Welcome to our review of the new NIS game called Fallen Legion, a strategy meets action RPG combo.
Fallen Legion: Rise to Glory – is actually 2 games, it chronicles the story of Legatus Laendur and Princess Cecille. What side will you choose to decide the fate of Fenumia?
First up is the story of Cecille: Fallen Legion: Sins of an Empire – Join Princess Cecille (and a saucy, talking grimoire) on her journey home as she fights hordes of monsters and a coup led by Legatus Laendur. A crumbling empire is in your hands. Will you restore glory to Fenumia?
Second is Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion – Legatus Laendur, a brilliant tactician beloved by the people, fought on the frontlines the Fenumian Empire, but when he discovers why it is rotting from within, he vows to overthrow the royal family. Fenumia devoured his homeland – will you fight to reclaim it?
My review of this game is based mostly on my gameplay of the Sins of an Empire play through as I chose Cecille as my character.
Fallen Legion is what could be best called a horizontal rushing fighting game with clear RPG influences. Basically, you and your enemies are on screen and it is up to you to use your men at your command to be victorious, sounds simple enough but it is not. This game gives the subtle appeal of needing a lot of strategy.
Strategy in the sense of really planning your every move, knowing when to block and when to strike. All while protecting Cecille who heads into battle right along the others. She has the ability to unleash big attacks or even heal injured allies or fallen comrades.
And now forget everything I said about strategy and listen to what it is actually like, a button mashing game that just needs proper timing and you will be a pro in no time. Despite looking at a messy battleground and not always knowing where you need to look, button mashing did the trick for me, just wondering if the repetitiveness of it can give due credit towards the replay value or not.
I am not joking, I started the game thinking this would be a great RPG style horizontal battler, but it is more a button masher than anything else and there is nothing wrong with that. Fallen Legion brings a deep story to the Switch and for as long as I have been able to play the game, I did enjoy most of it.
As I just said most of it, I should clarify a little here as well. As you battle, you free up more of the world map. All quite normal, nothing wrong there, until the second you lose a fight. The “level” needs to be restarted and I found no way to skip the often elaborate storytelling. The story itself is great, but not being able to skip it a fourth time in a row, it can get quite tedious and to a certain point even made me feel like quitting the game altogether…
That said, I should maybe also mention that the story can get dark at times, which may not be good for all ages, but as a 41-year-old gamer, I had no issues with that aspect, just saying this might not be the game for a younger audience…
In conclusion, this game is in my humble opinion more for the fans of the genre. Providing a deep experience though not for all ages. I must admit I generally dislike this playstyle, but there was just so much depth that kept me wanting to play that one more level and keep going on. Not forgetting those gorgeous graphics, even in the midst of a heated battle, the game kept looking great!
This game is also getting the Collector’s edition treatment from NIS and we recently had a very nice interview with them about this, you can read up on that here: link. I know I am looking forward to receiving mine when it is released.
Fallen Legion gets a 70% rating from me, the inability of not being able to skip parts, did take it down 5% as I originally planned to give it 75…
My rating is 70%
