This was one of those games that I saw on the Internet as a kid and instantly had one of those compulsive
urges where I was going to stop at nothing to play it. I didn't have a PS1 at the time, but I had a decent PC
and knew my way around the Internet and so set out to find a pirated *GASP* download of the PC port of the game.
I was just starting to get into Megaman and this game's cute, cel-shaded
cartoony graphics just drew me in like nothing else at the time.
I hunted and scoured websites until finding
the right "warez" site where I had to download the game in 20 separate zipped files over the course of a few
days that came with a shady looking installer that played catchy music and had a funny animation.
Somehow, I got it to work, and barely work it did. It was always on the verge of crashing and most of the
sounds didn't work, but I didn't care... I was playing Mega Man Legends!
The setting and world of this MegaMan spinoff are a wonderfully imaginative departure for the series. In a sentence, dungeon crawling MegaMan with upgradable loadouts featuring treasure hunting sky pirates. Whoa!! Such a cool concept. And it's pulled off really well. I love that the game basically exists on one small island and you don't get much info about what's going on in the rest of the world.
This game is wonderful to exist in. The graphics and design are perfectly done and are right at home on the PS1/N64 generation of hardware. Every minute of this game plays out like you're experencing a Saturday morning cartoon. The design is cartoony and animated and the voice acting is wonderfully cheesy and magnificent.
It took me some time to actually realize that the game is a dungeon crawler. I guess when I first discovered it I didn't really know what a dungeon crawler really was so to me it was just an action game. When I got older and realized what it exactly it was I was playing it kinda struck me with an "Oooohhhhhh" moment and suddenly the game was a million times more fun.
The controls are a bit janky, but once you really find where they sit in the borader aspect of the game it feels pretty nice. I also think there's a bit of early gamedev quirk where developers were still trying to figure out how to control characters in 3D and it seems pretty apparent in this game. It's definitely fun to play, but the moments where the controls get in the way and it's suddenly not fun are kind of a bummer.
