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Sadly, major flaws mar an otherwise exceptional game.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 64 / 82
Date: September 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This was indeed a saddening experience. The first X-Men Legends was pretty flawed, but this one was really a blast to play for the most part. I was smelling a five-star rating until the last third of the game, when serious problems crop up to make this game sometimes frustrating, sometimes infuriating...and at this point, unplayable (more to follow).

Pros:
- Most of my criticisms of the previous games have been acknowledged. Character abilities are much more diverse, so they feel much more like unique personalities now. And who wouldn't like playing with Magneto, Toad, or Juggernaut?
- Character training has been improved. In the previous game, the biggest problem was that you get so few ability points that you don't get to play around with some of the less useful, more exotic character skills. Here, characters can be customized to an impressive extent.
- Bishop was always one of my favourite X-Men, not to mention one of the few genuinely black characters (instead of a white character with brown skin, like Storm) in the comics. Great to see him in this game.
- The new "Blink Portal" feature allows you to call up a save point in most places every five minutes. This is an excellent balance between not letting the player save for 20 minutes straight (a major problem in X-Men Legends) and so many saves that the challenge goes right out the window.
- The fighting system has been tweaked, all for the better. Enemies are smarter, and sometimes it's frustrating to fight them, but in this game, it's a good kind of frustrating -- challenging instead of annoying. Whereas I couldn't wait to get the fights over with in X-Men Legends, here they flow seamlessly into the rhythm of the puzzle-solving, exploration, character training, and story.
- Maps are much, much clearer. The Automap feature is absolutely indispensable. And probably in response to accusations that X-Men Legends was too short, they have increased the maps drastically in size. But thanks to the new save system, it's not a laborious bore to explore the world.
- Item collection is more accessible this time around. It's much easier to discover things as you run/fly around the map.

Cons:
- This is the biggest one. I beat the game once and was delighted to see an option I clamored for in the first X-Men: The ability to replay the game using the characters you've been using, retaining your hard-earned abilities and items. But as I played on after beating Apocalypse, the game acquired this incredible tendency to crash. I'm not talking every hour -- I'm talking about loading a game, walking two paces to get to Zealot, and having the game freeze up the minute I defeat him. The game crashed at least 20 times (not an exaggeration) in one morning. Basically, it's unplayable. I don't care what the cause is or what game this happens to; it's unacceptable.
- Some of the Danger Room missions are well nigh undoable. In one Defend mission, you're supposed to protect Havok from harm. He's standing on the other side of the screen and it takes about five seconds to get to him. For the first dozen times I tried this course, Havok died within three seconds of starting the mission, before I even had time to switch characters to activate a healing ability. Did they actually test this?
- They actually put too many items into the game. Variety and flavour are good, but at a certain point, it became too much of a strain to try to distribute equipment over and over.
- Lots of the voice work and cinematics are poorly paced. I don't need eight seconds of the camera panning to the electric trap I just disarmed, thank you very much. They should have allowed us to skip some of these with the Start button.

Overall, I had a very good time playing this game. So it was very frustrating to see that the massive crashing problem suddenly emerge, rendering the game pretty much unplayable for me. X-Men Legends had the same kind of crashes, just not as frequently, and none of my other games has this problem, using this exact same console with the same memory cards, which leads me to believe there's something wrong with the way the game was programmed. Activision really needs to solve this, because no one will ever have the patience to play a game that crashes every three minutes. What a dismaying development to what is otherwise a very fun, well-balanced game.

An enjoyable and solid rpg/adventure

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 29 / 29
Date: October 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

X-men legends is a pleasing and well made game based very faithfully on the comics. You have 4 team members of whom you control one from both the x-men and Brotherhood.
Here's what's bad and good.

Graphics - Bright and solid character designs with interesting and detailed backgrounds. Badly lacks widescreen support and prog scan - this is lazy. The cutscenes are good but of a very low resolution.
7/10 - 8/10 if you have a deinterlacer.

Sound - The voiceovers are excellent and really capture the mood of the game. Patrick Stewart voices Xavier just like in the movies, and all the other voices suit the characters perfectly. The music ranges from incidental to very good, standout is the music that plays in the Temple of the Acolytes of Apocalypse.
9/10

Gameplay - You have a large variety of moves to learn, and special powers etc. The range is impressive and much like an RPG you gain levels and purchase points in whatever power you want, eg making Wolverine regenerate faster, or enabling Jean Gray and Storm to fly (Yes they really fly). You can also purchase many items like armour/gloves and belts. Always entertaining there's no real problems here. It's also great to fight as a team in real time, and the enemy/ally AI is decent.
8/10

Extras/Replay - There are 3 levels of difficulty and the last one "Hard" is a real challenge and you can use your saved characters and items with a save game+ feature. There are also 3 extra characters to get, including one which takes you alot of work to get (Worth it though). Only one ending though. There are also some small side quests for extra diversion.

