ARTHUR: “This way, knights!” ARTHUR: “The Maidens may perish this day, but their sacrifice shall not have been in vain! Onward, to the Grail!” Our hero… [Captions by: Val Grim] I’d wager most people know the basic story and characters from the King Arthur legend. Which is good, because this game isn’t going to tell you much. Which is ironic, with a big title like “Legion: The Legend of Excalibur”. It was created by 7 Studios, founded by ex-Westwood developers, and, naturally, it was going to be a strategy game. Which it still… kind of is. By the time it came out exclusively for the PS2, it was more of an Action RPG. It actually looks very similar to the “Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance” game. And I mean the one from 2001 that actually got a pretty nice rerelease a few years ago. NOT the standalone “Dark Alliance” game. That one is already… bad… but it does have one of my favorite game trailers. See, the old peak for desperately trying to make nerd shit look cool was the Marilyn Manson trailer for “Dragon Age”. This is culturally significant enough to risk playing the music. ♪ Are you motherfuckers ready for the new shit? ♪ ♪ Stand up and admit tomorrow’s never coming ♪ That was strong enough to hold the crown for nearly 15 years, until “Dark Alliance” broke out the GoPros. ♪ Cut my throat and throw me to the wolves ♪ I think that will be the champion for a good long while, but I am not immune to propaganda, and especially when I was a kid. “Legion” held the power that the other two were trying to tap into, and it was through the cover. Pop culture King Arthur usually meant Monty Python or a cartoon or Rutger Hauer and Sam Neill getting really annoyed. So, when my little brain sees in a video store, for $5, THIS, and then saw it was rated M, which means it’s for adults and must be good… I had to buy it, and that was taking a risk, too, because this would be contraband. Eventually, the box was found, I got in trouble, and I never saw it again, but I don’t remember feeling that sad about losing the game. But, as the years went on and I played other stuff, the image of the cool King Arthur continued to haunt me. What a great design! I also still had flashes of dark, high budget cutscenes and some atmospheric levels that were incredibly hard to beat. Why had no one I’d spoken to played or even heard of this game? So I figured I’d emulate it, give it a spin and put the whole thing to rest. It turns out, not many people did that either, and the one pioneer left a note reading “It isn’t very good, so testing time was low”. Oh, God… Well, if you run it in anything other than software mode, the ground becomes soup, but software mode emulates the game pretty perfectly, as far as I’ve seen. And I mean “perfect” as in “accurate”. Like, the first campfire also slows down the PS2 version, so this is accurate. Okay, so, all that done, let’s start the game. MERLIN: “Arthur… Arthur…” MERLIN: “Chaos reigns.” UTHER: “UEAUGH!” MERLIN: “The House of Pendragon is falling.” MERLIN: “Morgan Le Fay, sorceress of the underworld, has taken up arms against her father, Uther, King of England.” Okay, I’m not gonna do “it wasn’t like that in the legend”, or else we’ll be here all day, and the Arthur legends did come in all kinds of versions, even back in the time period. It’s still worth noting that this might be the most heroic Uther Pendragon portrayal. MORGAN: “I don’t want your love, father.” MORGAN: “I. Want. Your. Kingdom.” Morgan Le Fay has been gaining power through her dark sorcery, and Uther Pendragon could put her down, but in this case, he is held back by his love, and instead sends Excalibur into the famous… palantir? Which of course allows her to Wolverine him. [Uther gasps in pain] UTHER: “Arthur…! My… son…” There’s not much context to this, and not in the manual either (I checked), but it sets up the villain quickly, and, better than that, establishes the dark tone the setting is going for. For 2001, this is an impressive opening. Which makes the transition into the main game all the more jarring. [Arthur yawning] ARTHUR: “I… I must have been dreaming.” ARTHUR: “I watched Morgan Le Fay slay King Uther. And Excalibur was there!” KAY: “Excalibur? A good omen! You may bring luck to me yet.” Arthur has been sent to squire for his brother, Sir Kay, in an upcoming tournament. Arthur has no skills, no charisma – he’s the kind of guy whose head you crack open