Action-RPG, PS3, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom @ Gamer411

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I played Untold Legends on the PSP and thought it was a decent game. The game was monotonous but impressive to look at. The PS3 incarnation is a much more polished effort with beautiful graphics, good sound, simple yet engaging game play and a long adventure. I was foolish enough to listen to the critics, who all said that the game wasn't great, but after a recent play-through I'm left mostly impressed.

The gameplay is pure hack-n-slash. Fortunately there are combo moves which make things more exciting, and halfway into the game, my brother notified me that some of the moves have different effects. For example, if you pull off a combo it'll give you a bit of health back or stun an enemy. While this was quite fun to take advantage of, it also made the game much easier as you could easily just kill and regain health at the same time.

Controls were quite easy, albeit the jumping was a bit lame, but fortunately you don't need to jump that often. There were a few points where the camera got confused, but it only happened a handful of times throughout the game.

One of the more exciting parts of the game was getting good equipment drops from the monsters. Various armour increases your stats and sometimes you'll luck out and get a really good stat-boosting piece of armor. A nice touch is that you immediately see all of the armour when you put it on. You have a choice of four difficulty settings. Presumably the harder it gets the better the drops get.

You also have magic spells you can use. Some of them are quite helpful in dealing with large mobs of enemies, while others are quite pointless. One of my biggest disappointments with the game was the level cap -- 45. There are a few spots in the game where the enemies will keep coming endlessly (ie, until you destroy the monster tower which is spawning them), allowing you to max your level about 3/4 of the way through the game. It would've been nice if they just let you keep levelling.

My other complaint is that the game is mostly a breeze except for 2-3 bosses. The last boss in particular is quite difficult. This is to be expected in any game, but the rest of Untold Legends is mostly a dawdle that it just feels like a huge imbalance. And the ending/reward is immensely weak. It would've been a nice touch if they'd let you go through the game with your maxed out player on a harder difficulty setting. No such luck.

Overall, Untold Legends was a good romp. Beautiful graphics and fun gameplay are plenty. It's not a very deep or engaging game, but it kept me coming back, wanting to max out my player, get better gear and see what other monsters were around the corner.

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