Overall - Worth buying it took me about 20 hours on the first play through and as much again for the HARD setting, including the extra characters. So you get good value from this. A very decent game that I enjoyed playing and would recommened to fans of X-men and anyone who likes an enjoyable action RPG.
8/10

Fun Game, Bad Glitch. Here's how to fix the freezing glitch!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 29 / 30
Date: October 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is absolutely excellent. There's not much that I can add that hasn't already been said - but there is the major problem of the freezing glitch that can cause SERIOUS aggravation. I was up to level 4 and the freezing got to such a bad point, the game wouldn't load anymore and I had to restart from scratch.

From checking online, and trying it myself with a new save file, it is possible to get through the entire game without a single freezing glitch. There is a "Hero" chest where you can store items that are not in use (armor, gloves, belts, etc....)

Do _not_ fill up this chest and have your active characters carrying 20 items at the same time. Apparently this is what causes the freezing. I kept my items in the hero chest below 30 and the next time through the game, there was no freezing whatsoever.

The symptoms appear to be when you attack a glowing character, or try to pick up an item from a weapons cache, these are the most common points that the freezing occurs.

If this is the case, reboot the game and try cleaning out your hero chest items to below 30, and drop about 10 items out of your active party. That should clear up the problem.

I'd rate the game higher, but this is a glitch that definitely should have been caught during quality control.

Excellent sequel, some very minor problems

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 19
Date: October 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

X-Men Legends was a breath of new life for those of us sick and tired of waiting for a decent adventure game starring everyone's favourite cast of mutants. It was fast, fun, big and challenging, and contained more in-references and playable characters than you could shake a stick at.

X-Men Legends 2: ROA takes that formula and tweaks it somewhat, meaning that this is a sequel that essentially delivers more of the same addictive gameplay, bucketloads more of the same straight-from-the-comic-book atmosphere, and a few minor improvements and disimprovements over the original.

The plot is expansive and kind of perfunctory: Apocalypse is back and now the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (the baddies from the original game) must now side with the X-Men to remove the threat of immediate worldwide annihilation. This cunning stunt allows you to have a cast of sixteen selectable muties from the get-go, and this is a pretty even blend of both X-Men and BOEM characters alike. Some are strong from the beginning and only get more powerful as they level up (the ubiquitous Wolverine, Jean Grey, Colossus), some of the new characters are excellent too (Scarlet Witch, Bishop, Juggernaut and Sunfire), and some of the characters from the first game that you might not have used as much because of their clunkiness have been improved out of all order - for me, this was Rogue and Gambit, now (thanks to some serious design improvements) a formidable team.

There are still some dud characters, though, and these come in the shape of Magneto and Toad. Shame, but what can you do? You don't *have to* use them, so it's not all bad.

The only drawback about all of this is the fact that a huge, huge portion of the Marvel cast roster (and even that from the first game, which was by no means exhaustive!) is missing, and while newbies like the really excellent Scarlet Witch and Sunfire more than hold their own, you can't help but miss the presence of the more usable chatacters from X-Men Legends, such as Beast, Psylocke and Magma.

A nice touch, though, is if you assemble a team of heroes with matching secondary costumes (e.g. Age of Apocalypse), you automatically get a stat increase. Similarly, it's now much easier to distribute the stat points, with an Auto option that does the calculation for you, allowing you to focus in on the gameplay. Another HUGE improvement is the economic system of the game, Tech Bits are now in far more plentiful supply and items are relatively cheaper.

There are some drawbacks: The items system is still as rotten as ever, if you pick up too many things it's back to the Base to unload some in the Hero stash boxes (think Biohazard). But since this box is not bottomless, you need to sell the weaker items to Forge, too. This doesn't sound so bad in theory but it does break up the action pretty badly, and since the rare items are so very useful you do need to keep a close eye on what you're selling, equipping and moving about.

Basic gameplay remains pretty much the same, if overall a little easier than in X-Men Legends. It's fast, fun and very satisfying, and while there are some glitches here and there, the plentiful amount of Save points throughout means you never really spend too much time backtracking.

Maps are a pain; there's no way of viewing one overall map without loading up a Map sub-screen, so you do get lost sometimes. Similarly, loading times (as before) remain a second or so too long mid-mission, making leveling up and shuffling things about a bit more of a chore than it needs to be.

