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Fallen Legion: Rise To Glory is the complete Fallen Legion experience. Originally released as two separate games consisting of Flames Of Rebellion and Sins Of An Empire, Rise To Glory finally delivers the complete story in one package. But this, along with many other things, can leave new players feeling a bit lost.
Has anything changed in the porting process? Which do you play first? How does Rise To Glory meld them both together? There’s a lot to unpack, and we haven’t even opened the box yet. We are going to touch on all of that and more, so you know what to expect when cracking open Rise To Glory for the first time.
Your Gender Matters
Many games have a binary gender choice when you start a new game, but this rarely, if ever, changes up gameplay. Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard is mechanically the same regardless of her physical appearance, for example. This is not the case here, and the first choice you make is arguably the most important one you will make when playing Rise To Glory.
You can choose between Laendur or Cecille, and each one has their own, fully-fledged story that details their perspective on opposite sides of a war. They share some scenes, but narratively and mechanically, they are pretty unique. Even the warriors they have at their disposal differ, drastically altering the gameplay experience to boot.
Careful Decision Making
You will be asked to make decisions constantly throughout Rise To Glory’s playtime. Each mission will thrust potentially game-changing choices at you, and it’s up to you to figure out the best course of action. Do you execute mutiny leaders, or make them an asset to your war effort?
Things get more difficult when you factor in the mechanical bonuses for your choices too. Sparing some villagers might be the morally correct thing to do, however, murdering them all might give you a temporary combat buff that will make the upcoming boss easier to deal with.
Completionists Nightmare
Fallen Legion: Rise To Glory is a pretty long game - especially for one with action combat. It will take you about 10 hours to get through each campaign, which is a hefty chunk of content. In this time you will face off against countless bosses, recruit myriad warriors, and fiddle with all kinds of gems and mechanics. It’s a fun romp.
Completing the game 100 percent, however, is a much harder thing to pull off. It will take most players around 30 hours to see everything you can see in one campaign. That’s around 60 hours of content if you fully explore both sides of the campaign.
Don’t Expect Narrative Perfection
Fallen Legion: Rise To Glory is a fun game with an interesting concept. Mechanically, it does what it wants to do well enough, and it represents a genre that is woefully lacking in entries. It’s also incredibly ambitious with its story concept. The thing is, however, the game doesn’t pull it off as well as you’d hope.
This isn’t a deal breaker of course, but if you are going into Fallen Legion: Rise To Glory expecting a well-told story, you might be disappointed. Just looking at the surface-level issues, there are spelling mistakes and snippets of broken English. Dive a bit deeper, and the story often feels disjointed and poorly told.
Gameplay Niggles
Rise To Glory is cut from the same cloth that Square Enix used to craft Valkyrie Profile - an outstanding JRPG with an excellent combat system. This system has been used in other games since, but there are not many. This makes Rise To Glory immediately appealing as it taps into that long-forgotten set of systems.
It doesn’t pull it off flawlessly, unfortunately. Rise To Glory feels quite rough to play at first. There is a noticeable delay between pressing a button and actions playing out. This affects attacking and defence, leading to the combat feeling quite clunky. Chances are you will adapt over time, and once it clicks, the game can feel incredibly satisfying.
Relive Your Best Moments
The game uses a fairly linear map system to move between combat segments and story beats. What the game doesn’t make abundantly clear, however, is that you can go to any node on the map and replay it. This is great if you want a recap on a recent story event, or better yet, want to replay levels.
Fallen Legion: Rise To Glory ranks your performance at the end of each stage. Gunning for the S-Ranks is the ultimate goal if you want to have your mastery of the game’s mechanics on full display. Simply jog over the combat node you want to mess with, and go to town.