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Legrand Legacy

IndieHound

Literate
Joined
Nov 18, 2016
Messages
5
I saw this very cool new JRPG game on Kickstarter. Called Legrand Legacy.

Legrand's current grim state has been caused by the Mugna Feud - an ongoing war between the Kingdoms of Fandor and Altea. As a result, the inhabitants of Legrand grow increasingly contemptuous, while poverty soars and criminals reign free. On top of this, the entire Legrand universe is also prophesized to be at risk of being attacked again by the Fir Bolgs - demonic creatures from another dimension whose main goal is to conquer new worlds to expand their dominance and supremacy - no matter the cost.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/984434986/legrand-legacy-an-homage-to-the-jrpg-classics-pc

There is a 2hour pre-alpha Prologue available.

  • A fully immersive JRPG experience with a rich storyline, great graphics, and an immersive original soundtrack
  • Coming to PC via Steam once funded (we have already been Greenlit by the community!)
  • 3D models and original assets come together with stylized and gorgeous hand-drawn 2D backgrounds
  • Turn-based combat and tactical war scenes that will test not only your skill but also your wits and keep you on your toes
  • Recruit NPCs to revamp your Headquarters
  • Fully rendered 3D cinematics
http://legrandlegacy.com/
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
I looked at their site again: In house they have 27-people and and "a total of 81" have worked or are working on the game.
 

Somberlain

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Mar 5, 2012
Messages
6,202
Location
Basement
Best way to get a negative response is to promote your or your friend's game while pretending you just stumbled upon it.

:keepmyjewgold:
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
The guy seems to be from a well-off family which gave him the money to start this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/57vyc9/i_am_henry_william_winata_but_please_do_call_me/ said:
81 in total (30 inhouse, 51 outsource)
...
Hahaha... Yes that's a shitload of munie we're talking about. I'm somewhat in between 2 and 3 I guess...? I was lucky to be able to convince my family members to fund this crazy dream of mine. As to advise to other people... Although I'd advise to at least try to get smart money (angels who can contribute as well), if nothing else works, just go with dumb money (family members, crowdfunding... etc.) For me, nobody would believe in me since this is my first project. But that's just how the world works I guess.
...
My story is a bit similar to that of Witching Hour Studios in Singapore. Not of the same scale! No, I dare not compare my family with theirs... But enough to make a game I guess...
...
Yes about 1/30 compared to USA, 1/4 compared to India, generally in IT sector comparing the same level and work scope. BUUUT... efficiency is another factor as well... it's not always 1:1.
 

IndieHound

Literate
Joined
Nov 18, 2016
Messages
5
OK so this thing backfired.. haha guys sorry to make the rookie mistake of posting a Noob post as first.
It is my first post on RPG Codex, and as always I have to learn things. This is quiet the hard way!

I am Jordy from PRHound, and I would like to re-introduce the project on a proper way to you.

 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
The project doesn't sound too bad as a whole, but it doesn't really grip me, there's no well communicated USP. Everything seems to be derivative.

"A tale about heroism, sacrifice and betrayal" and "true peril to their universe lies within themselves" - never heard this before.
It's not bad per se, after all, we all love certain genres and their tropes, but in the crowded Kickstarter market, I fell like I want a bit more.

Turn-based Combat with Quick Time Event and Interruption

Strategy is key! Take advantage of each attack type, (slash, pierce, impact) as well as of element types (fire, wind, water, air and ice) to maximize your potential in battle. Once the commands have been selected, be ready for the ACT – Action Circle Tempo. Think of ACT as a Quick Time Event that requires that you press the correct button at the right time in order to grant bonuses to your attack or defense. You will also need to watch out for interruptions that can be triggered by the attacks from your enemies, however - you can also interrupt your enemies, so be sure to plan and act accordingly!

Who thought this would be a good idea? Even in the mainstream, QTE doesn't have many fans anymore. Sure, developers still use them, but they rarely call them QTE anymore.

But it's good to see that the project has advanced and a working team and quite a low goal, so it's not some high profile vaporware like Project Phoenix. It's also not expensive for a project with this size so good luck with the KS.
 