Graphics are much improved, though, with more detailed and colourful powers, costumes, enemies and stunning backdrops than before.

All in all, a sequel very worthy of its great predecessor, X-Men Legends 2 deserves a place on the shelf of all action-adventure game fans. Recommended.

If you liked the first, you'll love the second

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: September 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In the newest installment of X-men Legends, you and your x-men team up with the brotherhood of mutants to battle apocalypse, and his horsemen, with full excess to the brotherhoods team of mutant and a few new x-men.

At first glance the game looks and feels very much like the first X-men legends, the sound, the graphics (color, detail, and style, all similar to the first), and power-up systems are all taken almost exactly from the first, but it is the subdtle improvements that make the game worth buying. Most importantly (my personal feelings) is that you can go back to any level you've completed and search for secret areas and missed items.

The game has many new characters, in additon to almost all the orginals (no magma - replaced by sunfire who has almost all the same abilities), all characters have alternate costumes, and a new power-up system lets you customize the three main power buttons, so your not stuck with something like a defensive power you never use (anybody who played the first one knows that the denfensive power wasn't worth using). There are more secondary missions per level, and the area are a little less linear that the first.

This game feels more like an expansion pack than a sequel (not a bad thing), it took everything good about the first game transfered it to this game, and fixed almost every complaint I had. The game was devolped and shipped incredible fast after the release of the first one, so I am still fearful there may be glitches, but I'll just have to wait and see.

If you liked the first game, buy this. If you like the x-men, buy this. If you like RPG/action game, buy this.

8.7 out of 10

Great Improvements in the game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: November 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When videogame sequels are released, gamers often wonder how it contrasts the original in the series. After numerous hours of game play with the first X-men Legends game and careful review of X-men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, gamers are going to get the same mutant bashing, level destroying fun of the first game with a considerable amount of improvements.
Compared to the first X-men legends game, the second in the series has many upgrades. First of all, the unexpected alliance of the X-men and Brotherhood members allows players to assume the role of not only the goody, goody X-men characters we all love, but also the malicious members who make up the brotherhood. Mutants such as Magneto, Juggernaut, Scarlet Witch, Sunfire, and Toad are suiting up to stop the evil that perils them.
In addition to adding some powerful new characters - and weeding out the weaker ones - Each character has a much larger array of skill up grades. In fact, more than double the amount of usable skills can be found for each character, as well as more passive skills, resulting in more ways to customize each of your mutants.
The introduction of acts in this installment is a huge improvement. Unlike the first game where players are forced to follow the storyline unable to return to the areas they have previously visited, Rise of Apocalypse takes players through five acts, which can be revisited at any time. This also allows there to be more hidden areas and items to be found, since players can revisit any area. New secret objects include data discs (increases the number of potions held) and tech stations (increases one of a characters four primary statistics), along with the old secret findables danger room discs, comic books, and sketchbooks.
The environments have improved and players are taken from the land of Genosha, to New York City, and even through the great pyramids in Egypt. In each of these lands players can find an abundance of new enemy baddies and bosses to test their new Mutant powers.
Overall this game has improved greatly. Every aspect from the characters, their abilities, the environments, enemies, and secrets has been upgraded. This game is a great installment to the X-men Legends series and is worthy of a place in any adventure lover's playstation.

Withtout a doubt, the single most bug-ridden game I've EVER played

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Okay...it's like this: I've been playing video games for almost 20 years now, and X-Men Legends II has secured a special place in my hall of shame as the most problematic, bug-ridden game EVER. And this is a darn abominable shame, because the game itself is actually a lot of fun.

First of all, the game loves to crash on me when I least expect it. When I visit Beast/Forge's shop and choose the "see equipment" option, the game will sometimes kick me out to the title screen! And if I haven't saved my game in the last 5 seconds, bye-bye unsaved progress! The same thing tends to happen when I'm using the Danger Room computer, or using an Xtraction Point to change my team: the screen will go black, and I'll find myself back at the title screen.

The Hero Stash is another source of frustration. You're allowed to keep up to 60 things in there, but I've discovered that anytime I exceeded 15, all the equipment from Beast/Forge's shop that was for sale would just vanish. That's right; Beast/Forge would suddenly just stop selling stuff to you (except for potions and the Grab Bag), and I could not get the shop to start offering stuff again, even after I got rid of some stuff from the Hero Stash.

Also, you probably noticed that defeated enemies and breakable objects often cough up tech bits and, more rarely, armor and equipment. I've noticed that all this stops right around the end of Chapter 2: I can't get any money (tech bits) from that point on, no matter how many enemies I beat! How the HECK am I supposed to buy potions and armor and equipment without any money?