to look for candy in. KAY: “And learn to fight before you go on your way. Morgan’s army moves closer by the day, and you still hold your sword like a girl.” Yeah, a girl King Arthur? That would never catch on! After some arguing and saber-rattling from Kay, you get the tutorial. TRAINER: “You hold that sword like a girl. Here’s a tip…” 😤 TRAINER: “Pressing the X button will execute a basic light attack.” ☝️🤓 I did love that line in the book, but I’ll skip over this shit. There’s not much to see in camp, except for Excalibur. If you approach it, the wizard Merlin will telepathically tell you that you’re not ready for Excalibur, but you will be one day. So, instead, talk to the local drunks. DRUNK 1: “H-hey, Arthur…”🥴 DRUNK 1: “Aye. They say Captain Morgan Le Fay won’t rest until all the armies still loyal to Uther are slain.” 🥴 DRUNK 2: “How can we be loyal to a dead man?” 😒 DRUNK 2: “(hic, hic) Who will take his place?” 😒 DRUNK 2: “Did you hear something?” 🤔 DRUNK 1: “Go on. (hic) I think you’ve had a little too much to drink.” 🥴 (loud explosions and screams of soldiers) You’ve witnessed two drunks being pulverized by indirect artillery. !! YOU ARE NOW WORTHY TO WIELD EXCALIBUR !! Huh… Apparently, it’s also a Super Sentai transformation, and I didn’t expect that. But what’s done is done. You are now the King of England, and must defeat Morgan Le Fay and her evil armies. So let’s start with the graphics. I know people who have never touched one like to say “looks like a PS2 game” as an insult, but this kind of looks like what they’re imagining. They’re not horrible for the console, but definitely on the lower end of what it was capable of in 3D. This was likely done to give you more character models on the screen for a bigger fight, which is good. At least on paper… Sometimes, the environments do have more detail on them, or effects like a frothing waterfall, or just anything to add a bit of richness to it. Like, the mysterious rolling fog effect in Avalon is nice, but it’s an effect that works better here, because the rest of the game is already murky, for rendering purposes. While the cutscenes had a lot of interesting direction and color to them, the game itself looks incredibly dull. There are a few times when lights and shadows can create interesting contrast, but they happen so rarely I cannot actually find an example to put in here. It is such a muted-looking game, and even in areas that look like they should be brighter, like these lava pits, it’s still just nothing. It was reminding me a lot of “AvP: Extinction”, except, even that game could do more with the environment. It could still be dull, but “Legion” never looks exciting. The character models and little animation bits, like the cape, are the standout. They’re pretty decent for an overhead game, and, while playing, can be sliced apart in a few ways. The pure over the topness of the gore is the funnest thing in the game to look at. It’s also the only time I feel anything from the combat. Sometimes, a bad man will stumble backwards, or maybe wobble a bit if he’s blocking you, but, besides an air freshener spritz of blood, you’re not getting more until they’re dead. [foes yell in unison] You have three levels of zoom to go through, with the last being a direct overhead view. In theory, this would be for something more strategic, like using your squad mates and allies, but instead, I mainly used it when things get too busy, because the camera has a life of its own. Sometimes, it will snap to a large object. Sometimes, it wants to look for tardigrades in the soil outside the fight. You have to manually wrangle it, which is annoying when this happens, but the camera is mainly moving on its own. I’ve been editing around it, to make the video less painful, but, without that, this is one of THE most jittery isometric games I’ve ever played. Sometimes, it follows you, but also has snap points it’s triggered to pan over to, so you’re barely trying to move a few feet, and suddenly you’re inside of a tumble dryer. Then the opposite can happen, where the camera follows you along fixed points, but it can be so slow in catching up with you. There are so many times the camera doesn’t feel focused correctly. You have to cycle through zoom levels like you’re trying to discover a new fucking star system, instead of just watching the funny man hit people. It’s atrocious, and, while you can cycle through some other