huge spoilers ahead, so reader discretion is advised!
im really mad with how this game turned out, especially considering how much hype the game garnered before release (and even after with all the meat riders). that's not to say it's bad, far from it - it's just got some glaring flaws that really did this game dirty, and i don't see anyone talking about them.
let me start with the good. gameplay is objectively a huge improvement over 7's. combos, moving around your enemies in battles helps so much since you can now get critical back hits if positioned right, wonky foreground objects that would mess up your attacks in the last game can now be picked up as weapons, and grappling attacks that break guards - it's solved almost everything i didn't like about 7's gameplay and i'm very glad they put more thought into it, the potential of 7's system has finally been realised.
one big issue that pained me in the last game is still glaringly apparent here though. enemies and bosses are piss easy up until chapter 10 i'd say, all being able to be done with in 3 or less turns. after that, the game has a difficulty spike (annoying, but a lot nicer than 7) which forces mandatory grinding. granted, one run of the mystery dungeon will give you enough XP to fight the final boss with ease, but the fact that it never hits the sweet spot in difficulty is very annoying.
also, the new characters added are an absolute treat - they never feel out of place with the gang and i'm glad they're written well. easily the greatest part about the ichiban games are their bonds together.
this game is also filled to the brim with content, and not in a bloated way like 5. the bucket list is an absolute tearjerker (even though i think it should have been part of the main story) and the substories are pretty developed this time around, even better than they were previously. that, and the quality of life genuinely make me scared to see how 7's features pale in comparison to this. an auto-win button for low-level encounters, finally being able to choose a taxi location from the map, and especially the electric scooter - one of my complaints in 7 was that the city was way too big to traverse on foot, and i had to rely on opening the phone menu and selecting taxis way too often. it's a blessing and i'm glad they've done this much.

this is where the praise ends, and story spoilers start.

i don't need to say much about the ng+ dlc, but it's shameful considering that this was a thing with 7 in japan - but the backlash got so bad that it was included with the game in the english version. just an earthly reminder about how scummy companies can get. if not for the emotional kiryu stuff that was heavily advertised with this game, i don't think i would have got it. but if there's some extra dlc content that is worth getting, it would probably make the dlc worthwhile.

the story is easily the worst part about this game. there's so much about it that genuinely pisses me off, but i'll try to summarise it in the best way i can. they had so many chances to do some wicked shit but ultimately pulled a lot of its punches and played it safe for reasons i can't really grasp. the first half of the story is genuine filler - the gang was really just running around looking for akane - the game does a good job and hyping her up (she's his mom - obviously learning more about this goat protagonist is interesting) and lani as well (even comparing her to haruka in y1 - kiryu's reason for helping out) and when we do find them, they contribute absolutely nothing to the story afterwards. I don't even think kiryu and lani had a scene together, given how much he wanted to rescue her.
in addition to this, there's a lot of shit that just gets glossed over for seemingly no reason at all. the whole daidoji thing with kiryu could have been expanded on given how much of a tight grip they had on him in gaiden, but nahhh, he's just able to live after being exposed because he's "important for the mission". we're also gonna forget about eiji, the man who literally fucked up ichiban and gang's whole careers, fuckin disappears after we get back lani, and now he's gone back to japan and is now looking homeless? how the fuck did that all happen within the span of a few days???? and don't get me started on ebina. his whole backstory just makes the arakawa family fiasco in 7 even more confusing, and the fact that ichiban isn't even made aware of it is just ??????
people wack on 5's story for being ridiculous but at least it was a good time. this genuinely feels lazy.

on top of that, the villains are boring. bryce is some cult guy who isn't even remotely interesting. his backstory is lame, and we're supposed to care when we don't see him AT ALL. until his boss fight i'm convinced he only appeared to ichiban at least 3 times max. eiji is a bitch boy - his blackmail with chitose was honestly great, a very good motive to do all the shit he did, but there's no real resolve or one-to-one convo with him about it. only at the very end do we see he's sorry, and even though the ending went insanely hard, it just wasn't convincing enough because we didn't see any development from himself beforehand. i already talked about ebina, he's basically a "daddy issues" villain but his speech at the end highlighted the yakuza being a necessary evil, that will always linger in japan despite the dissolution. couldn't care about it less about it by that point but it made kiryu cry (something that hasn't been done since y3) so it gets extra points.

