Watch Dogs Legion Review

May 2014 was the first appearance of the Watch Dogs series, which faced a lot of criticism due to the graphics that were underestimated despite the quality of the game in terms of the story, gameplay, and new ideas presented in it. However this didn’t prevent Ubisoft from releasing a second part of the series that was available in 2016, but it was also criticized more, due to the weak level of the story and some repeated ideas within it.

Instead of losing hope in the series, Ubisoft has decided once again to trust the development team and release the third part, which is the last step in the return of hopes for the series, which Ubisoft has promised us will be a great return with various new ideas, will the French company will be able to fulfill its promises and offer us the perfect experience for Watch Dogs? This is of course what we’ll find out in our review of Watch Dogs: Legion.

In a world full of chaos and corruption in the near future, a group of hackers known as DedSec who appeared before in the series decided to rebalance the British capital again and save it from the pale future that is going towards it using their own ways, but on the other hand, a new group called Zero Day has emerged in the capital, which is trying to impose its control over London through many terrorist operations and many bombings that the group was able to frame for DedSec, which caused the intervention of the military in the city and led to the elimination of that group altogether, but hopes are revived again by you and those you will recruit for the DedSec again. Your only goal is to save London, which is now a major battleground, whether by the terrorist group Zero-Day or Albion that controls the British capital.

Unlike the second part, which suffered greatly from the quality of the story and the style of writing itself, these flaws were avoided during this part, starting with the coherence of the story and the attention to the details of the conflict between the communities that inhabit London, where each one of them has its own goals, whether to destroy, control, or even protect and save the future of that city. But even so, the vocal performance of the game’s characters, especially those you recruit during the game’s events, was not as it was supposed to be and didn’t serve the story as desired or expected to be seen.

Recruitment, recruitment, and recruitment, perhaps since the first announcement of this game and the biggest focus of Ubisoft company is the recruitment concept, which is a big shift in the world of video games, using that particular idea you will be able to experience playing with a lot of characters, you can recruit each character in the game world and experience playing with him as well, there are those who have political and security relations in some places, and there are others who have powerful vehicles and different badges, and also strong connections to help you complete your missions.

Ubisoft was able to present an idea that would change the entire gaming industry by not committing to one character or two to play with anymore, now you can try playing with any character and in any style. Still this the recruitment process will start to get a little a bit boring and repetitive while you progress the game, although that doesn’t stop us from enjoying the experience of playing with a lot of characters.

And since we are talking about the characters, the game was able to master the diversity among them not only through their features as mentioned and the benefits of each one to the organization only but even in the origins of the character and his vocal performance, which as we mentioned above could have been better and could make the game provide an even more interesting experience.

The developers were able to provide these characters with different designs that made them look great and different from one character to the other, and not only this, but all of them have their own style of gameplay and combat, there are those who prefer the melee combat, and those who want to exchange gunshots and hacking, and in the future, with the refinement of this idea (which I would describe as revolutionary) and improving it for the better in all aspects, we will be able to enjoy an infinite number of different experiences in only one game, which would be very impressive.

Ubisoft even gave us a special additional choice that you can activate at the beginning of the game, which is to control the fate of the character that you will be playing with, and that property called “Permadeath “, and it gives a special experience of the game because in this mode any operatives who go down in the field and aren’t revived will remain dead forever, that might seem rather cruel, but it’s arguably the way that Watch Dogs Legion was designed to be played.

The gameplay style of the game is divided into two parts the first and most important, which we are certainly used to from the first and second part, which is hacking, everything in the game is vulnerable to hacking, starting from vehicles, traffic lights, electronic doors, Drones which are heavily spread throughout the streets of London, surveillance cameras that can help you access the red zones “where you aren’t supposed to be ” by observing the enemies and trying to get rid of them one by one.

The elements of hacking did not differ much from the previous parts, you will not feel any new ideas in the hacking part only the addition of some small tools that help you hack and penetrate a lot of places and people, but with the integration of the elements of hacking that we are used to with the diversity of characters and their playstyle they were able to offer us a new experience than before, even the puzzles that we have seen before are back again with more difficult levels but they are also not boring because they appear at a bit critical times.

As for the second part that the game relies on next on hacking and penetration, is the varied combat system as we mentioned between melee fights, which is a remarkable addition to the game because here the fighting way is divided into direct combat by punching your enemy’s faces directly, or dodging their hits in an acrobatic way and hitting them again like in one of the “Souls” games ( not comparing at all), even if your enemies block your attacks you can perform bigger hits and break their defense and finish them off quickly. Hand-to-hand combat here was fun and I decided to use it a lot, although the game greatly encourages the elements of hacking with weapons engagement. Even though the enemies seem to be powerless in most levels due to the weak artificial intelligence that isn’t at its best and it did not appear as expected at all.

The game as mentioned before takes place in London city, which its varied missions were between the East and West of the British capital, and in order to navigate here and there, you will be using various transportation means such as cars that simulate the time period in which the events of the game were happening, you don’t have a set of cars that you can modify and customize for yourself, but there are people that you can recruit which they possess whether powerful cars or fast motorcycles that you can use in chases, which by the way has become more fun than before where it is hard to get away from the police, you can only do so by overcoming them in the chase or completely get lost from their sight, and that became harder especially since you can no longer stop the engine and hide inside the car as in the previous parts.

The game appeared at a good graphical level, which was provided in the Watch Dogs series (despite the low level that the first part has suffered from as mentioned above), starting from the design of London city, saturated with colors and very bright lighting, which especially appears in the best possible image on PC because of its support to the Ray Tracing technology, currently only available on PC, but will also be available through the new generation consoles. And although it doesn’t support the current generation consoles, the game looked with amazing graphics, whether the characters and their different designs depending on their origins whether English, Indian or even European, passing to vehicles and drones and the game world that was designed with great precision and made us dive into and take pictures right and left.

Conclusion

To conclude, Watch Dogs Legion have a good story that completely avoided the kick events that were presented in the second part of the series, and a different gameplay style from one character to another and combined with the elements of hand-to-hand combat, which provided diversity in the style of play while highlighting that artwork by amazing graphics especially for those who have tried it on a PC, with its support for Ray Tracing technology that made this game the perfect experience that Ubisoft should have provided from the beginning, but life is not completely rosy. The game also has some little problems like voice performance and strange lip movements and some technical problems like the drops in FPS sometimes, and even the weak artificial intelligence. But despite those problems, this game has managed to get our attention to the series again, and maybe in the future, and with the release of the new generation version, we will see the perfect part. Of course, we do not forget the variety of missions between the main and the side ones, which adds long playing hours to the life of the game without feeling bored.