The evil wizard Garm has used the power of Runestones to unleash a great evil power named Skorn, who breaks free of Garms control and kills him. Skorn then begins to terrorize the eight realms and scatters the runestones so they can't be used against him.
The history of the arcade game Gauntlet has culminated up to this beautifully rendered game. The game is fairly easy to learn, with three different control styles so as to make it as uncomplicated as possible. In Gauntlet, you have your choice of 8 different characters, each with their strengths and weaknesses, and there are another 8 waiting to be unlocked. You have to throw weapons at enemies to kill them, and thats without powerups.
Powerups include anti death halos. Death can steal health and experience from you if it gets near you, with the halo, the opposite happens, you either gain health or an experience level. Also you can get the Hand of Death, which kills enemies you touch instantly for a short time. You can also charge your projectiles with electricity, fire, acid and other magic. You can find treasure to buy items or you can find them in the levels. Also a certain number of a certain type of crystal will open the doorway to another realm.
This game would be a dream come true for players of Dungeons and Dragons type games or earlier Gauntlet games. I give the game an 8.0 and recommend anyone with a Cube at least try the game. I myself never played any previous Gauntlets and I don't enjoy this type of genre typically, however this game was an exception, I enjoyed it very much.
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy is a greatly expanded version of Gauntlet: Legends. Both games were originally arcade games. Legends was first on PSX (badly). Then there were good ports on N64 and finally Dreamcast. Dark Legacy went from the arcade to the PS2, followed by the GC and last Xbox. I've played Legends on arcade and N64 and Dark Legacy for GC, so I'll be talking about N64 Legends and GC Dark Legacy here.
Dark Legacy is great, and improved over Legends in most ways... the only problem is the bugginess and missing features.
-Legends displayed the number of seconds left for items, so you could see precisely how much time they had left. Dark Legacy for GC has no indicator of the amount of time items have left.
-In Legends, items last how long they last, no matter what you're fighting. In Dark Legacy, items get used up much faster while fighting bosses.
-Legends did not have a bug that makes the items dissapear when you load a game until you activate and then deactivate each item in your inventory. Dark Legacy for GC does.
-Legends never freezes when a message appears on screen (when it has text and says 'hit B'. Dark Legacy sometimes crashes on message boxes.
-Dark Legacy supports only memory card 1, and limits you to only eight save files on that card. Legends on N64 let you save to any spot on any card in any controller, and each character is a seperate file so you can have up to 16 (that being the max number of files on an N64 memcard) per card, and four cards. (though GL was perhaps TOO nice, as it let you save onto any slot on any card, including over other game's savefiles, and didn't remember the last file you loaded, so you had to select it from the too-small-font list... just aksing for trouble there... DL on GC in contrast auto-remembers which slot you loaded from and there are just eight, so it's must harder to accidentally erase a Gauntlet save file and impossible to erase saves from other games this time.)
-Legends allows you to rename your character at any time. In Dark Legacy, once you choose a name (during character creation) it is permanant -- there is no way to change that name again.
-In Legends, it saved how many coins you had for the unlockable characters. Bonus rooms were alternate level exits -- stand on them, do the bonus room, see how many coins you get, and you're done. Your coin total is saved and viewable in the interface that you control with the C-stick. In Dark Legacy, once you finish them you go back to the main level you were in, and your coin total is not saved -- it's all or nothing! Fail to get every coin in the time limit and it's back you go, and you've got to restart the level to be able to try again (from scratch).
-Legends N64 let you see your exact stats, including your precise amount of experience, stats (strength, etc), how many coins you had for bonus characters, items (compass, special boss items, etc), etc. in a user-controllable interface on the bottom of the screen you controlled with the C buttons. In Dark Legacy you can now never see your precise experience amount, just your level, and bonus coins aren't saved. You cannot look at your character stats or special items during a level, only at the end of one or from Sumner's tower (the lobby where you warp to the levels from). The interface now only is for your inventory items. There has been one improvement though -- in Legends items start on, and you need to hit R to disable them after getting one. Dark Legacy defaults them to off, nicely.