i've left the bucket list for last, cuz it's the best and worst part about the game. seeing old important characters really just made me appreciate for wonderful all these characters are. i genuinely shed a tear when i saw taichi and kaoru - such a heartwarming section and i'm glad they've done this. being side content really hurts it however, haruka's part is a very good example. you think there would be some insane cutscene where they both start bursting with tears while being the sweetest shit ever, but nah, we get edged and kiryu leaves halfway through. the daidoji is their reason for this i think? you'd think kiryu would go through some tough shit because of this but he just gets away with a simple fight since he knows that he has plot armour 😭 you can't make this shit up
if the bucket list took up the first half of the game, with the lesser important people being side content, i think that would have been perfect.

but as great as it was, the worst offender of the story is the ending, simply because it just leaves way too much unexplained. very lazy to leave this much "to interpretation".
for starters, ichiban and saeko's shit could have easily been the cherry on top, with him finally getting the proper words to say to her. but they just had to ruin it with some weird fuck ass shit - even for ichiban this was out of pocket, especially since the whole team was building ichiban up to this moment (especially saeko's speech in the final boss, was that all for nothing????) ofc it'll be resolved in the other game, but it really feels lazy.
we don't even see how any of the characters are actually doing, just short summaries. chitose and lani not being seen at all was very disappointing considering that they've both taken on some big roles.
but the final cutscene with kiryu was easily the worst. honestly thought kiryu's final moments would have been well spent - and him being killed off in a either badass or heartwarming way, but nahhhhh, he lived. with him with cancer you'd think he would go (or be finished by the daidoji after completing the mission) but fuck what we've previously established am i right?
to end it all off, haruka and haruto are waiting for him by his hospital bed while he's out for an inspection or whatever. here he reveals his name, supposed to be a big deal, but why should it be when there is no reasoning behind it? why would the daidoji let him do this????? the bucket list moment felt like it was leading to this, but of course we don't see what happens at all...... haha
just hype the end of kiryu up for it not to be the end of kiryu. this should have been the dlc that gaiden was supposed to be to this game.

even past all that, i did have some good fun thanks to the quality of life and improved gameplay. maybe i will go back in premium adventure because looking at the completion list, there's a LOT of cool shit i missed. hard to do that when the entire game was essentially a big blueball.

Mostly impressed by the people who are able to find this relaxing. If the game weren't so insistent on outlining everything in little red lines I would probably be endorsing it as a little therapeutic adventure, but as time went on I found myself just flying through the levels, taking all the shit and putting it on the floor so I could just see those red lines as quickly as possible and figure out why the MC is so damn insistent that putting the microwave 8 feet up on top of a cabinet is better than leaving it on the countertop.

I really enjoyed one or two of these, mostly the ones with the most room for creativity, but unfortunately the game is a lot more interested in providing a dump truck full of little trinkets for you to use to cobble together a story. I don't think this is inherently bad! But I had a lot more fun arranging the GF's collection of horror movie merch than I did finding spots for the horribly bland MC's collection of Eiffel Tower souvenirs. There are a handful of very obvious plot points that nobody is going to miss, but it seems that most of what people enjoy about this game is the story that they've projected onto it. There's a chapter where the main character moves in with The Worst Video Game Boyfriend of the Year who the devs tried very hard not to make "too cartoonishly terrible" and his biggest crimes are... picking an overly grayscale apartment and having hobbies that are a little too "adult Redditor"? Zero sympathy for the main character trying to hang her movie poster-sized diploma in every apartment for the next 20 years after she graduates. Under the bed is absolutely the perfect spot. These two deserve each other.

