Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for March 26th, 2024. In today’s article, we begin our week with a couple of reviews for you to enjoy. I have a full-sized look at NIS America’s The Legend of Legacy HD Remastered, and a slightly smaller evaluation of Dangen’s Dungeon Drafters. After that, it’s new release time. It’s a very dire bunch, as is frequently the case on Mondays. Well, what can you do? After that, we’ve got the usual lists of new and expiring sales for you to thumb through. Let’s get going with the week!
Reviews & Mini-Views
The Legend of Legacy HD Remastered ($49.99)
The Legend of Legacy has always been a bit of an oddball game, a fate perhaps fitting for a project that sold itself as a SaGa revival. That hasn’t changed in this new version of the game, which makes sense given that precious little has. Mechanically speaking, this version of the game is nearly the same as the original. The StreetPass-based expeditions have been swapped out for a method that works without such communications, the visuals have been nicely touched up, and the UI has been changed around to accommodate the lack of a second screen. There’s also a new guide/manual you can call up at the click of the stick. That’s the lot.
Otherwise, this is the same game as the one that came out on the Nintendo 3DS back in 2015. It has an outstanding soundtrack by Masashi Hamauzu (Final Fantasy XIII, SaGa Frontier 2). The scenario (such as it is, and it isn’t much) was written by Masato Kato (Chrono Trigger, Another Eden). Tomomi Kobayashi (SaGa series, Shin Megami Tensei IV) serves as the game’s main illustrator. The game designer is Kyoji Koizumi (SaGa series, Ever Oasis). From all of these names, you might expect a masterpiece. Well, you probably wouldn’t now. The game already came out on the 3DS; it did not light the world on fire. I don’t think it even did a particularly good job of appealing to the SaGa fandom.
Still, I want to stand up for this game. I think like many FuRyu-published games, it was crushed to an extent under the expectations of the names attached to it. Unlike many FuRyu-published games however, I believe there is something good here. It doesn’t scratch the itch in the same way a SaGa game does. It certainly has none of the qualities that make Chrono Trigger good. Set all of that aside, and take The Legend of Legacy for what it is: grinding heaven. Well, grinding heaven with some really wicked tunes.
If you’re sitting there asking yourself how grinding can be heaven, then I can tell you right away that The Legend of Legacy isn’t going to be for you. There’s virtually no story here beyond some extremely basic context for what you’re doing. The characters have simple motivations for why they’re on the island of Avalon, and you won’t see any meaningful development for any of them. Your goals are vague, and there’s no particularly strict order about how you go about them. Get a map to a location, go to the location, fight whatever is in it, map it out, and try not to get rocked by any boss monsters when you accidentally stumble across them. Head back to the town (there’s only one) and sell the stuff you’ve found, save your game, and pick up some new gear. Maybe recruit one or two new characters, depending on your progress. Then head back out there and see if you can push a little farther.
Difficulty spikes are common, particularly with the boss fights. You don’t always know when one will come up, and the somewhat open nature of the game means it is fully possible you are hopelessly incapable of defeating some of the ones you run into. It’s up to you to figure out where you can go and where you can’t; the bosses you can beat and the ones you need to save for later. Mistakes are going to happen, milk is going to be spilled, and you’re going to feel like crying sometimes. You see, you can only make a proper save back in town. If you die out in the field, you go back to the title screen. Some bosses allow you to rematch, but if you’re out of your league then any number of rematches are going to end the same way. Die, and you lose everything you gained since you last left town.
That’s something of a bummer in any game, but it’s an even more bitter pill here. The most SaGa-like element of this game is in how your characters gain power. There are no experience points or normal character levels here. Instead your characters have a random chance of gaining stats, new skills, or leveling up existing skills with each battle. Item and money drops are also fully random. It’s possible to fight battles and have absolutely nothing to show for them. You really never know what you’re going to get in each battle. If you’re making a run to fight a boss you’re not sure you can beat and you gain some cool skills or stat upgrades along the way, you have to really ask yourself if you want to go ahead with that fight or head back to town to save and make those gains permanent.