characters, the camera makes them virtually unplayable. Guinevere here has a bow, which you have to hold down the attack button for, which already slows things down, but the aim nearly always locks to enemies off screen. So the forces of Darkness end up caving your head in while you’re fumbling around with the protractor. Even if they’re not, it’s still dizzy as hell, and not worth it. The view bounces between being fixed or following you for no clear reason. It makes the act of just getting around so disorienting and awful. It makes sense it was once a proper strategy game, since sudden panning in those doesn’t bother anybody, but having this weird, hybrid combo of that and an ARPG, where you have no control of the panning, makes you feel insane. The camera’s attached to a drunk seagull, and he hates me! It’s so nice when the world goes still or smooth. Overall, I give the visual experience of “Legion” this/10. This brings us to the sound, which, in a nice surprise, is incredibly tolerable. [rustling rain] ARTHUR: “The enemy has arrived!” [generic swooshing of swords, grunts of pain and clanking of metal] It’s not great – it’s generic and repetitive – but it’s not attacking me, and that’s where the bar is now. The combat sounds are lacking, and the timing of some effects, like the gore and screams, do seem off. Not all the time, but sometimes you see a man explode, and 3 seconds later hear “AHH!” And that’s clearly incorrect. [limp thwacking and loud groaning] SOLDIER: “Take this! For the Ki-ing!” You may have also noticed that, to save on some voice budget, they’ve just pitched one guy’s voice around. SOLDIER: “For the Ki-ing!” 😃 [battle cacophony] SOLDIER: “For the Ki-ing!” ✊😤 SOLDIER: “For the Ki-ing!” 🤪 SOLDIER: “To the death!” GUARDSMAN: “It’s quiet.” Okay, I take it back – they’re not around all the time, but the random foot soldiers are incredibly grating. The stock battle sounds are serviceable, and the ambience is fine too. It is basic, and would not stand up on its own, but the music does cover for it. The soundtrack is something you would pick out of a jar called “Adventure Fantasy Game” – lots of strings and horns, very upbeat. It’s what you picture a kid humming in his head when he’s brandishing a stick in the woods. Some tracks are a little catchy, but there’s nothing that’s a standout. [upbeat, cheery medieval music] NPC: “For Honor™”! (off-mic) Can you shut the fuck up during the music sec-? [generic fantasy music] [silence] Yeah, when I said “nothing” was the standout, I meant no music in some levels. There’s still sound – just barely. [*swoosh-swoosh*]
There’s still sound – just barely. There’s still sound – just barely. [quiet rushing of water] [*grunk*] I don’t know how this happened. And yes, it’s like this on native Play Station as well. [*swoosh-swoosh-swoosh*] The music’s not amazing, but you don’t realize just how much weight it’s carrying for the soundscape until it’s completely gone. Three of the thirteen missions are like this, including the final mission. Which is bizarre on its own, but you double that, because this reuses a lot of the previous level, which DOES have ambient sound and music. You would think this would be simple, but, with how complicated videogames are, and how troubled this development clearly was, maybe having music here... made the game kill you. [obnoxious cackling] What else can you say about it? I guess, the highlight is the voice acting? BANDIT: “You hear that, boys? We block his way of transit, hah-ha-ha!” 😆 GALAHAD: “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” 🤨 BANDIT: “What? Now, don’t try to be a hero, you little gi-irly bo-oy!” 🤪 GALAHAD: “Last chance to clear the way. I haven’t time for thuggery!” 😤 BANDIT: “ERRGH!!” 😡
GALAHAD: “Last chance to clear the way. I haven’t time for thuggery!” 😤 BANDIT: “We’re gonna kik yor arse!” 🤬 Another little fun fact: the camera whiplash happens in the cutscenes as well. The performance of the main cast is all over the place from “good” to “terrible”, but the writing could be so clunky that I can’t imagine a lot of it being delivered well no matter what. ARTHUR: “Hey, I don’t take orders from you! I’m the King!” 😯 GWEN: “The King? Well, I didn’t vote for you.” 🙄 Boo… ARTHUR: “You don’t vote for- (sigh)” 🤨 ARTHUR: “Never mind. Find some cover, and I’ll defend the north wall.” 