80Maxwell08

Arcane
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
1,154
The project doesn't sound too bad as a whole, but it doesn't really grip me, there's no well communicated USP. Everything seems to be derivative.

"A tale about heroism, sacrifice and betrayal" and "true peril to their universe lies within themselves" - never heard this before.
It's not bad per se, after all, we all love certain genres and their tropes, but in the crowded Kickstarter market, I fell like I want a bit more.

Turn-based Combat with Quick Time Event and Interruption

Strategy is key! Take advantage of each attack type, (slash, pierce, impact) as well as of element types (fire, wind, water, air and ice) to maximize your potential in battle. Once the commands have been selected, be ready for the ACT – Action Circle Tempo. Think of ACT as a Quick Time Event that requires that you press the correct button at the right time in order to grant bonuses to your attack or defense. You will also need to watch out for interruptions that can be triggered by the attacks from your enemies, however - you can also interrupt your enemies, so be sure to plan and act accordingly!

Who thought this would be a good idea? Even in the mainstream, QTE doesn't have many fans anymore. Sure, developers still use them, but they rarely call them QTE anymore.

But it's good to see that the project has advanced and a working team and quite a low goal, so it's not some high profile vaporware like Project Phoenix. It's also not expensive for a project with this size so good luck with the KS.
My guess is it's supposed to be inspired from The Legend of Dragoon. But that was based on getting perfect timing, not merely hitting the right button. If they wanted to fix it but keep that, they should move it to hitting the right key at nearly exactly the right moment. Or just copy-paste what The Legend of Dragoon did.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
Commendably the have a 2h demo - maybe'll I look into it in the next weeks.
 

IndieHound

Literate
Joined
Nov 18, 2016
Messages
5
Hi guys! Thanks so much for feedback, I can rest assure the development is reading along with this post :)
But as you might know, there is not only hitting the right button, there is indeed the direction and a very small window of getting it 'perfect'.

And yes the pre-alpha Prologue is around 2hours, if you are a good gamer :)

You 'quoted' me somewhere? But couldnt see the post your were mentioning?
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,104
Commendably the have a 2h demo - maybe'll I look into it in the next weeks.

Was it just me or does combat take forever to get through? I realize input timing isn't perfect yet and all, but timing your attacks and defense will get really cumbersome if this is the number of encounters game plans to work with all the way throughout. I did like how decent production values appear to be, though.
 

IndieHound

Literate
Joined
Nov 18, 2016
Messages
5
Morning! So you played the pre-alpha Prologue, did you played it to the end? The combat system, is a turn-based system bases on classic titles such as Suikoden and Legend of Dragoon. They also have some awesome cut-scenes implemented.

 

IndieHound

Literate
Joined
Nov 18, 2016
Messages
5
There are a few Indonesian culture games already out there but none seem to work well. They're not trying to go Eastern or Western, they are going fantasy, albeit there exist stereotypical styles but they just want to entertain people genuinely without being too over the top different.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
IndieHound The one quirk of Codex is, we totally doesnt care that you are a plant trying to get us to play a game. We only care that if the game is good. So there's no need to hide your affiliate, get your plant badge from day one, and get to work on promoting your game.

The other quirk is that if your game is bad we will shred it without mercy. And how bad is what we define.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Also goddamn~ The Indonesians seem to be quite ahead of Vietnamese these days in game making. From what I can find, we mostly do shits for mobile and web games. No current big game is in the pot. My sister in law work for a Japanese studio in Vietnam and her side project with friends is tiny games.
 

Ayreos

Augur
Joined
Feb 20, 2015
Messages
109
If i hadn't seen the OP making a fool of himself, i would have thought it was a scam KS project. A 10K~ expense in cheap Chinese artists to make a demo worth of content for a 100K~ gain, followed by bogus updates and no one hearing from the devs or the PR "company" representing them again.

