Preview: Legend: Hand of God

Posted at: Thursday 7th August 2008 by Phil Hartup

Phil Hartup gets his clicking fingers ready to kill demons - Legend: Hand of God might not be Diablo 3, but it's still good fun.

Since Diablo 2 there hasn’t really been a truly great hack-and-slash RPG. We’ve certainly seen some good titles, but much of the creative energy that used to go towards single player or small group killing rampages now seems to be directed instead towards MMORPGs such as Age of Conan, and of course, World of Warcraft.

For some however, the constant ninja looting, waiting for group invitations and having to continually see your character class nerfed is enough to revive interest in the smaller-scale hack-and-slash RPG. This leads us on nicely to Legend: Hand of God, a single player hack-and-slash adventure game that will stir up plenty of nostalgia in older gamers. In fact, we found from the hours we've put in playing for this preview that in many ways Legend is actually more of a successor to the ancient Faery Tale Adventure on the Amiga rather than something as comparatively sophisticated and modern as Diablo.

A SINGLE GUARD

The backstory in Legend: Hand of God looks set to be classic RPG fare. The game begins with the hero, a member of an order of monks, up on a mountain deep in meditation. While he’s away a ninja cheekily sneaks into the monastery and then puts out a sacred fire that prevents invasion from an army of demons.

This is the game’s opening cutscene, where it’s revealed that this (apparently vital) fire is shown as being guarded by a single person only. It’s fairly obvious what comes next. Once the fire’s put out, demons arrive, enter the monastery and kill everyone. It ends when your character returns from the mountain to meet the sole survivor of the attack, where you declare your sworn intent to wreak vengeance on your enemies (although shouldn’t the vengeance be directed at whoever decided to only hire a single guard?)

This plot couldn’t be any less generic. Then again, how bad is that really? This game makes no pretences. It’s about punching goblins in the face and you don't need a plot to explain why that's going to be fun.

Don’t expect to be held up by any drawn out character customisation process either. You pick a pair of classes from a pool drawn from the typical RPG skill sets. Unusually, there’s no option to adjust your character’s avatar. If you dream of creating an out-of-proportion warrior wench crammed into an iron bikini, you’re out of luck. As with the lack of a noteworthy plot, we didn’t find this omission detracted from the game in any way. In the social environments of MMORPGs, your graphical avatar is more important than in a single player adventure.