😒 The good news is that, between the writing, the delivery and the awkward gaps in the cutscenes, they’ve accidentally made King Arthur extremely pathetic. Maybe I was losing my mind, but this got more and more entertaining. The cutscene timing isn’t wrong – it’s just that everyone hates him! SOLDIER: “Be careful, my Lord. He would like nothing better than to destroy you.” ARTHUR: “He’ll have to get in line. I fear it’s a trend.” [music awkwardly continues, accompanied only by sounds of off-screen archers] ARTHUR: “And who are you exactly?” NOT IMPORTANT: “My name is Not Important.” NOT IMPORTANT: “I JUST FUCKING HATE THIS WORLD…” The sound design is… also somewhere down in the lake. But, despite everything, can the fun of the gameplay salvage it? Well… no. Going back to the basics, combat is simple. As we all know, hitting X is your light attack, and Square is your heavy attack. Hit both at the same time, and you’ll use a dragon attack, which drains a lot of your stamina. All characters have an ultimate move like this, but it’s usually just the same kind of AoE. Spellcasters also just use stamina, and don’t have “magik” or something like that, so the combat is kept simple. You also have a block, which you can kind of time with early enemies, and it’s actually a lot better here than on the Play Station. Some enemies can be jittery, and it’s hard to time the attacks (especially when there’s, like, 8 of them), but the PS2’s framerate was all over the place, which made timing this even harder. It won’t matter too long, because “Legion” becomes a lawn-mowing adventure. That said, there are combos, but it’s not mixing your light and heavy attack. Instead, you do it by light-attacking. If you attack and sit a moment, your sword will flash. If you hit X on each flash, you do more damage, and eventually – a girly twirl. Characters have their own version, but it’s always mashing the X button. As you go through the campaign, enemies will drop gold, or you can find some hidden throughout the levels. Between missions, you can spend it at the treasury, for all kinds of items for your party, or just find items out in the world. These can give you all kinds of stat buffs, and there are even some elemental damage types. You know, Holy damage does slightly more to the undead – that kind of deal. There are plenty of character- or class-specific items, and, with all these options, there could be fun build potential in here. Despite everything, there’s really not… The items are spread so thin that you don’t have many options, and it’s obvious what you should be min-maxing inside of that. Plus, it boils down to “how much damage do you deal when you mash X?” The combat feedback already isn’t great – you don’t have a huge variety of enemies. Any benefit that could make this work in another game just isn’t here. Their one ace in a hole is that you have a party of characters, eventually getting up to four. You can command them or directly control them with the shoulder buttons, so they should give you more options. You get new fighting abilities and Arthur’s legendary friends. LANCELOT: “You! I’ve seen you at the tournaments. You fight like a girl!” The first issue is death, because, in some missions, a party member can die, but, as long as Arthur is alive, you can keep going. There are plenty where other party members dying makes you lose too, but it’s the first safety net. There’s no in-mission saving either, so, if you die, you go back, and that can mean losing a lot of time. If you do decide to play “Legion”, you can expect seeing this cutscene a lot… [*growl-chop*] Leaving Arthur unattended is generally a bad idea. Your AI companions are going toe to toe with bacteria when it comes to decision making. They fight slowly and poorly, and you constantly have to summon them over to you. And sometimes, for reasons I don’t understand, in certain missions, companions can’t use the Summon command. Which is a problem when they like to stare at the walls, but, even if they’re booking it to you, they can get stuck on all kinds of things. Or just flat out stop for no reason. Out of the game’s 13 missions, one is completely optional. You can free a bunch of dwarves from Morgan’s slave mines, and this will give you more items, money, experience and the dwarf companion, Anguish. The mine certainly has anguish… I have suspicion this mission was made optional purely by how often everyone gets stuck inside of the hallways. Even Merlin tries to TCL his way out, but he can’t do it. You can