Yeah, I've pretty thoroughly soured on this game at this point, having played through the whole thing and mostly feeling like the game doesn't have a real point that it's making. Life events happen? You can tell a lot about a person through their belongings? Clutter bad? Really makes you think! I could tell you almost nothing about this person, but I know enough to find them deeply annoying. The power of games!

More than anything, the last couple of months have been about learning to love video games again. As such, I’ve been revisiting some of my old ramblings, particularly that of the obstacle course 2D platformer. While I think the original Donkey Kong Country is a prime example of what I’m looking for, there’s always room for improvement, even if I don’t necessarily know what that improvement would look like. I think I might have finally found what I’ve been looking for though; call me basic or nostalgic, but Rayman Legends might just be the most polished and realized momentum-based crash course 2D platformer I've ever played, with easy to pick up but difficult to master character control potential and some of the most vibrant and engaging obstacle escalation in any platformer to date.

Rayman’s toolkit of a standard attack and jump with an extended hover while holding jump seems pretty simple at first, but there’s plenty to master too. Rayman’s dash attack gives an instant burst of speed, and jumping during the spin allows you to preserve horizontal momentum. Learning to minimize these moments of stagnation with break boosting and chaining well-timed spins and jumps with roll-jumping, air-kick cancelling to maintain aerial momentum, and ground-pounds to create hit boxes both above and below you while quickly diving allows for extremely tight platforming, alongside Rayman’s jump control (access to a short hop versus a full jump depending on how quickly jump is tapped) and standard chained attacks. Enemy placement lends well to this need for optimized movement too, since you’ll constantly need to balance throwing out hitboxes to knock out foes/barriers or jumping on enemy heads while finding the right times to maintain speed. The game even handles verticality well, thanks to a simple wall-running mechanic (that doesn’t even require you to build up momentum prior) with quick wall flip jumps as well as standard wall jumping outside of wall runs. Simply put, there is a lot of potential for movement optimization in this game, and it feels absolutely exhilarating pulling it off.

As for the levels themselves, take the design philosophy of the original Donkey Kong Country and turn it up to 11, and you’ve basically got one of the best modern translations of the formula in Rayman Legends while still managing to bring plenty of its own ideas to the table. There’s tons of moving parts and lurking dangers abound in the dreamy levels of the game to force Rayman and pals into action; vines, trampolines, water jets, wind currents, ziplines, swarms of bugs and flaming walls, you name it and they’ve got it. It’s a classic case of slowly introducing new concepts in the form of new movement tech, hazards, and set pieces while slowly interchanging the new with the old and ramping up the danger and tightening the execution until finally, you get to run your victory lap. The difference here between Donkey Kong Country and Rayman Legends is that Rayman Legends extends the obstacle course escalation to an entire world rather than just a single level, allowing the developers to really push their theming and various ideas to their fullest extent while providing more than enough time for players to adapt to the learning curve.

Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit provides the perfect example of this design philosophy in action, citing the fourth world of the game, 20,000 Lums Under the Sea. Let’s start with the core principle of the world; stealth mechanics in the form of the sentry beams that zap Rayman if he lingers too long in the searchlights. These forced stealth sections are first combined with underwater swimming levels, which I must admit is a such a damn clever combination; what better way to alleviate the painstaking nature of the slower swimming sections and the deliberate and calculated movement of forced stealth sections than to marry the two concepts? That’s just the first level of the world though; the second level is a grounded platforming stage where Rayman has to sneak around sentries with his companion Murphy, using Murphy to press buttons that both create barriers and block sentry searchlights while popping up walls and platforms to create paths forward. Then the third level turns this concept on its head again by starting levels lit-up with electric barriers, and then forcing you to replay the levels backward with the electric barriers replaced with sentry searchlights in stealth mode.

