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While you can see the potential in front of you for a great mix of throwback football gaming the difficulty can be tough to muscle through
As an enormous fan of the classic Tecmo Bowl titles back in the day, and regularly reflecting on the complete lack of almost any support for sports games on the Switch in general, I had high hopes when Legend Bowl was announced. On a general level, the good-ish news is that a lot of what has worked for Tecmo and some other football titles since then is present. Relatively deep and well-organized playbooks give you plenty of potential weapons to work with both on offense and defense. A full-blown franchise mode will help you get into the spirit of things, trying to manage your team both on the field and off to build something better for the future. Finally, in many ways the spirit of the likes of the old Tecmo football titles is there in the gameplay. That said, there are definitely some rough patches that can be frustrating. I think the biggest, and possibly the most crippling (especially if you want to play with some friends who are just picking it up) issue is with the passing and kicking gauge. It’s quick (even on the easiest setting), can be aggravating, and simply plays too big a role as the spoiler far too often as games play out. Even extra points are even odds since just a bit too little power and it will get blocked, too much and it risks lacking both power and accuracy. Especially with friends who are less used to that gauge it makes for quite an unfair advantage overall. At least with passing it feels more forgiving, but with kicking it’s a bit of a nightmare. What’s frustrating is that it’s “small” in design but big in consequence issues like this that take the experience down a peg or two when, on the whole, there’s also so much to enjoy. A patch to let up on the difficulty or even just a mode called “arcade-style” would really open the door to more people getting the most out of it. Even without it, if you’re diligent and determined, there’s quite a lot to enjoy here. You just need to be patient with it.
Justin Nation, Score:Good [7.5]