Overall: 9.9 (aka my highest score possible) Oh man, why oh why did I wait to review this game? Truth be told, this is only my 3rd review so I guess I'm getting to it pretty quickly.

If you can tell by my other reviews of Zelda 2 and Kid Icarus (shameless plug), I'm a little weird when it comes to games. There are some games that I just can't explain it, I just really, really like them. So it should probably come as no surprise to me that just like the often criticized Zelda 2 game, Mega Man Legends is the odd ball of a historic series that I happen to like most of all.

Now, I'd like to point something out to everyone and try to get you to realize when I say Mega Man Legends is my favorite Mega Man game that I'm not too young to have experienced the series during the glory days of NES. I was born in '86 so when I was young, we (my older brother and I) played Mega Man all the time. We didn't have much money so our video game collection was pretty small and outside of the Mario series we didn't really own many games. But we rented the hell out of Mega Man 1, 2 and 3. I have recently played through the entire NES series and beaten all of them except for 6. But I never beat them as a child. Maybe they were too difficult, maybe we didn't have enough time because they were rentals or maybe I was just too young, I'm not sure.

As I got older, I did the same thing with the Mega Man X series. What an awesome series btw! But again, I never owned a single one of them and would just rent it over and over. I was definitely a big, big fan of the Mega Man series even though I never physically owned them.

I know this is a long winded introduction and I haven't even talked about the game yet but I think the backstory is important for the reader to realize that I'm not exaggerating about how good this game is. It is so fricken awesome, I'll blow your mind!

MML was the first MM I actually ever owned. Why I asked for this game for Christmas, while I never did before with the previous games, I can't remember and we'll never know. But man, I'm glad I did. I have since lost that copy of Mega Man during my move to college several years ago and I regret it so much. I have since played through the game a couple times on an emulator and I've even played through the N64 version on Vizzed. It really never gets old to me and I have a hard time sometimes sticking with a game (I got bored with Final Fantasy XII right before the final boss and never finished for some reason).

In preparation of writing this review, I watched some youtube video reviews. I've realized something about what I think about when I'm doing reviews. I never even think about explaining the story, which is what some reviewer talked about extensively with this game and didn't even show footage of a single dungeon. Listen, you can learn what the story is about by reading the back of the box and learn the names of the key characters by skimming a gamefaqs intro section. I want to focus on what I really think about the game (which I haven't even really done yet ha).

Depth: 10. I'm starting with Depth first because this is what you need to appreciate if you want to truly enjoy this game. Comparing the depth to other MM games isn't even fair. Legends blows all the previous games away in the amount of hidden items, customization ability, side quests and exploration opportunities. As far as depth goes, this baby ranks up there with Ocarina of Time. Yes, I said it! Okay, okay, OoT is by all rights, 'the better game' but I like Legends more and if you've played through them you'll see the similarities. Let's do the check 1)Large dungeons to explore? check. 2)Fetch quests that require you to back track through areas you've previously visited and meet with the townsfolk and interact with the environments and finally culminates with a prize that helps you on your journey? CHECK. 3)Item and skill upgrades that allow you to reach those areas that you could see but you couldn't figure out how to get to? Check.

I could go on how the similarities with OoT are so apparent but overlooked (ummm Z targeting anyone??) but I'll move on. The real difference between the two games, in my opinion, is that the OoT's controls were much better and I'll get to that later. Okay, OoT's puzzles are obviously much, much better as well.

More on the depth though! How about this- how many games have you played where you collect some form of currency and it's vital to getting new weapons/armor/accessories? How often in those game that towards the end of the game, you become so rich that you can't even spend it anymore? The answer is - a lot. It almost becomes pointless to hack at jars and bushes to collect rupees at the end. But not Legends! You almost always can use money (zenny). Whether it's to buy some health upgrades or to customize/upgrade your special weapons, you can never have enough. I think this adds an element of trying to pick up that dropped zenny after destroying a robot that keeps killing them satisfying.

More on depth you say? Did I mention finding parts spread throughout the game that can be used to upgrade your buster? Or items that create a new special weapons? C'mon. How many games give you that much room for customization over your weaponry? You can even change how your buster performs based on the situation - long range and rapid fire for those pesky flying little guys or powerful with high energy for big bad robots.

Addictiveness: 10. Covered in the depth for the most part. Money is always needed giving you the desire to explore and blow stuff up. The customization of weapons is fantastic. Finding new parts through fetch quests and exploring parts of the dungeons and town looking for things you've missed. The side quest parts are what keeps you coming back for more. I once spent several hours trying to beat the high score of the hoverskates racing mini game.. as sad as that sounds.

Graphics: 8. The graphics are what you'd expect from a PS1 game. Overall, I do think they're very good. However, I'm not personally a big fan of the Japanese Anime art style with the weird flapping mouth. Literally, sometimes the characters mouth just moves open and closed even though you're not hearing words. Beyond this, they are pretty darn good for a 3D PS1 game.

Sound: 9. The music is good. The sound effects are good. But when you're talking about sound with this game, you're probably going to first think about the voice acting. While I think the delivery of the anime style characters is average, the voice acting is actually really good. This is polarizing I think based upon what I've read, but for me it definitely is very good for a PS1 game.

Story: 9. Like I said before. I won't go into the details of the story. It's not important in my opinion to give it to you but rather to offer my opinion of the quality. I will say that while it's no FFVII, the story does have some nice twists. Even a forbidden love story is included. Oh la la! But the story is engaging and you connect with the characters as much as you could in a silly game like this.

Difficulty: 6. Okay, this game isn't that hard. If you think this game is hard, I think I know why and as I alluded to earlier, I'll address it now. The controls aren't great. Actually, sometimes they are frustrating and they stink! Okay I said it! They are tricky to get used to and clunky and you can lose your enemy sometimes rather easily. However, once you learn that you can lock on to the target and just run in a circle around that target, it's pretty good. The camera angle is still a challenge though and sometimes while you're doing this you'll run into other enemies or walls or a hole in the ground. The controls are something that I think some people have trouble getting around and can't overlook and it's something that certainly hurts MML's prestige. I'm certainly not saying good controls aren't important, they definitely are! I'm saying that you can work with it and learn to get better at what it has to offer.

If I haven't convinced you yet that this is just a fantastic game and everyone who likes action adventure games should definitely give it a try, then I almost give up. Get over the fact that it's not a traditional MM game. So what. It is unique and certainly one of a kind that is just flat out fun to play. I won't get into how I feel about Legends 2 here but I will say this - go play the original. You won't be disappointed.

Oh and please don't crucify me for comparing this game to OoT
Just play the game, think about it and tell me how far off you think I am!

benis : I've never played ocarina of time, but i too feel as though I enjoy the games that not many others enjoy. For instance, the widely criticized Metroid other m (It's like my favorite metroid game!) I am a huge fan of the pac man world series, but not even sure if anyone else knows about it!