On second thought it's probably worse. Nothing more uninspired than the faces of those developers or those assets. There is no art direction whatsoever, the first thing a jRPG must have to even blip on the radar of the fans of the genre.
 

tet666

Augur
Joined
Apr 13, 2012
Messages
396
Dunno i kinda like it but not enough to bake it, they have a good foundation there it just needs to be more creative as someone above said maybe give it a cultural spin, generic uninspired fantasy shit isn't that hot anymore.
 

Jacob

Pronouns: Nick/Her
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
3,336
Location
Hatington
Grab the Codex by the pussy
There are a few Indonesian culture games already out there but none seem to work well. They're not trying to go Eastern or Western, they are going fantasy, albeit there exist stereotypical styles but they just want to entertain people genuinely without being too over the top different.
isn't dreadout quite popular in Indonesia though?
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Coming in January next year. They got Chinese and Korean publishers: http://steamcommunity.com/games/556740/announcements/detail/2922136622092600767

Introducing Our Publishers, Release Date Update, and Discord!

Hi everyone! The past few weeks have been pretty busy and intense (in a good way) for everyone at the studio, but we haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, we have some very exciting updates regarding Legrand Legacy’s release!

Introducing… Our Publishers!

We’re thrilled to announce that we are partnering with two esteemed publishers for the release of Legrand Legacy. ANOTHER INDIE will be working with us for our worldwide launch, while MAYFLOWER ENTERTAINMENT will be taking care of our South Korean players. You might have heard of Another Indie[anotherindie.com] from other premium games, like Lost Castle and Sinner, so we're looking forward to working with them on Legrand Legacy.

e1df5fdf832b3434e3259279fc6e334f566a4bfd.jpg
Watch out world!

What does this mean for you?

Well, this means that Legrand Legacy will be coming to you in English, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and a few more languages planned in the near future. This also means that you will be seeing more of us in upcoming events, like GDC or PAX East, so we can say hi to you face to face. Lastly, we hope you’re looking forward to a ton of swags, giveaways, and freebies for Legrand Legacy’s launch because we’ll have LOTS of them!

Release Date & Discord

Our current goal is to release Legrand Legacy for Windows some time in January 2018. We’re still ironing out the details so we don’t have an exact date yet.

In the meantime, we've set up an official Discord (discord.gg/ai) and we cordially invite you to hang out with Henry, AJ, and me, along with fellow Legrand Legacy players for some pre-launch fun. If you have any questions and suggestions about Legrand Legacy or life as a gamedev in general, please don't hesitate to drop by!

dcaf623f9468594dbaea765c5cd1d27dc745162f.jpg
Come hang out with us :)

Thanks for Reading

These partnerships are a HUGE deal for us because it means that Legrand Legacy will be able to reach MORE players worldwide, so we hope that you’re as excited to read today’s update as we are. We do have a few more surprises in store, so stay tuned for the next update!

-Revinia & the SEMISOFT team-
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
First reviews are in:
https://www.dualshockers.com/legrand-legacy-tale-of-the-fatebound-pc-review/

Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds Review — Cue Epic Battle Theme
Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds brings the graphical style of early PlayStation RPGs to 2018, and it's a whole lot of fun.

Azario Lopez
#greyscale"); display: block; margin-left: 48px;">on January 23, 2018 10:00 AM
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Being around for RPGs during the original PlayStation era definitely showed how adventurous developers were willing to go with the more improved technology. With the release of games like Final Fantasy VII and The Legend of Dragoon, the bar was set high in terms of what gamers expect from the genre and it seems like developers have been surpassing those expectations ever since. However, with the popularity of retro-inspired games on the rise (especially from the indie developer community) it’s strange we don’t see more games that replicate the PlayStation era RPGs from our past.

Thankfully, Semisoft has heard the cries of these particular fans and developed Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds. Here is a game that aims to bring everything that we remember about these original PlayStation RPGs onto modern hardware for old and new fans of the genre. What’s most impressive about Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds is the presentation is spot on since the developers clearly know how to create a game in this graphical style and in my time with the game, I was transported back to 1999 with minimal speed bumps along the way.





Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds tells the story of a slave named Finn who doesn’t remember his past and only knows of his life in a cell. Eventually, Finn finds himself in a fight to the death tournament where he finds out that he cannot kill his opponent. This is an action that is punishable by death, but luckily he is saved by an old traveler. From here the story takes off and introduces new characters as well as the actual premise of the game. As the party grows and adds new additions we find out that they are connected and known as the Fatebounds. Coincidentally, a prophecy says that the Fatebounds will be the ones to put an end to the war that is ruining their world, Legrand.

Although the plot seems like your generic “unlikely hero” story, Finn’s character develops far beyond the robotic slave that we meet at the beginning of the game. Furthermore, even though the story has the player control Finn, the entire party takes on an important role in the story. I enjoyed the main premise and the twists that it takes on in the later parts of the game, but some scenes can get a bit chatty with characters coming off redundant during dialog. With that said, every character has a unique personality that makes them seem like odd traveling partners, but it works. This is because they each have their personal strengths and it makes up for the other member’s weakness which created a perfect balance in the party.

However, in terms of the lengthy dialog, there are some scenes that occur and the story doesn’t really return to the issues that the scene created, or when it does, it’s not until hours later when I’ve already forgotten about the scene they are referring to. For example, one of the most notable main characters, Eris, shows a really dark side of her in the beginning of the game, but after a brief exchange of dialog they more or less just move on. I feel like this scene, in particular, could have potentially been an underlining issue with Eris, but we don’t see exactly what she is capable of until ten hours later.



Aside from the story, the battle system of Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds is one that is sure to inject loads of nostalgia into fans of the genre. Reminiscent of The Legend of Dragoon, each attack or guard is followed by a face button press that could strengthen the player’s action depending on the when the button is pressed. This means it won’t be possible to just spam the X button until the battle is over.

Instead, each fight requires a certain amount of attention in order to survive any of the battles because missing a button press often results in a missed attack. I feel like Semisoft knew this could become repetitive to an extent because the speed of the battles are so well optimized that I found the length of them to be typical to what I’d expect from a typical turn-based system.

Each enemy has a weakness to a weapon or magic type, but I didn’t run into too much trouble using the same party of three throughout most of the game. The option to switch between party members is there, but the only time I switched characters was during boss battles so I could use every character’s special attack, which is represented by a gauge that fills up slowly after landing an attack. These special attacks can be pretty overpowered at times and can make some of the bosses come off a little easier. However, some bosses do have gimmicks that require special needs to be met during the battle in order to land an attack.



Weapons are upgraded and purchased with materials found in dungeons and battles. Some items are difficult to find, but I found the system to be fairly straightforward and never found myself missing too many items to acquire a stronger weapon. This means there is some farming that needs to be done if I wanted the more powerful weapons found throughout the game, but this also benefited me in the end because I was grinding levels at the same time.

I’m sure the graphics might come up as an issue to some gamers, but I must say that the character models and battle animations all work for me. This is a game that is made to look and sometimes feel like an RPG from the original PlayStation days and it does just that. However, I would have liked to see more enemy types and they also reused many of the NPC models, but they are still an indie team.



The environmental backgrounds found in Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds are simply beautiful. I loved exploring each and every area since they are unique and full of detail. Sadly, the game doesn’t allow the player to venture too far away from where the story wants to take you. Often I would be exploring an area and met with a “we shouldn’t go this way” dialog box. I’m the type of gamer who enjoys getting lost or figuring out where to go by simple trial and error.

Throughout the game, side-quests can be picked up that have the player do a number of various tasks. The best part about these quests is that they offer a unique and sometimes fun break from the storyline. Quests can have the player find an item or fight a monster, but the more interesting quests have the player run errands for ghosts or find a particular person to deliver a message.

I would like to mention that the music of Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds is brilliant. Each score is a joy to listen to and keeps the pace of the game going. I was stunned by how great the soundtrack of the game was and found myself staying in certain areas just to listen to the music.



There is so much to be impressed with when playing through Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds. The game presents an amazing story presented in the 3D polygon style graphics that I grew up with. Even if the dialog can be a bit lengthy at times, Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds’ story has far surpassed my expectations.

More importantly, each character has left a lasting impression on me and the growth that they experienced during the story makes the game feel even closer to the timeless stories of early RPGs. Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds expertly brings the PlayStation era RPGs to 2018 with an attention to detail that brings the genre to modern consoles and satisfies that nostalgic itch.

http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/Legrand_Legacy_Tale_of_the_Fatebounds/index.html

There's no shortage of games seeking to pay homage to the classics about which we old-timers constantly wax poetic. In fact, this class of game may now merit being a subgenre unto itself. While some titles manage to emulate the sources of their inspiration with varying degrees of success, many fall decidedly flat. Indie developer SEMISOFT is the latest to attempt to capture that magic with their debut title, Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds.

Legrand Legacy opens in the desert city of Tel Harran, where a human slave named Finn is marched into an arena to battle the vicious gladiator champion. Bucking the odds, Finn overcomes the hulking foe by unconsciously tapping into a hidden power he doesn't understand. An elderly Norn, a race with the ability to speak directly into people's minds, is so impressed by this display of mysterious power that he buys Finn, sets him free, and hires him as his bodyguard. So begins the journey to save the world of Legrand from the second coming of an ancient evil.

In truth, there's nothing particularly original about Legrand Legacy's story. The overarching narrative is a patchwork of mostly Celtic mythology that is immediately identifiable by the largely unaltered names of mythical locations, items, and individuals. This borrowing of lore isn't, in itself, necessarily a bad thing. To prevent their creation from feeling derivative, however, the SEMISOFT team needed to enrich it with an interesting world, captivating writing, and engaging characters. They didn't quite hit the mark.

The history of Legrand is thrust upon the player through heavy exposition, early and often. It becomes so overbearingly descriptive at times that forthcoming plot twists are easily inferred through character exchanges simply meant to set the stage. Even so, Legrand itself is an intriguing place ravaged by war, slavery, poverty, and social stratification. The small amount of worldbuilding that does occur successfully paints a dire picture of a world coming apart at the seams. The potential immersion falls apart whenever someone opens their mouth, though, as the characters and dialogue are both thoroughly mediocre.

I'm not sure I've come across a cast of main characters as unlikable and paper thin as the main party of Legrand Legacy. Aria, the main female protagonist, is cartoonishly abusive, obnoxious, and petulant. Finn is an excessively deferential nincompoop who whines incessantly. Kael is a walking, talking bad decision, and the rest of the party is a collection of cardboard cutouts that are more caricature than character. Worst of all, nobody grows in any meaningful way — nor seems to learn anything — by the end of the story.

The character issues tie directly to one primary cause: poorly written dialogue. It's clumsy and unnatural at best, and nonsensical at worst. The main party spends an inordinate amount of time bickering with each other for seemingly no other reason than to manufacture internal conflict. This bickering occurs continuously through the duration of the game, right up until the very end, when a character who had to repeatedly learn the same lesson makes yet another irrational decision out of the blue. These complaints don't even include the inane love triangle, the incredibly poor decision-making ability of literally everyone with any power in Legrand, or the phenomenally underwhelming ending that leads me to believe that there has to be a good ending locked away somewhere. There's plenty of room for improvement in this area, to say the least.

On a positive note, one of the first things you'll notice about Legrand Legacy is the striking, hand-drawn backgrounds that grow more stunning with each new area you explore. They're certainly a feast for the eyes and enhance the game's unabashedly gritty art style. These visual aesthetics are perfectly combined with a great soundtrack to effectively capture the hauntingly moribund ambiance permeating Legrand. The animated avatars during dialogue scenes are worth noting as well, as they're a nice little touch and look great despite the accompanying text that distractingly justifies mid-speech.

Legrand Legacy's battles are standard turn-based affairs with an additional timing mechanic known as the Action Circle Tempo (or ACT). The ACT, appearing as a circle on screen for both attack and defense actions, requires the player to push buttons to stop the indicator in the right area to trigger bonuses. Fans familiar with the Shadow Hearts series will recognize the ACT as a watered-down version of the Judgment Ring. The key to surviving the many tough enemies throughout Legrand, though, is the exploitation of weaknesses and strategic switching out of party members during battle. It's a simple system that requires just enough strategy and player interaction to avoid becoming tedious or boring. It should be noted that controls, particularly response times, are key with a system like ACT. Thankfully, Legrand Legacy's are fairly solid and responsive, save a few areas on some maps where movement gets a little awkward.

Dungeons are fairly standard, though several of them include traps and conditions that add layers of difficulty. The desert heat slowly damages your party over time and cold terrain slows them to the point that outrunning enemies is impossible. They're nice diversions, and the dungeons are very straightforward, but some of the later areas spike somewhat in difficulty. There were a handful of instances where the environmental factors, dungeon layout, enemy damage, and respawn rates combined for some frustrating moments. Your mileage may vary here, of course, but some adjustments may be required for the sake of balance.

Legrand Legacy also includes a tactical war system inspired by the Suikoden series, where players move troops around a tile-based map to clash with enemy units. There are various troop categories, like archers and cavalry, and these too have strengths and weaknesses. It's not an overly complex system, but it's just deep and unforgiving enough to merit forethought during key story battles. There are several minigames to boot, like fishing, fencing, and a monster arena. These minigames, as well as the castle building and recruitment feature, are essentially window dressing with little real substance.

Legrand Legacy has some additional warts worth mentioning, including glitches and quality of life omissions that are a little odd. There are multiple grammatical errors and instances where the wrong character's avatar appears during dialogue scenes. The game crashed on me a couple of times, as well. Still, these are bugs that can probably be patched out. More perplexing is the lack of standard features: area and overworld maps, the ability to sort your inventory, and the inability to retain weapons after crafting new ones. None of these are game breaking, but they're odd nonetheless.

I found Legrand Legacy an exceedingly tough game to score. Although it clearly has its flaws, I enjoyed the roughly 40 hours I spent with it all the same. The small but immensely talented development team may simply have tried to do just a little too much here, possibly to the detriment of character development and script writing. There are things it does well, including its great audiovisual quality, but it doesn't truly stand out in any meaningful way. SEMISOFT wished to create a "love letter" to JRPGs, and perhaps it did that in a most unintentional way. Legrand Legacy manages to capture much of the indelible charm of the JRPGs to which it pays homage through its rough-around-the-edges execution.

https://wccftech.com/review/legrand-legacy-review/

JRPGs have been around for quite some time, but their golden era came a few years after the first few games of the genre got released. While many considering the SNES era as the golden era for JRPGs, with games like Final Fantasy IV and VI, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger and so on, there are others who see the PS1 era as the best one for JRPGs. The latter has been a great influence on Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds, a new title developed by SEMISOFT (and funded on Kickstarter) to properly give homage to JRPGs released between the mid-90s and the early 2000s. This is, in truth, the game’s greatest achievement and greatest flaw at the same time, depending on how the player sees the lack of true innovation.

Legrand Legacy stars an amnesiac young man named Finn, a slave who is forced to fight inside the arena found in the town of Juble. Following an intense match where Finn emerges victorious, his freedom is bought by a mysterious old man who asks Finn to accompany him in a dangerous area. Little does Finn know that his journey will bring to discover his nature of Fatebound and his destiny as the world’s savior.

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Legrand Legacy has all the tropes that fans of the genre have seen in the latest fifteen to twenty years: amnesiac main character, tomboy heroine, a mysterious old man with strange powers, a great war between nations, otherworldy powers aiming to destroy the world and so on. Despite this, both story and characters manage to be enjoyable, but mostly as a tribute to older games since they are not terribly original, as already mentioned. Special mention has to go to the world, which is quite well crafted: all of the locations, while generally having a very somber atmosphere, have a distinct feel to it, which is heightened by the impressive hand-drawn backgrounds.

Legrand Legacy’s homage to PS1 era JRPGs doesn’t stop a story and characters, as the game plays like one released shortly after Final Fantasy VII. Players control Finn as he explores towns and dungeons, all coming with static camera angles and visible enemies. Touching an enemy from behind allows players to initiate combat with a sound advantage while getting touched from behind an enemy will allow them to attack party members at the start of the battle. Completing the homage are treasure chests scattered all over the locations and secret exits which can lead to the discovery of rare items and more.

Legrand Legacy employs a turn-based battle system with some interesting tactical and action elements which make it quite involving. At the start of each turn, players can choose to perform a regular attack with the equipped weapon, use items, defend and unleash skills which are called Grimoires. With the exception of using items, all actions, when performed, bring up a circle with a highlighted area: if the player manages to hit the shown button at the right time, the action will be more effective. Pressing the wrong button will decrease both strength and accuracy of the regular attack or Grimoire, or make the defensive action way less effective.

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Alongside these small action elements, the Legrand Legacy battle system also comes with plenty of tactical ones. Even before battles begin, players have to decide the party formation: characters in the front can only attack enemies in the front if they have a short range weapon, while those in the back can only attack with long-range weapons or Grimoires. The formation can be changed during battle, allowing players to adapt to the situation. Additionally, all enemies come with resistances and weaknesses, adding yet another tactical element to the battle system. All these action and tactical elements mesh quite well, so it doesn’t take too long to get acquainted with the battle system intricacies.

The growth system is also quite interesting, even though it’s not something we haven’t seen before. Upon level up, characters receive an HP and AP increase as well as ATPs that can be spent to increase stats. Increasing stats to certain points also unlocks Grimoires, opening up some interesting customization possibilities: while Finn, to make an example, is mostly a short range, powerful fighter, players can choose to make him more balanced by allowing him to learn a variety of supportive Grimoires, which are learned by improving stats other than strength. Leveling up and learning Grimoires aren’t the only way to make characters stronger in the game, as a crafting system also allows players to craft weapons that are not available in regular shops.

Adding more variety of the experience are also some true tactical battles, which have definitely been influenced by another great JRPG series which started on the original PlayStation, Suikoden. During the course of the game, players will get involved in some tactical battles, moving units on a battlefield and fight enemies. There are a different set of mechanics behind these battles, adding more variety to the experience.

Most of the JRPGs from the PS1 era came with a lot of mini-games, and, being a homage to them, Legrand Legacy features plenty of them, ranging from some fighting mini-games to fishing and so on. They are not particularly difficult to complete, so they are a welcome change of pace. The game also features a town-building mini-game where players recruit craftsmen to rebuild the abandoned city of Dumville. Not terribly original, but definitely a welcome diversion.



If there’s an area where Legrand Legacy truly shines and manages to be fairly original as well, is in its presentation. As already mentioned, the hand-drawn backgrounds are very beautiful, enhancing the unique atmosphere of the game’s world. Characters and enemies also evoke the feel of the PS1 era: models are far from being the best we have seen, but they do their job decent and mesh well with the beautiful backgrounds. The soundtrack is also quite well done, with select town themes being standouts.

Legrand Legacy: Tale of the Fatebounds is a difficult game to score properly. While the game is definitely enjoyable, there isn’t anything new that hasn’t been done by other games in the past fifteen years. For this reason, those looking for something new may be disappointed in Legrand Legacy, as the game doesn’t go past tributing the golden era of JRPGs.

General consensus so far is good, not great, and is a strange of amalgam of PS1-era RPG's with very little new ideas to be found. Character customization seems to be similar to Vanguard Bandits - you gain Stat points on level-up and can distribute them as you please. When you hit certain thresholds of stats you unlock new abilities, allowing you to make either pure combat characters, balance them out with support, pure mage, etc etc. Combat is a timing puzzle, a la Squall in FF8, Legend of Dragoon, Mario RPG, Gladius etc, and there is also a tactical war system similar to Suikoden. Curious as to which rendition they copied, S3's war system was my personal favorite, followed by 5.

Edit: Spoiler Tags, made things neater.
 
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My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Hmm, I did like Legend of Dragoon back in the day and this looks very committed to it's PS1 JRPG roots. The price ain't bad, so I'll wishlist it on GOG to try when I've got a hankering for some late 90's style JRPG action.
 

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