GameCube
X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse
| Graphics: Sound: Gameplay: Overall: |
8.45 8.60 9.05 8.80 |
| Votes: | 20 |
| Reviews: | 1 |
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| Reviewer: yingmin | Date: Nov 25, 2018 |
| READ THIS FIRST! THERE IS A BUG THAT CAUSES THIS GAME TO CRASH IF YOU HAVE TOO MANY ITEMS!!! If your game crashes, reload your game/state and drop/sell a few items. What actually causes the crash is if you have the maximum number (supposedly 46) of items between your inventory and your characters, and an enemy drops another item.
With that out of the way, this is an excellent followup to the original X-Men Legends, with many welcome improvements and additions. Graphics: 8 In-game graphics are solid, and the cutscenes look much better than the first game. The scenery looks great, the sprites look good enough and have plenty of variety. The addition of a "skin" feature lets you choose between different costumes for your characters, which is a welcome improvement. Sound: 8 The voice acting ranges from over-the-top and vaudevillian, to Patrick fucking Stewart. Apart from a few goofy performances, it's really good overall. The music is atmospheric and appropriate, and doesn't jump into a rock song every time an enemy is near, like in the previous game (or, if the music does change, it's at least much less intrusive). The only gripe I have with the in-game sound is when an enemy is suffering "bleed" damage, it makes the same pained sound repeatedly, which is a little annoying. Otherwise, there's enough variety of sound that it doesn't get monotonous. Gameplay: 9 Very fun game with good controls and a lot of interesting mechanics. It might just be my controller, but sometimes character selection gets finicky and I have to try a few times before I actually select the character I want. As tempting as it is to just mash buttons during combat, it's helpful to slow down and execute specific combinations of attacks, depending on what kind of enemy you're fighting. AI is significantly improved over the previous game, and the wide variety of characters and play styles keep the gameplay interesting. The puzzles can be a little frustrating at times, but the improved map system and clearer objectives make it easier to find what you're looking for compared to the first entry. The Danger Room gives you a lot of additional opportunities to hone your skills, experiment with different characters, and level up your party. Overall: 9 This game was a lot of fun to play, and it really rewards replay by allowing you to continue from your previous game with all settings and characters intact, in addition to unlocking hard difficulty. The story is interesting, and allows for the option to play as X-Men in addition to traditionally "evil" mutants like Juggernaut and Toad. The story is much more nuanced, and shies away from the more cartoony portrayal of the Brotherhood in the first game. In fact, the story in this game almost doesn't make sense as a sequel because of how hard-line fanatical the Brotherhood was, but that's a knock against the first game, not this one. There are two characters that I'm mad that they didn't include in this game: Magma, who was the central character of the first game, as well as the ultimate tank character; and Psylocke, just because she's one of my favorite X-Men. Emma Frost was playable in the first game but not this one, which would bother me more if I actually used her outside of the parts where she was required. Bottom line: PLAY THIS GAME! |
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