Black Legend Reviews
Black Legend is a turn-based role-playing game, with good ideas regarding combat and a very distinctive visual appearance. However, certain elements cloud its virtues. Finally, this is a game only for fans of turn-based RPGs.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Black Legend is a tactical RPG with a good sinister and historical setting. It is fun, but overly complex. If you overcome the initial difficulty barrier, you will be rewarded with a rich, immersive strategic game with lots of possibilities for experimentation.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
What’s good about Black Legend is very good. The gloomy atmosphere and the novel turn-based combat based on 17th century medicine are well designed and smartly implemented. Everything else about this game is either bland, rough around the edges or straight up poor. Diehard fans of turn based strategy games that can overlook the issues will still get something from Black Legend. For everyone else, there are better alternatives.
It’s dark, it’s foggy and there is blood on the streets. Welcome to Black Legend on the Nintendo Switch, a tactical turn-based combat title with a few twists on the usual tropes of the genre. Think of it like ‘ye olde X-Com with an emo makeover.’ A strange, madness-inducing fog has crept over the city of Grant and it is up to you and a team of capable mercenaries to aid the struggling resistance and eliminate the devastating fog.
Even though Black Legend uses a lot of common features, they are blended in an original way. With the addition of alchemy, battling never gets boring, even when it takes hours of gameplay to be proficient in it.
A great foundation soured by unbalanced classes, uninteresting story and an extremely linear exploration. Black Legend could’ve a future if updated and polished further, but I don’t see that happening.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Black Legend’s combat is solid if unspectacular, and the setting is unique and atmospheric. The character progression is more interesting than the characters themselves, and the story fails to match the intrigue created by the overall visual style due to average writing. Across the board, Black Legend is a decent game with some good ideas but technical issues hold it back.
Black Legend is a game with interesting ambitions. The gameplay is well structured in the fights, the dark atmosphere of the lost city in a mad alchemy of madness and violence is well executed in some respects (such as the voice acting and one of the side quests) and also some of the themes raised by the discovery of the origins of the fog are of good depth. Unfortunately, the many technical shortcomings don’t allow you to enjoy the game without being distracted by the aforementioned discordant notes but, if you are a fan of tactical RPGs, give it a try. Grant's misty streets could be worth the ticket price, especially in sight of patch improvements.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Despite the heavy influence of Belgian folklore and an interesting tactical battle system Black Legend couldn’t convince me. A disappointing visual world, annoying bugs, and frustrating explanation of game mechanics result in a game that exists but won’t be recommended by anyone. Honestly a big missed opportunity for something much better.
Belgian studio Warcave's approach is nothing less than an interesting mix between an RPG of turn-based tactical combat and a game of exploration in the small open world of a city in Modern Age Europe.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Tactical strategy titles have begun to show up more often overall on Switch since launch but the consistency of quality in the genre has been spotty...
Black Legend introduces some neat concepts, but lacks the depth needed to create an engaging experience.
Black Legend is a very pleasant surprise for me. Combining real historical elements of the 17th century with alchemy and mythical creatures from folklore into a turn-based strategy game, where you can also combine different job classes with lots of weapons and equipment, is really successful.
Review in Czech | Read full review
Black Legend features some outstanding gameplay elements that can make its battles extremely rewarding. On the other hand, its underwhelming and monotonous game world combines with oodles of technical issues to hold it back from greatness.
While Black Legend may not be the prettiest game to look at and there are still quite a few bugs around, the sinister atmosphere, local folklore and deep tactical gameplay made up for a lot. If you’re a fan of turn-based RPGs, you’ll probably have a great time.
The story does little to appeal, although the setting has some potential. The presentation is bad. The city is filled with tropes and no surprises. The development team has a good grasp on mechanics and that will keep die-hard fans of the genre playing for a while. But to reach a wider audience they need to improve all other areas of a future release because Black Legend seems impossible to redeem.
Black Legend is not completely without merit, but it's a game that had better ideas than execution. The big, unique gameplay mechanic that dominates its combat system is also responsible for making each battle far too long, and while the game's atmosphere is excellent, the art direction is uninteresting and there isn't nearly enough of a narrative to actually make something of the setting. There are a lot of excellent tactics games being produced these days, and I fear that the developers of Black Legend won't even be able to use patches to bring it up to the standard of the least of their competitors. The flaws are simply too ingrained into the core experience.
Despite having a distinct setting and good ideas for its combat, Black Legend fails in putting its elements in the right place to deliver a worthy experience, which makes it just another forgettable game.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Black Legend isn't perfect, but it brings some really solid pieces to the game as a whole. The town is interesting and is designed well, the class system allows for a good amount of freedom of player choice, and the alchemy system is pretty novel. The writing (or lack thereof) is a stumbling block, along with the difficult healing system… but the atmosphere really draws you in and leaves you wanting more of Grant and its mysteries.
Black Legend might not be an unmissable game, but it's still one that fans of strategy RPGs should definitely have on their radar.