Atlus brought The Legend of Legacy, a RPG developed by former SaGa staff, to E3. Reminiscent of SaGa Frontier, players choose one of seven characters to be the protagonist and each adventurer has a different reason for traveling to the holy land of Avalon. I picked Filmia, the Frog Prince, as my lead character since The Legend of Legacy’s scenario writer was also the scenario writer for Chrono Trigger.
The E3 demo automatically partnered Filma with two other potential protagonists, Meurs and Bianca. With a party set, I started exploring Avalon. The top screen shows the world and The Legend of Legacy has a neat where trees and houses sprout from the ground when you walk towards them. It’s kind of like exploring a pop up book packed with random encounters. Fitting with the SaGa connection, The Legend of Legacy has a high encounter rate and an interesting combat system.
Filma bravely stood in the front row while the other two characters were in the rear. You can do an all out attack and have all three heroes strike, but that will probably get your team wiped out. Your party members only have a little HP and two or three hits can knock a character out. While you fully recover HP at the end of the round, a better strategy is to have Filma defend and the other two characters select their weapon to fight. When Filma defends he takes less damage plus he covers the two fighters in the rear row. The "frog shield" strategy is just one battle plan. The Legend of Legacy lets players create and name battle formations so you can have all three characters in the back or a V with two heroes in front.
Another throwback to SaGa is characters learn techniques in The Legend of Legacy by simply using their weapons. During the demo, one character learned a skill in a critical moment during a boss battle. This allowed me to turn the tables on the enemy after I used up all of my healing items to keep Filma alive. While this was probably scripted for the demo, learning moves on the fly was one of the aspects that made SaGa memorable. Perhaps, this will be a highlight in The Legend of Legacy too.
Atlus said they plan on rebalancing the game and details about the changes will be announced later on. The Legend of Legacy is scheduled to come out this fall in North America.