The improvements, though, make the issues worth it... Legends just had 27 levels, while Dark Legacy has around 48 or 50 (though all but one of the levels from Legends return). The new levels are just as good as the old one and help flesh out the game and make a great game even better -- they are the reason that the bugs mentioned above are worth tolerating. Dark Legacy also has twice as many characters to choose from, though the eight new ones (four normal, 4 upgraded) are not really new, being just variations on the four basic templates. Still nice though, and this time it's easier to make new characters because each player file includes all characters -- as seperate characters with their own unique levels and stats and unlocking and everything. In Legends, each file just had one level, so while you could switch you were just switching shape/stats and your level was always the same (to start a new game with one of the unlockable characters you had to load the file that has the character unlocked (because if you just choose New Game from the menu without loading the game which has unlocked the characters first they will display as not available), choose 'New Game', choose the unlocked form, name yourself, and then save the new character in a new file... confusing... it certainly confused me for quite a while. In DL you just choose that character from the menu you get once you choose your player file. So easy!). DL's method means that each player file is in effect 17 files (9 unlockable)... which helps some with the problem of only being able to have eight characters per card -- as long as you don't mind each 17 characters having to share one name, each card can have over a hundred characters on it. Oh, and the graphics are better... not exactly pushing the GC, perhaps, but good enough and noticably improved over the N64 game if you go back and play it.
Oh yeah, I finally got around to beating Dark Legacy last week... said 25 hours. Stupid Skorne in the underworld had me stuck for quite a while... Garm was really easy, though, unfortunately. My character is just level 93, and I didn't manage to unlock the Unicorn or Sumner (compared to Legends, where I brought two characters up to level 99 and unlocked all five secret characters that game had)... oh well... but great fun. Hack-and-slash combat in its simplest form! All the little touches are awesome too, like the area-specific music (in taverns in the first level, or the basketball court area in one of the battlefield levels, etc), the puzzles, the ... everything... it's just so much fun to play! Certainly one of the great multiplayer games and only marginally worse with one person.
I could write quite a bit more about these games, really, but is anyone else interested?
Edit: Gah... wrote all that and forgot one of the most important differences... the item sales system! In Legends, it works as you would expect. After a mission, or at any time in the tower, you can go to the store. There you can buy or sell any item you have (in specific increments... like 40 seconds of rapidfire, etc), in addition to buying stat upgrades and health. Dark Legacy has the store, still after missions or any time in the tower, it has the buying health and stat upgrades... it has the buying, done the same (with largely the same items)... it just doesn't have the selling seystem done right. I'm not sure if it's broken or if it's meant to be incomprehensibly weird, but the item system just doesn't work right in DK... some items eventually dissapear from you inventory whether or not you use them (important stuff like the Skorne weapons and the halo will stay, though) -- understandable in PS2 Dark Legacy where you cannot disable items once you get them (their timers just start counting down and evetually run out and the items are lost), but not in GC DL where you can disable and keep items! This isn't the main problem, though. The main issue is that not all items are sellable. Which ones are seems chosen at random, and is comparitively few compared to all the ones you can't sell. This is really, really annoying, to say the least... item selling was a good source of money in Legends and it's mostly gone now because of the broeken item selling system. Oh, you do get enough gold to survive, but it's kind of irritating... just another sign that this version of the game just wasn't as polished as Legends. (with the exception of Legend's it's-too-easy-to-accidentally-save-over-the-wrong-file problem which DL fixed)
Anyway, I'd probably give it a 9 just because of how much fun Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy is to play. :) I remember thinking that Legends deserved something between an 8.7 and 9.2, some years back, but I don't think DL can be given a 9.2 with all the bugs... sure,. you get used to them and most aren't too bad, and the gameplay is great and there is a lot more content than Legends (three all-new worlds and two others that are largely new but each have a couple of levels from the removed Air Legends world (three of the four Legends Air levels and its boss are back, but one level, a cool airship level I believe, is removed... oh well, it's just one stage...).), so it deserves a good score from anyone who enjoys Gauntlet Legends gameplay like I do.
Why do I write these when no one cares enough to reply to them... :(