I’m a huge fan of Ubisoft, I’m at a point where they’re easily one of my favourite developers (in fact you can see my top 15 game here, here and here) because they just put out so many good titles, sometimes you might have to wait a year for the game to become really good, but they put some absolute corkers. What I’ve really loved about their games in recent times is how they’ve moved away from their ‘standard’ format with games such as Farcry 5 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Every mission felt unique and it was exciting to keep forging forwards. Unfortunately I feel like they’ve take a step back with Legion, but that’s not to say I don’t like it.
Now I will admit I’ve not dived that deep into the story but I have done all of the boroughs, which has given me an excellent idea on how the gameplay works and what the game has to offer. The boroughs consisted of doing things like photographing evidence or changing a propoganda display to build up a bar (3 of these types of missions in each borough) to then unlock a bigger mission to liberate the borough and unlock a special operative, these were things like controlling a heavy duty drone to reprogramme the London eye or driving through checkpoints whilst being chased. The unique missions were really fun but I did feel the gameplay itself got repetitive. Again though that’s not to say I didn’t have fun!
A lot of the game is focused on unlocking new operatives and I highly suggest putting permadeath mode on because once they’re dead, they’re gone. It adds a lot more meaning to the extra operative missions because when you’ve lost a couple you’ll want to go out and recruit to ensure your ranks are bolstered. I’ve tried playing missions in different ways and often when I run in guns blazing, I’ll lose, and I have killed 2 operatives by doing this. At the beginning it’s made clear that Dedsec (your rebel organisation) only use guns as a last resort and the gameplay definitely makes that obvious, there’s not much point in being able to hack everything in site if you’re just going to play it as a 3rd person shooter after all. However I have found that sometimes the hacking was repetitive and the ability to hack the larger drones that you can ride can make you bypass so much of the game, I actually liberated most of the boroughs just by dropping myself in the right spot for the mission and not really having to hack that much!
The game is definitely at it’s best when the missions are unique and you’re using the game to the full advantage. Perhaps playing on hard and perma death would be the best way to play? I don’t want to judge the game on just liberating the boroughs as I’m sure the story missions will bring more and fun and uniqueness. It is refreshing to play a game in London and the novelty still hasn’t worn off for when I recognise an area I’ve been to in real life. The game definitely isn’t re-inventing the wheel but sometimes you just need some dumb sandbox fun!
You can watch Luke’s review here: