The charm and charisma of this game hold the rest of it up like how Altus holds the weight of the world on his back.

I really like Mega Man Legends. It has a passive peacefulness that could trick you into thinking you’re playing an island life simulator. You run errands for the townspeople of Kattlelox island, you play game shows on tv, you become a local legend for donating money to get better medical equipment at the hospital. Cutely designed characters have funny dialogue, you can tell the lady who runs the junk shop that your name is Hippopotamus. Hippopotamus can look at a magazine rack full of dirty magazines and contemplates reading one. The music that plays while you avoid oncoming traffic downtown sounds like the happiest trip to the mall you’ve ever had. Mega Man Legends is so pleasant.

But then, deep underground beneath the town, lies the Ruins. Eerie mines full of mindless Reaverbots, ready to kill anything they see. Under the silent cover of low draw distance, they wait for you. Some of these robots can drain your health in an instant, while you’re several loading screens away from salvation (and your latest save file). Mega Man Legends can be a little tense. (The hamburger-lookin ass crab Reaverbot, called Kuruguru, was particularly frightening to me and my younger brother when we played this game together.)

The tonal whiplash between the happy town and the harrowing ruins is only further compounded by the hysterical (and I mean that in both that they’re funny and that they’re constantly in hysterics) Bonne family. Between Tron Bonne’s violent and confused feelings towards Mega Man and Tiesel Bonne’s maniacal laughter after he plots a doomed scheme, any time they show up you’re in for a fun time.

That is, when the cutscenes are playing.

Early on, you gradually ease into the combat after a good amount of time hanging out in the town. But then BAM you’re hit with two back to back missions with their own boss fights. I guess the game wanted you to grind in the ruins for a lot longer than I did before starting those missions, because Defending City Hall is a huge difficulty spike.

And that difficulty, of course, comes from the controls.

Everyone hates tank controls. I won’t spend time reiterating what we all know, tank controls aren’t great for 3rd person action adventure games. This game is early enough in the genre’s existence that it was all they could conceive at the time. It’s really hard making two dimensional games as it is, and now you have to make a 3D game work and not completely copy Mario 64.

And besides, it’s not like Mario had a gun he could aim in Mario 64. They had to figure that out with what they had.

It’s a tough job, and I think they did OK with it. Decent enough to play, but not fun enough to where I get excited that a saving issue brought up the possibility of replaying 8 hours worth of the game. I didn’t have to replay those 8 hours, thankfully.

The main problem with Mega Man Legends’ turgid tank controls is half of the game’s loop is long term money grinding for obscenely expensive purchases. If you want to keep up with the dangerous enemies that threaten your life, you’re going to have spend a sickening amount of time grinding for zenny, all while moving around in that awkward and uncomfortable way. You get used to it, but it doesn’t make the grinding fun.

I genuinely recommend looking into cheat codes or something for this game to just give yourself a huge amount of money to mitigate the grinding. I played it “pure” and spent days running around the same spot in the ruins making chump change. Just cheat. Cheat because that half of the game is so lackluster compared to the side quests.

The side quests is what makes this game shine. There’s not enough of them to feel like a substantial Zelda-like adventure, but the amount we get is still satisfying. When you’re not raising money to rebuild the island from collateral damage you could have prevented, you’re helping the citizens with their simple problems. I’m return, you get an item that goes towards improving Mega Man (which you might need that grinding money to make use of), but more importantly, a fleshed out Kattelox Island. It makes it feel like a real place, and I love it.

However, these side quests have a dark side to them. A problem that could leave a “pure” playthrough completely in the dark.

A lot of these side quests/things to do are not blatantly advertised enough.

Much like the hidden treasures in the ruins beneath Kattlelox Island, Mega Man Legends hides it’s delightful and rewarding supplementary content behind obscurity. While some games with a racing minigame have some kind of eye catching indicator of its existence, or even a cutscene to let you know about it, Mega Man Legends has a nondescript npc in the corner of a building you might not think to go in anymore because you cleared the other two minigames it offered.

There are important npcs who have things for you to do who look like any other npc. Sometimes you have to talk to an obvious quest npc multiple times after you finish their quest to get a second or third quest. And I don’t mean just talk to them again I mean again and again and again. Some of these quests are built around the in-game timer, but it’s never specified exactly how much time it’s built around.

If your Saiyan Pride doesn’t let you cheat or use a guide, I respect that, but understand just how much of your precious time will be spent grinding zenny and talking to every npc multiple times. It is not weakness to save yourself an hour because you know where you have to go.

At the very least, I recommend having a guide handy while you play this game, just so you can give yourself everything it can offer. My first full playthrough was without a guide and I missed half the game and it really felt like it.

That full playthrough completely missed all the quests that went into the most powerful weapon in the game, maybe the entire Mega Man Series: the Shining Laser. The incredibly expensive culmination of several quests and mountains of money, the Shining Laser turns the already easy final boss into a seconds long joke.

Normally I’d be upset at the prospect of being robbed of a good fight, but I think it thematically works. The Shining Laser is everyone you helped on Kattelox returning the favor. It’s the final episode of the anime where everyone opens their hearts to send their energy to the hero. I like it. It’s a reward for players who aren’t good at combat but love the side quests, and it’s a reward for people like me who put too much thought into it.

But anyways,

I’ve played this game three times and rolled credits twice. I got every item on the second full playthrough, but I didn’t upgrade the weapons all the way because I didn’t cheat this time lmao. I fully upgraded the Shining Laser though, which is more than enough for me.

I recommend Mega Man Legends to anyone willing to put up with the few drawbacks it has. They are certainly drawbacks, (though I think the controls are much less of an issue) but the characters and world this game creates are vibrant and endearing and maybe the strongest in the entire Mega Man franchise.

There’s a reason why Tron Bonne shows up in more games as a cameo appearance than Mega Man Volnutt. It’s because she’s the best character in the game.

it was aight. the only thing anyone can say about this game is that it's cute and looks good and both of those things are true but overall im just very unimpressed with this game. i didnt feel anything from the townspeople, i didnt feel anything from the town itself or the world or the story it tried to tell at the end. gameplay wise it was fun to upgrade my weapons and get stronger and minmax my favourite stats on my gun but the whole thing was also pretty slow and clunky, but that's something i got used to anyways. idk. i dont feel very motivated to play the next games in the series.