LEGRAND LEGACY: Tale of the Fatebounds

This starts as a solid turn based RPG. You've got three in combat and they can switch when you need to. The story isn't anything special. In many cases, the writing seems a bit repetitive as characters become outraged over and over again. It quickly gets tiresome. The ending seems forced as well. The music is excellent. There is little or no voice acting, which would have helped. Graphically, the game is fairly nice. The stages are hand drawn paintings, but sometimes your character gets stuck when moving. This is only really annoying when you run into a problematic(boring) area. As for gameplay, the combat starts off promising, but it quickly become gimmicky. You end up using a few skills over everything else, and many of fights past the halfway point become cheap. It's easy to lose interest with so little variety. The fighting becomes more of just a minigame feel because each attack requires you to push a button when a wheel goes around. This is interesting at first but wears old towards the end. Some of the enemies use cheap tricks that are unavoidable which hurts the experience. The dungeons are mixed. Most dungeons are okay, but there are at least two that are annoying to the point of ruining the game. The final dungeon gets the vote for a waste of time and impossible without a guide. Puzzles and endless repetition are not fun. All that was needed was a few decent playtesters, and this could have been easily ironed out. Instead, we are left with annoyances that simply become a bore and make you want to quit. How hard would it have been to have someone play through it a bit? The end result is game that has great potential but is hampered by a gimmicky combat system and some horrific annoyances. This is a shame because there's a lot of untapped fun here.

I have 6 hours into the game and have little to no interest to continue. The story is poorly written and most interations between characters don't make any sense. I am so glad I got this game on extreme sale. If I hadn't I'd be really ticked off.

On the surface, Legrand Legacy looks like many other retro-PS1 JRPGs. Since I am a fan of both the PS1 and JRPGs, this game should be up my alley. Unfortunately, on playing it I discovered very little nostalgia. Instead, it is filled with incredibly bland and generic art design, cliched characters and story, and some of the worst pacing I have ever experienced. A game that embraces a retro attitude towards "required grinding" should never require you to revert to a save *three dungeons back*. And while I can't personally attest to it, from what I have read the characterization goes from "cliched" to "atrocious" a few chapters after I gave up. If you want a retro JRPG that hits that early PS1 feel, give Earthlock a try instead.

OVERALL RATING : 4,8/5! This game simply a pure nostalgic JRPG experience. The game feels really polished with almost no bug. Controller respond and support also great (im using PC joystick). Loading time also pretty fast with fluid FPS and no stuttering at all, simple graphic/sound/controller/gameplay setting as well which is good. Handrawn artworks looking great, Great FX (sunset water, snow, etc), Good 3D model, FX and animation in-game quality that match well with old JRPG quality, Great cinematic as well, simply match the old JRPG feels. Combat also feels very balanced, complex and challenging I've almost got heart attack few times with challenging boss and almost got a game over LOL. Love the suikoden type batlle wars combat, All in all the combat really feels great! The game design overall also amazingly done, with all the creative little traps, balanced dungeon/monster difficulty, addictive mini games which is a lot of FUN, complete and very informative tutorial, simple but yet enjoyful side quest; simple, easy to learn UI and awesome inventory/crafting management makes the gameplay even more enjoyable. The soundtrack is simply AMAZING I even dare to compare it with FInal Fantasy series quality soundtrack (IMO), Really LOVE the world map Music, I even sometimes leaving it ON and keep it playing when I do another stuff. A Masterpiece. Pros : - Great handrawn artworks and Full 3D CGI Cinematics - AMAZING high quality soundtrack - Great combat system which feel balanced and challenging - Gameplay feels really enjoyable just like Great old JRPG Game - A lot of content (mini games, crafting, many city/town, a lot of dungeons, many side quests, long gameplay hours) Cons : - Conversation feels a bit draggy

Disclaimer (only played the PS4 version). - Combat is balanced : maybe a little hard in the hardest difficulties (especially at the beginning). - CGI FMV renders are quite decent for an indie title. - DO NOT use a mouse (at least after playing only with a controller i can't imagine playing with a mouse, lol) : the reason is the QTE timing in combats. Hardest difficulties have very short timing to make perfect QTE (that's very important, if you aint able to do perfect QTE quite often in those difficulties, play in a lower one). - In the hardest modes grinding to the max lvl makes life easier (so your are warned if you play those difficulties). I warn you it's quite long to reach max lvl. - UI does its job with a controller - Assets & backgrounds are fairly decent considering an indie title - Story is correct, nothing stellar (that's an indie title after all) -> won't spoil anything - Soundtrack : good, maybe more variety would have been welcome - Translation : cant really tell, english isn't my native language, but to be honest it was good enough. - The weakest point ihmo are the mini-games : totally frustrating (sure those are helpful in hardest modes but still...) and some of those were worse with the PS4 version : some were broken in Dumbville (despite having reported this to the devs : those have never been fixed). Seems the PC version got more attention, but can't really tell if those ones got fixed on PC. So for this reason i removed one star, if those have been fixed the game worth 4 stars. Have fun.