The fourth level, “Infiltration Station,” toys with the ideas of the previously mentioned second level by now replacing the buttons with movable objects; as a result, Rayman must now adapt to Murphy shifting the level by moving cover or even moving the sentries themselves. Then, the fifth level relegates the sentries as the backdrop hazards to a grand ol’ elevator defense, which Rayman must keep track of and avoid while picking off bungee shock gun frogmen straight out of a Mission Impossible movie. Again, it’s important to remember that these levels slowly introduce new level elements aside from the main gimmicks (invincible underwater worms, laser trip detectors, skull-marked naval mines, etc), but ultimately it is the synthesis and variation of the elements (i.e. inserting enemies in sentry-guarded zones, or using the mobile worms and stationary mines as mandatory cover against searchlights) that makes the difficulty so versatile. This all comes together in the sixth level, “There’s Always a Bigger Fish,” where every introduced obstacle in the arsenal is thrown at Rayman as he furiously paddles away from a snapping serpent in a frenzied auto-runner/chase sequence. Finally, after the penultimate level that serves as a boss fight against yet another hostile Frankensteined mechanical beast, you get to reap the rewards in a final musical obstacle course dubbed “Gloo Gloo,” where your platforming and swimming actions in-game are synced to the beats of a whimsical cover of “Woo-Hoo”. It’s such a pleasure mastering these playable music videos and knowing that your survival is the only thing keeping the music at full blast.

As you can probably guess from the musical endnotes of each world, Rayman Legends is absolutely no slouch at atmosphere and presentation. Theming in every world is extremely distinct and yet remains focused to where level elements never really feel out of place or excessively repetitive. You go from navigating these tight, booby trapped castles in Teensies in Trouble to carefully gliding and maneuvering massive beanstalks in Toad Story, to dodging cake eating centipedes and fending off scores of luchadores and mariachi skeletons in Fiesta de los Muertos. Every new world has its own unique focus on gameplay mechanics (swinging axe and ropes courses in Teensies in Trouble, windy, open air plant-infested levels in Toad Story similar to that of the bramble levels in Donkey Kong Country 2, and Murphy quite literally playing with his food to progress past hazards in Fiesta de los Muertos), and the dynamic comic book visuals of the UbiArt framework as well as the extensive orchestral + electronic mixes in the soundtrack really bring it all home. To top it all off, there’s just this joyous and infectious energy embedded in every detail of the game, from the punchy and expressive attacks and sound effects, to the backing “Ooooooh” track that plays every time you stumble upon a secret, to the Teensies themselves cheering and giggling like schoolchildren when you bump into them in the main gallery. I can’t help but grin and chuckle like a madman every time I pick up this game; it’s just dopamine in distilled video game form.

There have been a few complaints here and there that Rayman tends to lean towards the easier side, at least with regards to many of the main story levels. That’s where the invasion and challenge levels come in. The challenge levels are straightforward enough; compete against the world in a daily/weekly generated survival and/or speedrunning contest for glory, and lums/”Awesomeness points” for more cosmetic palette swaps if you want to change up your character model every now and then. More importantly, you’ll get an alert every now and then that goons from previous worlds have come to “invade” the dreams of previous stages, and be invited to partake in a timed invasion stage, where you must rush to the end against a new combination of foes in a different theme. This concept even gets its own twist when after beating the game, Shadow Rayman invasion levels are unlocked, where a dark copy of you follows in close pursuit and both keeps you moving while carefully planning out your route as so you don’t stumble into your duplicate while backtracking. These levels really force you to use every tool at your disposal to optimize your strategy and beat the clock, and it almost becomes that of a puzzle game but with extremely tight execution involved as well.

