Colored Minions

When it comes to actual gameplay Dark Legend is decent at best. Minions come in red, blue, green, and brown and they are all unique in their own annoying, evil, and destructive little way. You will first gain brown minions, who are your basic fighting grunts and are no good at anything but looting, pillaging, and beating on things. Later on you will gain green (which absorb poison), blue (which can go into water), and red (which can absorb fire) which are all needed at all times.

To solve simple environmental puzzles, certain amounts of minions are required. Say you have a turn wheel, but it has green gas pods around it. Then you use greens to absorb the gas before sending blues to turn the wheel. Everything works like a chain and it is never too hard to figure out what is expected of you. You even have a mini map with a compass that shows you your current objective. Using warp gates, you can quickly move from one area to another.

Summoning your minions is done via hives located throughout the levels. You can use them to pick up relics for spells, max health and mana increase as well. Such spells vary from petrifying to electrocution, to time slow, to making your minions crazy and powerful for a short amount of time. The best technique however is the new ability to strangle your minions and charge them up. Red and brown ones explode, green ones can be used as a gas grenade, and blue ones give you life. I found all of these to be extremely helpful in a tight pinch. To top things off you can kill enemies for souls to acquire more minions. Gold found in chests can be spent in your castle's smelting room where you can upgrade your weapons, armor, and minions. This is a must for harder enemies and bosses later on in the game.

End of Lesson

The environments are very pretty at times and some of the areas will definitely pique your interest. My favorite moment in the game was when I was in the woods chasing down Little Red. The area in which this takes place felt both charming and unique, its ambiance amplified by a menacing looking moonlight that gave the leaves on trees a creepy look. The dialog the developers chose is clever, yet evil and the voice actors give it all their evil might to help set the mood.

So, there is lots of fun to be had in Dark Legend thanks to the clever use of minions and the good amount of spells and plenty of relics to find. You will be sucked in for a good 6 to 8 hours. I just wish the minions were a bit smarter and the collision detection didn't suck. The backtracking can really get you down too. I highly recommend Dark Legend only to Overlord fans or Wii gamers who want to wipe the dust off that Wii. The Wii shovel ware stops here my Lord and so begins the tale.