Legasista is a Japanese ARPG from System Prisma that skimps on story and character-driven content and tailors itself to the grinding crowd. If you love to crawl dungeons for loot and tinker with stats for hours on end, then Legasista is for you, but some flaws prevent the game from achieving greatness.
The story begins 1000 years in the future, when science is viewed with mistrust and hostility by society. A young man named Alto must reverse the curse that has turned his sister, Mari, into a crystal–by enlisting the help of an ancient weapon. This ancient weapon has taken the form of an adolescent girl (Melize) who has lost her memory, and she and Alto must traverse the dungeons for her memory files. The plot does a decent job of carrying us along from one dungeon to the next, but it’s forgettable. While it doesn’t stick with you long after you turn off the system, it does raise some interesting philosophical questions, like “should sentient robots be afforded the same rights as humans?” Unfortunately, the characters don’t deserve more than a passing glance, because they’re all one-sided and play to JRPG tropes. The hero is selfless and noble, and the women are overly sexualized. It’s a shame, because with deep characters, Legasista’s story could have been something special.
The combat is simple. There are no combos, and the three specialization options are your standard magic, ranged, and melee. There’s also no way to upgrade weapons–you have to scavenge for everything. This makes the game at least partly dependent on luck, but you won’t have problems finding decent gear. Whether that gear is feasible to use is another matter. Bows are next to useless at higher levels because you cannot strafe with the bow drawn, there’s no targeting function, and melee weapons often provide higher DPS.
Movement within combat is less precise than it should be. The best way to describe the combat system is “grid-based without the grid.” This would be easy to deal with if combat was turn-based, but it’s real time. In hectic situations, you may often find yourself stabbing the air next to an enemy instead of their face.
Your intrepid band of explorers dives into the dungeons in sets of three or less, giving you a lot of freedom to customize how you approach battle. You can roll with three magic users and blast your foes with fire, ice, and lightning, or you can run with two lightly-armored thieves and a tanking warrior, where the two rogues dash in to deliver critical hits while your warrior finishes the job with a sledgehammer. In absence of deep combat mechanics, this variety in team formation helps combat stay fresh.
Another element that keeps the game fresh is the Ran-geon system. Ran-geons are procedurally generated dungeons that house items and enemies you won’t see in the story dungeons. Each Ran-geon can be up to 100 floors long, and the warp gates you use to travel from one floor to the next determine the difficulty and item drop rate of the floor you’re warping to. Ran-geons are a great way to grind for levels and items, and their random nature means you’ll always be on edge. There’s no way of knowing what floor you’ll be sent to (warp gates turn into other types of gates randomly). Every time you step into a gate, there’s the thrill of not knowing whether you’ll be sent to a floor with a high item drop rate or one in which the enemies are thousands of levels higher than you. This variety keeps you on your toes and makes every excursion in the Ran-geons a lesson in preparedness. The Ran-geon system is easily one of the game’s high points.
Legasista’s equipment system is confusing to the newcomer, but the game gives you many tutorials to help you puzzle it out. Basically, every piece of equipment has its own HP bar that contributes to your overall HP bar. Once an item’s HP bar is depleted, it breaks, which means you can’t use it until a return to the hub restores its durability. Even your weapons can break, sometimes quickly.
This unique equipment system is tied into the larger systems of Energy Frames and Jobs. Your character’s Job is their overarching skill set–like Pyro, Cryo, and Explorer–that determines what Energy Frames they can use and skills they can benefit from. Energy Frames determine how much and what type of equipment you can use, as well as their placement on the HP bar. This stats system, along with the team-of-three mechanic and the Ran-geons, ensures that there’s no end of dungeons to explore, team formations to use, and ways to differentiate every character. On top of all that, Legasista includes a character creator that lets you use pixel art to draw and animate your own monster-slaying creations. You can draw using the controller in the game itself, or you can import art from your computer. While it likely won’t be used by everyone, it’s a great tool to customize your experience further.
While the graphics are great, the sound is middling. Bright colors and crisp lines are the order of the day in Legasista, and every story dungeon looks radically different from the next. Some enemy models are reused, but they’re color-coded so you never mistake one for another. Characters in cutscenes are lightly animated and much more detailed than their in-game counterparts. Legasista’s soundtrack is fantastic and catchy, but the sound effects could use some work. The incessant, tinny walking noise is sure to get on your nerves, and the weapon effects are nothing special. The game has English subtitles, but the dialogue is in Japanese. This isn’t off-putting, though, as the Japanese dialogue gives the game a charming vibe.
Legasista is not a game for everyone. Those looking for an innovative story, deep characters, and tight combat will want to look elsewhere. But gamers who want to play with combat styles, mess around with stats and set-ups, determine every physical aspect of their character, and spend hours upon hours combing randomized dungeons for loot will feel right at home.