I love examples, so have another one on me just so I can illustrate how batshit crazy this gets. In the Shadow Rayman invasion variant of “Infiltration Station,” you have to pick off sequential droves of enemies in order to unlock the door to the next room and eventually free your Teensie friends at the end. From the starting position of the second room, you first have to take out the frog goon on the left while then immediately destroying the bones barrier below. Since there’s a Shadow Rayman copy following me, I dash attacked into the goon then immediately wall-jumped and slammed through the barrier, landing on an enemy that spawned directly below me and then bouncing and air kicking the newly spawned enemy to the right on the platform. From there, I hold down the right trigger and jump out to the ring and back on top to the platform previously above me, kicking the buff brawler in the face. Then, I full jump out towards the ring to avoid my shadow and hover for a second so another toad can finish spawning in and land on the ground, allowing me to slam to its side and end its misery. I immediately input a jump upon landing since there’s no enemy to bounce off of this time and air kick the last toad brawler on the platform, land on the platform, and break boost by immediately spin dashing to the left off the platform towards the door once obscured by a vine and make my exit. Here’s a quickly sketched schematic of my “optimized” route that takes about nine seconds when executed well, and if you think this is fast… the world record for the whole four room affair takes less than double the time it took for me to just finish the second room alone. Needless to say, the thrill of improving both my execution and pathing while directly competing against others on the leaderboard is definitely a crucial component that keeps me coming back for more.

If I really had to nitpick, then my only complaint is that some of the Back to Origins content (the forty returning stages from Rayman Origins) feel a bit out of place. While the main platforming stages still feel tightly constructed, with the classic escalation and variation of moving elements and hazards formula for mechanical depth aided by carefully hidden short side corridors for goodies and bonus rooms, there are unfortunately one too many horizontal shoot em up segments (both in the form of full Origins levels and bonus room challenges) thrown into the array that feel like abrupt breaks in the natural flow of things. To be fair, this is at least alleviated by two factors. Firstly, the Back to Origins content is not necessary at all to unlock the main stages of Legends (in fact, you can even just focus on Legends content exclusively and still have enough Teensies to unlock the 8-bit bonus music levels), and are randomly earned from scratching Lucky Tickets that come as their own reward for collecting enough Lums in main stages; thus, I always saw the Origins levels more as bonus content if anything. Secondly, even within the shmup segments themselves, there’s a fair bit of variety thanks to the wrinkles thrown in (namely through the ability to suck certain enemies/obstacles and shoot them back out to deal more damage, as well as the reflective surfaces that let you bounce shots off and levers/switches thrown into stages that present a less “harmful” but just as engaging obstacle to contend with) as well as the expressive theming that the game’s known for to mitigate any staleness. Nevertheless, even if I think this is a minor gripe considering that the final product is definitely more than the sum of its parts, I do acknowledge that the bonus content would have felt even more gratifying if they had cut the number of shmup sections in half and replaced them with the engaging platforming that Rayman Origins & Legends exemplify.

One last disclaimer for the road: a couple of years ago, the servers for Rayman Legends on PC were shut down, effectively closing leaderboards and barring players from accessing any challenge levels on PC copies. If global kudos and constantly generated online challenges are a defining draw for you, then you may want to consider picking up a console copy of Rayman Legends instead, where the servers are still up. That said, PC players can still mod the game offline to create their own challenges, and I have heard that some Rayman community discords have been running custom challenges themselves in spirit of the old system (though I haven’t been able to confirm), so perhaps not all hope is lost.

I suppose they don’t call it Rayman Legends for nothing; even while considering some minor design decisions that could have been improved, the overall game is one of the most cohesive and mechanically deep 2D platformers I’ve experienced to date that never fails to put a smile on my face. This really is one of the most replayable and fundamentally fulfilling platformers that I’ve ever played, and it absolutely deserves to be included in the conversation as one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time. It is a shame that as rich as the series has been (at least, in the two Rayman games I’ve played to date), that Rayman himself has seemingly fallen to the wayside while his creator, Michel Ancel, has been rather busy with the development hell of Beyond Good & Evil 2, until he left the project and Ubisoft altogether two years ago. Ubisoft’s been in a bit of an unsurprising rough patch since, having cancelled three unannounced games and “facing major challenges” in the form of underselling titles, so I’ll just say what’s on everyone’s mind: bring back Rayman, Ubisoft. It’s been eight years since Legends, and the boy deserves so much more. Don’t let these greats go out like this; we may still have the classics, but future generations ought to know that once upon a time, there was once (and perhaps still is) a platforming legend that reached the heights of Mario, Donkey Kong, and so many others while always remaining true to itself.