I’m a sucker for Schafer. I enjoy his quirky humor, the unique art styles, and his music taste is stellar. And with all that said, while I enjoyed Brutal Legend, it needed a little bit of polish. Let’s run down the gripes, shall we?
1) Whaddya mean I have to go find it again? Scattered throughout the world are legends, These legends, once found, describe the history of the world of Brutal Legend. A world that is pretty fucking metal. And after you find it and watch the video, you can’t watch it again through a menu. You need to trek across the world again to find it. And god forbid you find them in an unusual order.
2) How the hell do I open that? It wasn’t until I finished the game that I found out how to free the dragon statues and the legends. I thought I needed to find the proper relic in order to have a way to unlock them. Turns out I just needed to do some Pyro or Earthshakers. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the first comment out of the character’s mouth wasn’t “I’ll be back when I can find a way to get you out of there.”
3) Why is there only one campaign? The game focuses on Ironheade the entire time, and you never play as another group. Which is irritating because once you hit multiplayer, you can play as all three factions and only have a clue as to how to play one of them. Instead of having constant repeatable missions, the Legends could have unlocked Deviculous’ rise to power in the Tainted Coil, and how Ophelia led the Drowning Doom. This would’ve given you time with the individual units to learn how they play, similar to how all of the other units were introduced for Ironheade.
4) Where are the awesome boss fights? You have three boss fights right away, and then don’t have another until the final boss which is about six hours down the line. I know you’re going for the stage battle aspect, but the boss fights are so well done that it’s a major disappointment going so long between them.
The first two points could be fixed with a patch, by adding the Legends to Eddie’s notebook and adding the opening clues to the tutorials. The third would involve going back to the design phase to add in an expansion pack and the fourth would require reworking the entire game. I don’t anticipate these things being done, but if they were, I can’t see a valid way to argue against this being a must buy for any gaming enthusiast.