So around the time I bought GTA V I also got Rayman Legends. Surprisingly it was only £20 at the time so that was fortunate. I assume the sudden drop was due to new games like GTA V just recently coming out, and it was a pretty dumb idea to release this game so near to that date but whatever. I’m gonna come out and say right off the bat that I thought the first game was overall better. Because:
The path to 100% in Origins was short but not frustrating like in Legends. In Legends you collect 10 teenies throughout the level instead of 6 and those 10 can very easily be missed, especially the king & queen ones. Not to say I’m not looking hard enough, twice I missed one because it was behind a hidden wall. Walls which
actually looked like real walls and not walls you can clearly tell stand out, one was beside a bottomless pit too. One was hidden in a tiny pathway in a right wall during a swimming level, I spent several minutes trying to find it then I looked it up and realized that the tiny hole wasn’t even visible on my TV, unlike the other secret passages. In Origins, the sixth teeny was always at the end of a level so you just had to find five & they weren’t hard to find unless you were speed running the level, I think I only missed a teeny on one level in the original game going through the first time. The bar has been raised from needing to collect 300 lums to 600, with the king lums taken away and replaced with stupid "follow the pattern perfectly or immediately lose the 2x lum multiplier" purple ones. It’s harsh as fu
ck too, in Origins you could do reasonably well and finish with over 300 90% of the time, here half the levels require near perfection (every purple lum, physically kill all enemies, get all teenies in one run, get heart at the start & never get hit so you collect every bonus heart for +5 lums etc.) just to reach 600. One swimming level that sticks out in my mind I went through it pretty damn slow making sure to get everything yet I finished with 595. Apparently I missed out on a small cave that gave you about 35 lums, so yeah, 630. Again, this was a
perfect run, and I had to go slow as sh
it to make sure I got all the lums I could.
The levels with Murfy are crap because he just slows down progression most due to the game wanting you to play a point & click platformer, not sure who thought this was a good idea. They basically took out the Tricky Treasure levels for the Invasion ones (more like the time trials really which were also better because the Origins levels were designed to be speedrun except in some spots where you're forced to slow down to avoid dying), which are alright but they don’t compare, though I did like the Invasion themes. The one from Olympus Maximus the most of all, I wish all the invasion worlds had that theme, it certainly got me in the mood to beat the time limit of 40 seconds for the 3 teenies. Just look how well the theme matches up in The Amazing Maze:
Of course you can finish pretty early since I’ve finished that in just under 37 seconds. Most of the invasion levels are surprisingly easy to finish in under 40 seconds really, with most I finished within the 34-38 second range. Hell, I managed to finish one in under 32 seconds, but a few seem more like they were designed to have a 45 second timer in mind, those two being Quick Sand (I had to work my ass off trying to go as fast as possible in any spot where I had the space and still struggled) & Infiltration Station (Dark Rayman makes this aggravating since you gotta kill all enemies in 4 rooms so you need to know the right path to get anywhere under 40 or just avoid running into DR period). Just like everybody else though, I loved the music levels, Eye of the Tiger & Land of the Livid Dead deserve special mention. Having levels that match your movements with the beat is just awesome, a shame there weren't more of those. On the other hand, most of the 8-bit music levels you unlock after getting 400 teenies were either dumb or pointless aside from hearing familiar tracks with a retro filter. They've all just got some gimmicky handicap & make it so dying sends you back to the start. Most effects were bearable but 8-bit Orchastra Chaos was the worst, or as I call it, "Can't See Sh
it." Seriously, look at this sh
it:
I had to replay it like half a dozen times due to needing a perfect jump to get all those lums 2/3's into the level. 8-bit Land of the Livid Dead was good because it used every kind of retro effect every few moments & it went the extra mile near the end with the whole splitting the screen into 4 chunks, then 9, then 16 etc. Now that was inventive. The only disappointing thing was that LotLD's music level didn't have the same kind of difficulty as the final bonus level of the first game, or that there wasn't a level like that in general.
Now a level like this I actually consider challenge, but one that's actually fun & not frustrating just for the sake of it. I've played that level enough times to run through it without dying, which isn't required since there's a ton of checkpoints but I did it. Not to brag about my 12 inch E-peen, not because I was bored and couldn't afford any new games, but because I really enjoyed the level. I can speedrun it consistently these days (though I find the hardest parts the first area & the last before the boss). The start of the second area is also where one of my favorite themes starts up, which was the one they used for the music level. So yeah, still enjoyed it a lot but Origins was overall better because Legends had a little too much unnecessary sh
it in it.
