple times characters can move across boxes or other high objects.

After defeating them, an optional boss didn’t vanish (NOTE: Fixed by a patch).

Highlighting items twice blocks the view of important descriptions

Halfway through her dialog, a female character that can be recruited switched to a male voice

I fell on the ground in an alleyway. (NOTE: patch fixed)

The New Game + gut got stuck in a loop while creating characters (NOTE: Fixed by a patch).

Most of these issues can be solved by simply reloading a checkpoint. I have to say that Black Legend's save system is amazing with frequent auto-saves as well as the ability to save yourself anytime (aside from combat).

Let me be completely honest and admit that I initially expected to get Black Legend lower. However, the gameplay eventually won me over and I discovered the intricate tactical gameplay. I ended up spending around 20 hours playing the game, including all sidequests.

The Final Word

Black Legend is not the most beautiful game and there are still some bugs, but the sinister atmosphere and local folklore, as well as the deep tactical gameplay, made it worth it. You'll have a blast if you love turn-based RPGs.