This means you’re constantly weighing risks versus rewards, because you can stand to lose an awful lot sometimes. The battles themselves play out more or less like standard turn-based affairs. You have three characters and can choose which of their skills to use on each turn. Some skills cost nothing, while others use up your limited (but always replenishing) skill points. The good news is that all of your HP will be replenished after each fight, but the bad news is your SP won’t be. If a character falls in battle, they can be healed and revived easily, but they’ll take a hit to their maximum HP until you can get them back to town to rest. Each time they go down, their max HP will slip a little more. Know when to retreat. Act like too much of a hero and you’ll just end up fully demotivated. Play it cautiously and you’ll make progress.
That’s The Legend of Legacy, really, and that’s equally true for this Remastered version. The early experience can be very frustrating as you get a feel for when you should press on and when you should head back to town. Then you settle into a groove, and it feels good in a fairly mindless way. Then it starts to get a little repetitive, because the game never really tries anything too different and there certainly isn’t much in the way of a plot to keep you going. Grinding-as-lotto makes it an easy game to pick up and put down, and the absence of plot or direction means it’s one of those rare RPGs that you truly can digest in small bites over the course of a long period of time. It serves a very specific need, but if you have that need it does a great job of handling it.
SwitchArcade Score: 4/5
Dungeon Drafters ($24.99)
There sure are a lot of great games these days, aren’t there? Really, a lot of exceptional ones. Young Shaun couldn’t have fathomed such a wide and rich selection back in the day. Where does it leave the games that are merely good? I sometimes wonder about that. Dungeon Drafters is good, you see. It’s not great. It’s not exceptional. But it’s good. It’s the kind of game that could keep me busy for a pretty long while, if it was in a position to have to do that. Imagine if this had been the game that had to last me from my birthday to Christmas when I was ten, rather than 8-Eyes? Gosh, that would have been wonderful.
But that isn’t where we’re at now, I suppose. We’re living in a gaming world of rich excess, and that means that I’m going to sit here and give just a light recommendation to a game that does a lot more well than it does badly. Bizarre. Anyway, this is a roguelite. You go into procedurally-generated dungeons, battle monsters, pick up loot, and try to get out alive. You’ll die a lot, and you’ll have to use the knowledge you gain and the few bits of permanent progress you make to try and do better on the next run. There are several characters to choose from, and I favored an Owl-Monk. Monk-Owl? He was cool. I love him.
The gimmick here is that in addition to your basic movement and melee attacks, everything you do comes from using cards to cast spells. You can set up your deck as you like, and as you gain cards you’ll want to tweak it to suit your needs. You can get packs of cards, and I love opening up packs of cards in games almost as much as I like doing it in real life. That’s all fun. The presentation is nice, with some high-quality pixel art and solid music backing it all. If you’re looking for another roguelite dungeon-hopper to play, like deckbuilding, and aren’t too fussy about the finer details, I think you’ll enjoy playing this.
Alright, so what if you’re fussy? Well, there are some issues here. The bosses are very RPG-like in that they’re a lot tougher than the mob enemies (that’s fine) and are generally quite resistant to status ailments (that’s less fine). There are a lot of cards and deck builds that are going to almost useless against many of them, limiting the kinds of ways you can tackle them. It’s also wildly unbalanced on the whole, and part of that is because of how the bosses work. Cards are divided into different colors, just like in games like Magic: The Gathering. And like that game, the colors sort of have themes. Some of those colors are better than others against bosses, and once you sort that out, it’s hard not to just use what works best. Spoils a lot of the enjoyment, to be sure.
Dungeon Drafters is a decent roguelite game with some enjoyable card mechanics and an above-average level of polish. For players who aren’t too concerned about gameplay balance, there’s a lot to like here. Unfortunately, a few design decisions feel like they’re at odds with the deck customization gimmick that runs at the core of the game and keep it from being all it probably could be. This wouldn’t be my first choice in the genre on the Switch by any means, but if you chew this kind of game up and spit it out then it will keep you happy for a little while.