get stuck inside crowds of your party members and NPCs, and this can and will happen on many more missions. Jesus Christ, get me out! This is not an adventure! This is herding cats! The chairs of the Round Table need rollercoaster restraints for them! Like, take Percival – you meet him, he’s your holy healer, so he should heal the party. GWEN: “Dear Lord, I see dead people!” Instead, he never does it. Even at full stamina, when everyone, including him, is injured. So you have to manually grab him sometimes and force him to do a heal, which is like a ranged attack, and this is assuming he’s not stuck somewhere. You’re getting them all slowly through the campaign as well, so they won’t be as leveled as you or your first party members. So you have to find areas to grind, to level them up, if you want to play as them to have a chance, but some missions you can’t take them along, or the companions are already chosen. And again, you’re mainly still hitting X, unless you have some magic, and most magic is ranged, and ranged sucks! So it’s not even a murder-hobo gang – you can’t have a murder-hobo gang if half are shuffling around to a different bus stop! [incessant meowing] I mean, who are we kidding? The game’s fucking terrible! 😂 But here’s the thing, right? I can’t even fully blame the NPCs for getting stuck, because I do too! There are several bosses that I’ve lucked out on, because THEY’VE gotten stuck! And you could be saying “Oh, that’s a shame. If it was polished up, it could be fun.” But no! No-o. These missions… Oh my God… To be fair, some are simple, unremarkable “clear out the bad men” ones, but some are so bad that they left an imprint on me even if I couldn’t remember the mission itself. A prime example is on the second level you’re supposed to destroy a bridge before Morgan Le Fay’s army crosses it. But I remembered I should go into this corner and start grinding. The bad men come in waves forever here, so you can rack up some easy levels. I remembered to do this, because I had to restart the entire campaign back in the day, since you only get one save slot. I learned it through a walkthrough, and couldn’t remember a lot of the game, but could remember this. It was because I’d been stuck in a Black Knight mission and couldn’t reliably grind it back then, so I just restarted the whole thing. So I thought I was preparing for that, but a few missions later, you have to defend a village from bandits. You need to travel the map and hunt down the bandit king, but if a bell rings, it means the town is under attack again, and you have to go help. Because, if you don’t, they’ll all die and you lose. [sounds of combat] [bell starts ringing] The bell goes off endlessly, and there are so many parts of the map to get stuck in. I also can’t leave Guinevere in town, because she’ll die. But look, this is the correct way to go, and, for reasons I cannot understand, I can just not get across. Sometimes, it works just fine. Not this time. I’m almost across... [bell starts ringing] You can be fighting the boss, and the village gets attacked, and you lose. Which I thought was the peak of it, but no. I was so quick on this time – I thought I had him. BANDIT KING: “Hey, Mr. Chivalrous Knight. Do you know what a-” [bell starts ringing]
BANDIT KING: “Hey, Mr. Chivalrous Knight. Do you know what a-” Do I skip the cutscene? How do I even respond to that? The game has such a habit of making you do tedious, mundane things, and at the very end there’s some kind of instant lose scenario waiting for you. The Black Knight is not who I ended up stuck on, and is by far not the worst. To start, you have to fight everyone who has ever died, while Percy purifies three churches. This takes a while, and when you do get the honor of fighting the Black Knight, you learn about his Beams of Instant Obliteration. Which means doing the whole thing over again to get back to him. I have heard there is a way you can lead him far through the level to a purified church, and he’ll instantly die there (maybe from an exploit), but I never got him to follow me, so I’d sit far outside the arena, healing everyone up, like it’s some kind of MMO boss fight. He did get stuck at one point, which helped, but it still took ages to whittle him down. [bell starts ringing] What I was originally stuck on was the fourth King of Camelot. Each one gives you a trial, and they’re tedious and annoying, but not too terrible. Like, the