Legasista is a new 2D dungeon crawler by NIS America, which will have you playing for hours. At first look it appears to be more like an RPG, so I was a little turned off. However, I’m glad I gave it a go because at heart it’s a dungeon crawler.
The story takes place in a time where science has been forgotten, and is now seen as magic and curses. The main character Alto sets off on a quest to find an ancient relic that lies in the Ivy tower. It is said that this ancient relic or weapon is the one thing that will be able to turn his sister, Mari, from a cursed crystal back onto a human. You find out that this ancient weapon is actually an android named Melize. The problem is that shortly after you find her she loses all her memories/info. So now you must travel through the dungeons and find data files that will hopefully remind Melize as to how to turn back Alto’s sister.
As with most dungeon crawlers, players navigate through maze like dungeons full of monsters, traps, switches, and treasures. Legasista is full of all kinds of monsters; so many that once you find the right data file, Melize will have access to a monster encyclopedia. Also each monster will have different weaknesses weather it be to a certain class of attack (physical or magic) or just a certain direction. This can make things a challenge, since say a monster is only weak against fire magic and your party is made of a physical attacker and ice mage.
In the beginning Alto is the only playable character. However, as the storyline progresses in a story book style, Alto meets new characters which will be able to be part of your team. I would use the word team a little loosely though. Typically when I think of teams I think of grouping up. In this game, though, a team is a just which three characters a player can switch between. You’re only ever able to use and control one character at a time. The one exception to this is that whichever character is active can use other characters magic abilities.
Each character has a class, but in Legasista they are called jobs. You can be an Explorer, Warrior Pyro, Cryo Theif, or War Mage. Then there are also frames, the way they work is that each one will have a different set of weapon and equipments slots with varying amounts of mana. Some frames are designed for defense or support, while others are just a good balance. Once a character has reached level 20 in a given job, you can the switch to a new one.
Character frames are important, but the equipment put into the frame is equally so. Each piece will have a certain amount of durability as well as certain amount of required mana to use it. Once a piece of equipment loses all its durability, it is broken and can no longer be used until you exit and all HP and equipment will be resorted. When in dungeons the damage taken will either affect HP or equipment depending on how the characters frame is set up.
Better equipment will have what are called titles, which are added stats such as added defense or attack. Titles are broken down into two parts: main-titles and sub-titles. The main-title is an added affect that applies to the sub-titles. So for example a main-tile could be mana use -1, so all sub-titles will use one less mana than what is listed. All the sub-titles are applied to the equipment. You can even save sub-titles before you discard an item to put it on a better piece of gear later. Since there are so many different titles and so much equipment that drops, saving and move titles was just a bit much for me.
If you start getting a little bored with the short storyline dungeons, you could try a Ran-geon. These are 100 floor dungeons that are underneath the Ivy Tower. Not all 100 floors need to be completed before exiting; all you have to do is find an exit which random generates every couple of floors. However the challenge is that depending on what type of gate you go through to get to the next floor, you might end up in a easy floor with level 5 enemies or a on a floor with enemies that will kill you just by breathing on you. Another feature of the game is that you can create your own characters from scratch or copy a pre-made look. Even if you copy a look you can change the look down to the pixel. I’m probably missing something, but there is just so much to do in this game.
With all that you’re able to do in Legasista you won’t find yourself getting bored; that’s for sure. Every dungeon is different so you really don’t know which way to go or what is around the corner. If you’re a fan of anime you might even find yourself getting into the story a little; as this is how the story or cut scenes are presented. If you’re a fan of RPGs and/or 2D dungeons crawlers definitely check out this game.
