Tournament of Legends (Wii) Review
The fighting genre is quite under-represented on the Nintendo Wii, with a few stand-out titles being on the system, a lot of them fall flat either due to a lack of care for the genre or a lack of depth. The closest we’ve ever gotten to a decent, well thought out fighting game is without a doubt the recently released Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. However, High Voltage Software, developers of the rather infamous The Conduit, have now released Tournament of Legends, a mythology-based fighter that, despite some clever ideas, comes across as feeling rather, well, disappointing.
Each character in Tournament of Legends has their own specific story, though the over-arching storyline in Tournament of Legends is quite average. Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods, has mysteriously vanished and Thanatos, the god of death, takes advantage of this absence by taking power over the world. Naturally, for anyone who knows that power is transient, Thanatos challenges the world to defeat him properly, cue nine powerful figures from Graeco-Roman mythology attempting to defeat Thanatos with the ultimate prize in hand: immortality.
As I’ve said before, the story won’t do the game any great favours, but it’s rare to see a game in this genre do so anyway. Characters are all recognisable from all kinds of facets of mythology, with some coming from rather famous Greek mythology to lesser known Asian and Egyptian deities too.
In terms of presentation, Tournament of Legends utilises High Voltage’s rather famous Quantum3 engine, so the graphical fidelity in this game is quite high. Character models are quite well detailed (albeit poorly designed and uninspired) and animated extremely well, while arenas are well constructed to reflect the period which they are based on. What’s probably best about Tournament of Legends is the realistic artistic direction that it takes that also utilises many bright colours, something that is a bit of a rarity in this generation of washed out browns and grey. Before and after each character’s story mode, a stylised comic-book depicting the character’s story is played and these all are quite nice to look at. Sure, cutscenes would’ve been better, but the quality in these pieces of art is stunning.
Unfortunately, that’s really where my praise for Tournament of Legends ends. Upon choosing a character, players can choose a weapon and an orb. Your choices made during this period affect not only which special moves you can use, but also which perks are unlockable. Defeating enemies unlocks their own weapons for use with your character, creating an opportunity for players to mix and match powerful characters with even more powerful weapons if they so wish. Each character has special moves, along with one weapon-specific move to create a bit of variety, and these moves are incredibly unbalanced. In fact, some players have amazing moves that do almost half a life-bar’s damage, while others have moves that only stun. It’s quite clear that High Voltage wasn’t really understanding of the genre when they developed this game.
The fighting itself takes place in a fully three-dimensional arena, in a similar fashion to Castlevania Judgement. Players can move wherever they want in the arena, and a rather handy semi-circle appears in front of players to indicate the range of their attacks. This removes a bit of frustration out of missed attacks, though also seems quite unnecessary at times. Each player, as said before, has special moves which are initiated by holding down the A Button and moving the Nunchuk’s analog stick in a direction, a system kind of adapted from Smash Bros. The aim of each battle is to down the enemy three times within two “acts”. Each act has a certain time limit and between acts players can regenerate their health or repair armour in a rather mundane waggling mini-game.
As I’ve said before, the gameplay in Tournament of Legends isn’t really all that great, but it does feature some nice little touches that impressed me quite a bit. First of all, every character has armour that is breakable through constant attacking in a specific direction. This is notably easier with the Classic Controller, as the Wii Remote is not too accurate in determining which slashes are in which directions – a rather strange fact considering High Voltage chose to remove MotionPlus support. Similarly, within each level there is a super-god or deity that occasionally lashes out and attacks players, requiring a quick time event to avoid. Despite the rather random and luck-centric nature of this component, it can lead to some pretty hilarious outcomes and make the game a bit easier for newcomers to the genre.
I suppose the best way to explain my ambivalence towards Tournament of Legends is the fact that the developers were probably quite ambivalent as to what kind of fighting game they wanted to deliver. There are elements of Smash Bros.’ accessibility, mish-mashed with elements of Punch-Out!!, topped with elements of luck found in Nintendo’s Mario Party series. Overall, the gameplay in Tournament of Legends comes across as rather shallow with a very severe identity crisis.
The game’s audio offerings aren’t too crash hot either, with voice work being quite cringeworthy during the battles themselves. Some one-liners are just too cheesy to be so-bad-it’s-good as well, creating a rather horrific experience for one’s ears. The music, while attempting to sound quite epic and provide a great back track to the action, is way too underwhelming to be considered music, instead “noise” would be a better word.
In terms of value, Tournament of Legends doesn’t feature a lot of it. There are two secret characters to unlock, and obviously weapon sets for every character, but there’s really no reason as to why you’d want to go on to unlock such things. There is a lack of modes to play through, with just a Story Mode, Versus Mode and Training Mode available. And while the characters are all somewhat unique, players will have trouble mustering the interest to play through the story mode more than twice at best (which takes no more than two hours to complete). Then again, this game is offered at a more budget price point, so it’s not asking too much, though an online mode surely wouldn’t have hurt.
Tournament of Legends was one of my most anticipated titles from High Voltage since I was disappointed by The Conduit. Sadly, being a rather avid fighting fan, I was sorely disappointed by the rather lax effort it seems has been put into the game. Not only is it dull and uninspired, but it’s lacking any real substance to keep me coming back for more. As said before, despite the fact the game is offered at a cheaper price point, I can’t see any reason why I would want to shell out that much for a game. Younger children may enjoy the title, but fighting fans and older fans would probably want to stay clear.
Graphics 8.0
A rather bland offering of poorly designed characters, though the modelling, animation and environmental effects are quite well pulled off. Opening and closing cinematics are excellently designed.
Gameplay 5.0
A mish-mash of Punch-Out!! with Smash Bros. creates a rather strange experience. There are special moves to pull off here, but most players will be most comfortable waggling their Wii Remotes mindlessly until their character (or even themselves) fall.
Sound 4.0
Unbearable voice acting combined with an underwhelming soundtrack create a rather disappointing aural experience.
Tilt 4.0
Tournament of Legends offers little reason to return to it once youve completed it, besides unlocking weapons that you most likely already have for other characters anyway.
Value 5.0
Despite most of its shortcomings, I had a rather average experience with Tournament of Legends.
