I just beat Legion.........what a flaming pile, thru & thru!

[ParanoiaDragon]

First, I will clarify, I used save states AND slow mo wherever it was needed.  With that said, there really is nothing appealing about the game, it is deffinitly one of the crappiest shooters I've ever played, EVER!  I really don't know what was going thru the minds of the people at Reno, but, I seriously would be ashamed to have my name in the credits at the end.  And it's not that the graphics are terrible, cuz I've seen worse.  There's some decent tile & sprite work, & frankly, we could take those tile's n' sprites & make a REAL game!  Sheesh, what a heaping flaming pile!  I guess now I should beat Rock On!


Edit-Now that I think about it, Reno was also responsible for Golden Axe!  So I guess it's no surprise of how terrible Legion is

[Keranu]

This game had to have been rushed to get out the door, there is no other way to explain the terrible programming and bugs in it. From looking at the graphics, I think they were trying to make a decent shooter, but for whatever reason they had to hurry it up too soon.

[runinruder]

I like it.  I'll just repost what I said about it in another topic:

I know that many people have complained about its difficulty, but it can't be that bad if I've completed it in one day (and I'm not a very good shooter player).  Yes, it's discouraging at first when you realize that your relentless enemies are extremely fast and fire extremely fast bullets.  But I think the key is surviving the early stretch until you power up a bit.  Grabbing and powering up the spread shot and learning the layouts of the first two stages (and how to defeat their respective bosses) will lead to success.  With a little bit of practice, you can reach the third stage with all of your lives and a high-powered gun that covers an ENORMOUS amount of space with its shots.  Your ship isn't helpless anymore, and you start obtaining shields to boot.  Suddenly, the enemy armada doesn't seem so tough. 

It does take some practice, and memorization, and strategizing.  But it's certainly not an impossible mission, and the more you learn and the better you get, the more enjoyable the experience is.  And the "getting better" process obviously shouldn't take very long.  Before long, you'll have your once-hapless little ship soaring to all the right spots, reacting quickly to its speedy adversaries, and wreaking havoc with screen-spanning weaponry.  I'll admit that the very last level is crazy and I haven't come up with a good strategy for it yet, but I made it there with so many lives in tow that I was able to smash my way through and win.   

The graphics aren't very good, and the music is chip fodder.  I like most of the tunes, though, and can live without fancy visuals in a space shooter if the action occupies my attention, which it does in this game. 

...

So, yeah, it seemed really rough at first but I enjoyed the challenge and found that the experience became much more enjoyable as I worked on it and improved (which, again, didn't take long).  I recommend to anyone who's going to play it that you try putting in a little practice instead of running for save states and slow motion when things seem difficult.  You might find it to be a rewarding experience, as I did. 

[GUTS]

Yeah I totally suck and I could make it to level 4 the first day I had it.  The game is just weird enough to keep you playing; from the totally insane amount of times you die the first time you play to the awesome narration, the game at least has some unique charm to set it apart from all the generic space shooters.

[Keranu]

Whenever I dust off the game and play it, I usually play until level four also. Crazy game.

[Tatsujin]

awesome paranoia

I really don't know what was going thru the minds of the people at Reno, but, I seriously would be ashamed to have my name in the credits at the end.

i'm just wondering what you would say after playing golden axe?

[ParanoiaDragon]

Golden Axe is terrible!  The music is decent, I'll give it that, but, the graphics, animation, ugh.  It's a mess!

[Tatsujin]

it seems just to me, or did reno much better works on other systems e.g mega drive (gaiares is a really nice shmup copared to the legion mess)? what are the good ones for the PCE?

[Keranu]

Didn't Reno do Riot Zone / Crest of the Wolf and Future Boy Conan as well? Those games were decent.