first King will heal if you hit him at the wrong time, the second King is always running away from you, spawning archers, and the third makes decoys of himself. The final king is the Greed King, and he spawns in gold all around you. If you touch any of it, he grows more powerful. This is tricky, since he keeps teleporting around it, and eventually, he can just instantly kill you. I cannot stand doing the duel with Lancelot and doing all the trials again, just to get back to this point. I could pull it off now, and there were some new challenges, like the Red Knight. He can kill you instantly at random, but, allegedly, this is a bug. There are plenty of moments similar to this, but none come close to the Green Knight. GREEN KNIGHT: “How convenient! Now I can have the Grail AND dispose of Morgan’s mortal enemy.” He may not sound like much, but this is one of the worst boss fights I’ve played in a video game. So, for context: Galahad has joined the party in the previous mission. Naturally, he’s seeking the Holy Grail, but I’m seeking some levels on him. You can grind him up a bit in that mission, but to make him even would take hours, and I’m not doing that. At first, I tried a new party, figuring Lancelot would take care of Guinevere in the castle, but then I went back to my usual Gwen-Percy gang – now with Galahad. First, you have to travel around the map and rescue several Knights Templar. They could be getting attacked by creatures or have also gone crazy, which is convenient, since there’s a priest who deals with psychos. So that takes a good chunk of time, and then you head to the beach. But you’re attacked by Morgan’s forces and have to hold out against their waves for a while. And you’re also waiting on the ocean waves to recede back, so you can cross. But it won’t cross all the way, and the water is freezing. So you have to time your party crossing the water, and the water hitboxes are not too accurate, and they will take damage, and if you try to do it one at a time, someone will run into the water on their own, or die to soldiers. There’s also a chance they just run into the water and die before this, which… you could keep going if it’s not Galahad, but you need everyone. If someone dies last second, you go back. When you finally pass the beach that makes you cold, only Galahad can enter the building. He will then undertake several solo combat trials against hordes of ghosts or soldiers, or the spirit of evil Galahad, who will try to trick you into dying instantly, and if you don’t do that, you face him in a duel. And all the while, you have to switch back to the main party, which is fighting an onslaught of soldiers who can make it through the cold water just fine. Then, when Galahad finally gets the Grail, the Green Knight shows up. And God sounds like a metalhead… GOD OF METAL: “Galahad. The power of the Grail is now yours.” 🤘😎 Fantastic! But once you tear through the Green Knight’s bodyguards – this is where it goes to hell… Only the Grail can make him vulnerable. The Grail that Galahad is carrying. So Galahad has to grind up on him with the cup of Christ to make him vulnerable to damage, but he teleports constantly. If he’s not in Grail vulnerable mode, the attacks heal him, and the green squares he’s on heal him and damage you. And the more damage he’s taken, the faster he teleports and the faster he regenerates. This fight feels like a genuine insanity test. I thought there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to beat the game, or else I’d have to start over and really grind up Galahad. Because his class is a Cleric, so, even with great items, he doesn’t do a ton of damage. I also tried moving the entire party away, so only Galahad could do damage to him, but his output is so low there’s no chance of doing any meaningful damage to him before he teleports and starts healing it up again. And if you somehow luck out and do, he starts teleporting faster, and you’ll never catch him. Where the Green Knight is running doesn’t always mean he’ll teleport there, and, even if he does, you’re not gonna do much. You need the whole gang to lay into him, but only when Galahad is close, and he’s constantly moving around. And he’s still dishing out damage, so sometimes you need to retreat and heal up your own guys, and he’s already healed by then. And if you die, you go through everything all over again. Good God…! I eventually built Guinevere