Okay, so I posted some glowing impressions earlier in the thread. Don't really want to pour fuel into the fire, but honestly after finishing the game in 25 hours mark, it ended up being... disappointing
- For a game that promotes creating your own solution, there's really no incentive to get creative. In WD2 I felt like a fucking tech haxx0r magician when I infiltrated the Google parody HQ with a jumper car, installed a backdoor and got out without setting my foot in it. This game doesn't really any mission on that level of scale. Mission areas are tiny and repetitive with a handful of guards, drones and turret. I tried playing around with the spiderbot at first, but since the AI is piss easy and the level design is too linear even by Ubisoft's standard, I just dumped it, put cloak on my spy and played like a bog standard stealth game.
- Another reason for this is there's no reason to play any character that is not a spy, hitman, soldier, guard or drone expert. A hobo with a Vector .45 is hilarious, but when it comes to practical play, I'd prefer my spy because she has quicker takedown animation and AoE gun jam. I found a lot of fun archetypes, like the protestor with speaker who can attracts NPCs to attack a target, but they remain just that, a gimmick. I told my friend about characters like that, we had a chuckle, I never used them again. Why? Because in no circumstance I feel like their niche skillset is needed. Enemies don't give me a lot of challenges to think outisde of the box, mission design is straightforward and banal I can just play like how I did in WD1. If the missions are too boring and I'd prefer using effective characters to get through them quickly, that speaks more about my lack of creativity, or the game itself?
- Your characters DON'T GROW, which is my biggest issue regarding the game. In nuXCOM your characters all go through a zero to hero journey, start out as rookies, then through battles, with each lucky shots, each wounds, each exit in time, they forged their own story. In Legion, my characters stay the same throughout the game, your accountant whose only trait is getting more money from hacking ATM is still that accountant by the end of the game, so I never felt anything about her importance to the group's journey. She died in a random ass carjack mission, I felt nothing, I picked an Albion guard, finished the mission, moved on. It's insane because I really really hate how Ubisoft does unnecessary progression in their recent games, but in this one particular game where it makes sense to do so, they didn't. Imagine a behaviour-trait system, you drive well, don't hit pedestrians, escape police sucessfully and your dude becomes a getaway driver with new driving skills or car hacks. Imagine your gal parkour a lot so they run faster, they mantle over objects faster and can move from cover to cover with one button. Imagine if your 80 years old lady can't shoot gun accurately because she's old and her hands shake, but you take her to combat a lot, she gets good at it and now she can snipe fuckers with a deagle. With how the system works atm, I never felt like I was looking for people, I was looking for weapons, and that's awfully limiting in a game with such diverse archetypes.
- Another rant on mission design, it's insane how in a game that's all about building a team, there's not a single mission where you assign people in different roles to take on an infiltration. You can't send a mole Albion guard so they would open locked gates for you instead of looking for the gate code by yourself, you can't send a gunner waiting outside and ready to fire if you escape with enemies chasing you, you can't send the protestor to create attention at the main gate and sneak in when guards are distracted. Fucking. Missed. Opportunity.
- Game has 5 villains. The human trafficker lady's story lasts 3 missions. One of the bossfights is one where you crouch walk around an area, solve a hacknet link puzzle 3 times to expose the boss' weakpoints and shoot them (wow very in-line with the hacker theme guys). One storyline ends with you deciding between two choices with literally zero consequence aside from bickering from a side character (who immediately act like normal after 2 or 3 dialogue lines). One villain literally came out of nowhere, no foreshadow, vague intention. The last one is pure forgettable. I like Bagley, he feels like a Stephen Merchant mimic at times but he has charm, but little guy can't carry the entire game.
- Cryptocurrency can be gained by a lot of methods, yet for some reasons the only thing you can spend it on is clothing?
- The technical side is incredibly dodgy too. Female character spawned in too quickly, her voice module couldn't catch up so the first line she said sounds like a man. I also have a 60 years old man with a teenager voice, a middle aged woman that says "fuck yeah", a police officer who said "wink wink" out loud. And you guys probably know how ugly the NPCs are, faces also repeat a lot.
I lowkey adore Watch Dogs 2, yes I liked the characters, the tone, the atmosphere, the unsubtle disses against corporations and consumerism, the ironic "how do you do fellow kids" attitude was fun to follow, San Fran is magnificently crafted, all those hacking functions and systemic gameplay were surprisingly engaging, and the whole over the top HACK THE WORLD thing was incredibly executed. WD Legion is experimental and I still believe it has soul, unfortunately that soul is heavily fragmented and unfocused. Inconsequential mayhem remains shallow, permadeath can't change that.