[Tatsujin]

Just confirmed it on PCECP:

RENO: Legion

RENO/SEGA: Golden Axe

RENO Renovation: Death Bringer - The Knight Of Darkness, Dekoboko Densetsu Hashiru Wagamanma, Exile, Final Zone II 

Renovation Games: Jantei Monogatari, High Grenadier


Riot Zone/Crest of Wolf was made by Hudson/Westone.


but seems that legion and golden axe builds the top of their mess. not that the other games are excellent, but far away from those two.

[Michael Helgeson]

Reno and Renovation are part of the same company,Telenet. They used to have a top programming group,Wolfteam. The Reno side also handled the Valis 1 Duo remake. What you'll have to keep in mind with a company like Telenet is they would toss a certain budget towards diff projects,some expecting to sell well,some expecting to just fill a shelf and sell a average amount and gain a small profit. Some of the X68000 and Sega Cd versions of their games,like Sol-Deace was just awesome. I think the complete list of Telenet is:
Wolf Team,Commseed, Laser Soft,  Renovation Products, Reno, Telenet Jr, Riot, and Namco Tales Studio.
Some of these divisions no longer exist in Telenet,some still do in one form or another.

[Keranu]

Very interesting info, Mike. I haven't heard of Telenet Jr. or Namco Tales Studio before.

[ParanoiaDragon]

My Valis 1 says Riot on it, not Reno

[Michael Helgeson]

My Valis 1 says Riot on it, not Reno

Oops,yea I was wrong,too many divisions with the letter R. Then again,they are all the same company

[Michael Helgeson]

Very interesting info, Mike. I haven't heard of Telenet Jr. or Namco Tales Studio before.

Well the Tales division comes from the fact that Telenet leftover Wolfteam members makes the Tales of Phantasia games for Namco. Alot of people don't know this. Im thinking Namco now owns this division completely,but I could be wrong.
Also the Renovation side was responsible for distributing here and Japan. They also handled localizing and translating for the stuff released in the USA. They typically did not handle programming. Basically they were the publisher side of the company,nothing more.

The manner in which Telenet used all these divisions was pretty convoluted. Even back in the early 90ies I just couldn't keep up with them. Most real gamers back when I was  a teen just put it like this: All the divisions of Telenet just make up the company itself and there wasnt much point in trying to figure which division was doing what,esp on the USA titles released here,because the ones not programed by Wolfteam tended to just carry the Telenet or Renovation name and not the small divisions names.

It would have been insane to have had on a Genesis cart Telenet,Renovation,and Riot or Reno all on the back of the case. That was more information then what people wanted or needed usually in the USA. In a backwards way of doing things the exception seemed to be for the titles Working Designs reprogramed and published because Working Designs seemed to early on take credit in a manner of speaking for any of the Telenet games they released here. On those titles I think you only saw Telenets name itself in small text typically on the disc and title screen. Typically a person,even average gamer at the most only cared who the publisher and game company was,not much more,and not many cared for the special in-house groups anyway.

The only reason Wolfteam got its name at the beginning of a game or on packaging was because the veteran members of Wolfteam wanted it that way. For a couple of years they they had split from Telenet and enjoyed some independence on its own. I think they got pulled back in around 1990. They were alot more pushy then most people and had alot of pull because Wolfteam was pushing out the best titles for Telenet. Telenet was passively  eager to please them and put up with it because about all the Wolfteam games got rave reviews both in Japan and in the USA. I'm sure anyone who did read EGM or Die Hard Gamefan knew how the reviewers worshipped Wolfteam.

I know that Masaaki Uno the head director and producer for Wolfteam,along with the original founder Masahiro Akishino and most of the programers and staff that worked on the Megadrive/Genesis titles left in 1993 after Telenet decided to restructure and merge everything back into one name/division/company. This included Reno,Riot,the remaining members of Wolfteam Lasersoft who stayed,and whoever else. ( Lasersoft and Wolfteam had been merged in 1991 to help Wolfteam make the transition into cd games) Telenet became whole again for a long while at least with no more factions/divisions.