Welcome to our Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds review! This game had a lot of hype in the JRPG community due to its awesome art direction and promise of a new take on traditional JRPGs. The question is did it deliver? Keep reading to find out! This is our Legrand Legacy review!
Legrand Legacy is an Indie JRPG developed by SEMISOFT with the promise of bringing a fresh take on traditional JRPGs. The world is a beautiful 2D hand drawn canvas with 3D models for player characters and NPCs. The setting is one of fantasy, with magic playing a large role in combat. The story revolves around the Fatebounds and the Flame working together to save the world from the destruction.
Gameplay
Like most traditional JRPG games, this is a turn-based game. You are able to set your party up to your liking, and even change character positioning on the field to create your own strategies to defeat your enemies. The party limit seems to be just three characters so you are limited on how much firepower you can bring at once.
If you’ve played games like Bravely Default on the 3DS, or even older Final Fantasy games, the overworld map will make a welcome return. As you progress through the game, you travel overland via the over-world map. Each area you enter is its own minimap with several “rooms” as I call them to progress through. You enter dungeons, combat zones, and cities via the over-world map. There is a fast travel option, once you’ve visited a place you can use an NPC inside each town to fast travel to and from each location.
The turn-based system is nice, but not always forgiving. Once you select what you wish to do for your turn, you get a popup that spins and you have to hit a specific button at the correct time in order to succeed in your attack or defense. Fail, and the turn fails for that character. You do this per character, so up to three times each turn. There are options to force it to a single key, at a single spot, or randomized. If you choose randomized, you get an EXP boost. Each character has a specific action they do while defending. An example would be using Aria’s guard function to gain AP. AP is your “burst” currency. You gain AP as you fight, or by using guard with Aria. This AP is used to cast Arcana abilities. Arcana abilities are your ultimate attacks, either to damage or heal and buff your entire party.
Using items in combat is a bit more tricky than traditional JRPG games. Each character has 4 slots that can have items assigned to. Those are the only items you are able to use during combat. That means if you forget to assign a specific remedy, or healing item, you aren’t going to be able to use them when you need to in combat. I made that mistake twice with new characters that joined my party.
The world , in general, was gorgeous, but the 3D models for most of the monsters were rather dull and took away from the experience. Every combat zone uses the same sprite for the over-world monsters, a black ball with red eyes. Each area also re-uses models from earlier areas so you feel as if you’re killing the same mobs over and over even though you’re hours into the game. A bit more variety is needed in my opinion.
While the game shines with story and visuals, it lacks severely in controls. There’s a lot of hate right now because of this “lacking” feature. This game was designed for use on a controller. I struggled to use my keyboard for about 30 minutes before giving up and using my Switch Pro controller. When I say keyboard, I mean just the keyboard. The only mouse support the game has is for menu navigation. So you have two choices, horrible keyboard controls, or a controller. Once I hooked up my controller the game was significantly better. Don’t let this put you off of the game. Using a controller negates this entire issue.
Final Thoughts
Legrand Legacy is a great indie JRPG that brings a lot of cool ideas to the genre. While it has its quirks and definitely bad controls with the keyboard, the gorgeous visuals and gameplay make up for it ten fold. If you’re looking for a great JRPG with a good story and awesome gameplay, check it out! For the price tag of $25, it’s a great buy for any JRPG fan.
Note: Our copy was provided by PR for review purposes on Steam.
Final Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds Review Score: 8/10
Pros:
- Beautiful Visuals
- Great Story
- Different take on JRPG gameplay
Cons:
- Horrible keyboard controls. No Mouse controls.
- Lack of variety in monster models.
- Sub-par 3D models ruin the gorgeous backgrounds
If you liked this review, check out my last review for Zwei: The Arges Adventure!