SwitchArcade Score: 3.5/5
New Releases
The Bin Bunch
Animal Buddies – Party Beasts ($13.99)
Portal Shot Gun Teleport ($11.99)
Melt Down ($0.99)
Spring Bunny Islands ($3.99)
Demon Drop DX ($3.99)
Just Find It 2 Collector’s Edition ($9.99)
Swing By ($9.99)
Sales
(North American eShop, US Prices)
A small list in the inbox today. If you want to cry, Rakuen is right there for you. Otherwise, it’s a big show in the outbox. Capcom sales ending, Koei Tecmo sales ending, WayForward sales ending, and more. Have a good look through and see if anything is worthy of your wallet.
Select New Sales
Rakuen: Deluxe Edition ($19.99 from $24.99 until 3/30)
Swing By ($2.99 from $9.99 until 4/1)
Clue ($3.99 from $19.99 until 4/2)
Kao the Kangaroo: Anniversary ($16.64 from $36.99 until 4/8)
EA Sports FC 24 ($17.99 from $59.99 until 4/9)
Inkulinati ($19.99 from $24.99 until 4/12)
Rough Justice ’84 ($15.99 from $19.99 until 4/12)
Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook ($7.99 from $9.99 until 4/12)
Void Scrappers ($1.99 from $3.99 until 4/13)
Fates of Ort ($5.09 from $14.99 until 4/13)
The Nom ($1.99 from $4.99 until 4/13)
The Forest Quartet ($2.99 from $9.99 until 4/14)
Sales Ending Tomorrow, March 26th
Ace Attorney Turnabout Collection ($19.99 from $59.99 until 3/26)
Atelier Ryza ($23.99 from $59.99 until 3/26)
Atelier Ryza 2 ($29.99 from $59.99 until 3/26)
Atelier Ryza 3 ($38.99 from $59.99 until 3/26)
Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium Bundle ($19.99 from $39.99 until 3/26)
Capcom Arcade Stadium Bundle ($15.99 from $39.99 until 3/26)
Dead by Daylight: Gold Edition ($41.99 from $69.99 until 3/26)
Devil May Cry 3 SE ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen ($4.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Fantasy Blacksmith ($2.49 from $9.99 until 3/26)
Furi ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective ($19.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Ghosts n Goblins Resurrection ($9.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Hello Kitty & Friends Happiness Parade ($4.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Kingdom Eighties ($8.39 from $11.99 until 3/26)
Latte Stand Tycoon+ ($2.49 from $9.99 until 3/26)
Marble It Up! Ultra ($21.75 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Mega Man Battle Network Collection ($29.99 from $59.99 until 3/26)
Mega Man Legacy Collection ($7.99 from $14.99 until 3/26)
Mega Man X Legacy Collection ($7.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection ($9.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Monster Hunter Rise ($15.99 from $39.99 until 3/26)
Monster Hunter Rise + Sunbreak ($19.99 from $59.99 until 3/26)
Monster Hunter Rise + Sunbreak Deluxe ($24.49 from $69.99 until 3/26)
Monster Hunter Rise Deluxe ($20.99 from $49.99 until 3/26)
Monster Hunter Stories 2 ($29.99 from $39.99 until 3/26)
Resident Evil 4 ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Resident Evil Revelations ($7.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
RWBY Arrowfell ($14.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Shantae ($5.99 from $9.99 until 3/26)
Shantae & the Pirate’s Curse ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Shantae & the Seven Sirens ($14.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate ($14.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge DC ($4.99 from $9.99 until 3/26)
Siralim 3 ($7.49 from $14.99 until 3/26)
Siralim Ultimate ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
Squids Odyssey ($3.74 from $14.99 until 3/26)
Touhou Spell Bubble ($27.49 from $54.99 until 3/26)
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2 HD ($14.99 from $29.99 until 3/26)
Wingspan ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/26)
That’s all for today, friends. We’ll be back tomorrow with a couple more reviews, some new releases, more sales, and perhaps even some news if we’re lucky. I enjoyed my weekend. Spent some time playing Metroid Zero Mission on my Game Boy Advance, as I tend to do here and there. They really should get around to adding that to Nintendo Switch Online soon. Maybe toss Metroid Prime 2 and 3 on Switch while they’re at it. I wouldn’t be sad. I hope you all have a great Monday, and as always, thanks for reading!