All these bugs have screwed up my save data permanently several times already, and I've had to start the game over from the beginning each time, hoping that I can do something differently each time to avoid the bugs, but no such luck. Frankly, I'm now sick of trying.

What was Raven Software doing with this game??? Did they even have a Quality Assurance department? Hey Raven, you guys NEED to come out with X Men Legends 3, and you NEED to address the bugs. That's the ONLY way you'll make up for releasing an UNFINISHED game onto the market. And you guys'd better make sure this NEVER happens again.

AWESOME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is just awesome! I played and loved the first X-Men:Legends, and Rise of Apocalypse is even BETTER! The graphics are very cool. They really nailed the lighting in this game. So many more characters with even more awesome powers.

Just like X-Men:Legends, the multiplayer is very good because my friends can join and leave the game at any time. This is a great feature! In other games, once you start a multiplayer game, your friends must stick around all the time.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS GAME.

I gave it a shot, and it shot me in the face

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I started playing Rise of Apocalypse, I wasn't initially enthralled with the gameplay. I could see the potential for repetitiveness, and I have to say that I was underwhelmed by all of the characters included here. Some nice inclusions are Sunfire, Iron Man, and Deadpool, but honestly who really cares about Scarlet Witch and Grizzly? When the boss for the first level is Grizzly you realize that they scraped the bottom of the barrel for random cameos by obscure characters. That doesn't mean I didn't appreciate the good inclusions. Sunfire became a staple of my chosen four, because his energy attacks and flying ability come in very handy.

Activision tried to base this game off the Age of Apocalypse storyline, but the only real reference to this is Sugarman. He mentions briefly that he comes from an alternate future in which Apocalypse rules most of the world, but aside from that you don't get much. In fact, there's not much in the way of story overall. When I play an action game like this, I want the repetitive smashing to be broken up with a compelling story. Give me a reason to keep bashing stuff. Without motivation, I can think of a dozen other things I'd rather be doing than engaging in mediocre gameplay. The first X-Men Legends had a cohesive story to it. The events of one mission directly led to the next, and so on and so forth to the last battle against Mastermold, giving the gameplay a sense of urgency: I need to save the world, and what happened in previous levels had a direct effect on why I am here at the end. Rise of Apocalypse feels like a series of unrelated events hastily stapled together to create something like a plot: over here is the first thing we need to do to defeat Apocalypse, now over here is the second thing we need to do, and over here is the third, and now we've defeated Apocalypse. Lackluster, to say the least.

Replay value for me was virtually non-existent. You can play through the game again with newly unlocked characters, but I didn't really have the urge. If the game included a reason why Tony Stark decides to lend Iron Man's help to the cause, or why Deadpool decides to become involved, it might be a bit more entertaining. As it is, you can play through on a higher difficulty to make the game more interesting, but higher difficulty in this case means about ten times more bad guys who are about 100 times harder to kill. You will get your ass kicked over and over again and have to revive lots of teammates. Add to this the insane number of bugs you have to kill in the first mission, and it makes for a miserable gaming experience.

Now let's talk about the glitches. There's a really big one that makes you have to start over again from the beginning. At a certain point New York, the game freezes up. Every time you try to start the level over again, it will freeze in roughly the same spot. There is no way around this unless you know the secret. Make sure your party is carrying a very small number of items, like belts, gauntlets, and gloves. If they're carrying too many, the game can't handle it, and it freezes up. I didn't know this at the time and wound up having to play the entire game over again, having the game freeze up again in the same spot, and eventually finding help online. Irritating, to say the least.

Overall, the game is decent, but that's only because I'm a fan of the X-Men and I liked having Sunfire available as a playable character. I wouldn't reccommend anyone buying this game. If you want an average gaming experience, then by all means rent it. I highly reccommend you avoid this game, though, as there really are many other wonderful things you could do with your time and energy.

Frustrating game with too many glitches

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: January 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I played and enjoyed X-Men Legends I, but I am terribly disappointed by this sequel. I've encountered many glitches in this game. In fact, this may be the worst game I've ever played as far as glitches go. It's as if the developers didn't even care; the glitches in this game could've easily been detected and fixed if they had tested it adequately. For a game with so much hype and anticipation, there is no excuse for putting out a shoddy product. I know I'm in the minority here, because most people on the web are enthralled by this game because it does have many playable characters, mutant powers, etc. And the game mechanics are reasonably sound, but for me the game is frustrating and unplayable. I personally don't like playing a game with so many bugs. I wouldn't pay more than $10 for this game because the only thing it's really good for is to be able to run around and bash things with X-Men skins. There are many other games out there that are more polished and are a better use of your time.

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