up so she could have a higher chance of stunning him, but even then, the close calls were all over the place. It took many, many attempts to get the pure dumb luck in teleportation to finally kill him. THIS was miserable. I didn’t know a game could still make me feel this way. He’s spiritually the final boss, and embodies everything this game stands for: lots of tedium, with an occasional death ray. You may wonder why I’m brushing over the story, and I would say… what story? Character-wise, after many adventures, I guess, Arthur learns how to hold a conversation? ARTHUR: “Did anyone ever tell you that you hold a bow like a girl?” Never mind… It’s a collection of missions with barely any context connecting them. “Kill the next person at the next location.” The Round Table sure seems important, but what is it? It gets ONE mention. ARTHUR: “People of Camelot, this castle has been restored! Morgan’s tyranny goes no further!” ARTHUR: “My knights now have a place to call home! We have a base of operations!” ARTHUR: “We now have a Round Table!” Does he know how that sounds? That’s… meaningless. ARTY: “Good people, we have a castle! We own an ottoman!” I don’t care. And the game doesn’t either, because, when you finally do get to Morgan, she has no voice acting. At least, until she does. [Morgan laughs derisively] MORGAN: “Fine then! I’ve opened the way. Come, face your death!” She dies so quickly… After all these years, I didn’t think it would end quite this badly, but that’s how things go sometimes. MORGAN: “NO! ARGH! Master, why?!” MASTER: “YOU HAVE FAILED.” MORGAN: “Give me another chance! I have them now!” MASTER: “YOUR SO-O-OUL IS MI-I-INE.” MORGAN: “NO-O-O!!” [heavy thumping] [stabbing sounds] [Morgan's scream] [rumbling and dramatic music] And finally, our ending. [heroic music] Eh, what…? What’s happening to his arm? Then it sends you to the main menu, there are no credits, your save is wiped, enjoy your day. Hooh. The Extras menu has cutscenes that never appear in the game, likely made for the old strategy version. Which do look great, but there’s no telling how the game itself looked at this point, especially when it took such a big shift. There’s also a trailer for the “Defender” reboot, and I’m realizing that’s why I bought the “Defender” reboot, but… I remember that game being fun. Wasn’t it? They also have an entire sequence telling the story of the sword in the stone – just not the one they used in the game. Or anywhere… I’m okay with this being a mystery. Everyone has that bad game they have fond memories of, and this one is mine, with a very large gap between those two. It can still be fun and satisfying to mash a button and watch someone die, but there are far better games for that. This is a miserable, terrible, broken game, but I will remember it until the day I die. I guess, this is my chance to read about other people who also played it, because, in itself, the only remarkable things are a striking design for a suit of armor and the level of pain it can dish out. Everyone has their own unheard of, not-needing-to-be-dug-up game, and this was mine. It feels like a long brain itch taken care of. Anyhow, there has been a lot of fantasy lately, and I don’t wanna get back into the Warhammer stuff yet, so come back next time for a sci-fi turn. Joshua Crager: “Do [you] find nostalgia to be a blinder toward past favorites?” Well, apparently not… If something I liked as a kid wasn’t actually very good, I’m not gonna get defensive over it. It won’t change how I felt then or cheapen the memory of it, so I can let that go. Bittdye: “What are [your] thoughts on devs being scared of “Baldur’s Gate 3”?” All the ones I know are playing it, and really excited and happy about it, so, maybe I missed something, but I’m not sure where that’s coming from. I found that lots of people who work on video games also tend to like them. Artega: “Any opinions on Tim Cain’s new channel?” Yeah, it’s excellent. Tim Cain’s YouTube channel is great. It’s not always pure game stuff, but he’s great at telling stories, and that’s what he does. Nathan Brinson: “When does the Reclaimer glyph brain poison end?” Sadly, I think that is there to stay. I’ve had people ask about lots of background details in non-Bungie videos where they think they’re seeing it, and I’m not sure most of them are there. I could be wrong though. You never know. PIG: “Squee!!” ARTHUR: “The battle is at hand!”
