Watch Dogs: Legion — Current Impressions

Autumn
4 min readNov 8, 2020

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tl;dr — It’s an Ubisoft game.

Slight spoilers ahead. Nothing major.

I per-ordered Watch Dogs: Legion. The gold edition, in fact. I was super excited for it when it was announced at E3, and all I can say about it so far is that “it’s just okay.”

Moving forth on this review, you should know I have not finished the game yet. This is a “current impressions” as of November 7th, 2020. I’m sure the game will mature, get patches, and I might even like the story and characters more, who knows. Maybe I’ll like em less. This is an Ubisoft title, after all.

First off,

Yeah. I’ve had my fair share of this screen. Only a few times, but all of those times were in quick succession of each other. And if that doesn’t pop up, it’ll just crash my graphics card. Whatever it feels like doing that day.

The day one patch and November 6th patch were meant to fix these issues. They did not. I would not be surprised if Ubisoft was just focusing on issues with NVIDIA cards. They were heavily advertising the “NVIDIA RTX TECHNOLOGY” with this game. And as an AMD user, I don’t get that, of course. But most people probably do.

It doesn’t even make much sense. The game only takes up 3GB of my Radeon RX 5700XT’s 8GB VRAM. The only other game I’ve had an issue with like this is Bloons Tower Defense 6. Don’t ask, cause I don’t have an answer.

If nothing else, the game still looks stunning. It’s not that huge of an upgrade over even, hell, Watch_Dogs 1! But it’s an upgrade nonetheless, and I’m sure it looks much better with RTX on.

The (not so) rare manless gunman, on the attack!

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its fair share of visual bugs.

Dude, fix your jacket.

And sequence breaking bugs.

I got here by starting a fight with someone. You’re meant to solve a puzzle here to open the door.

But it’s still fun. Many people complain about the repetitiveness, but… it’s a Watch Dogs game. You hack, you fight, you electrocute someone’s face with a technologically advanced spider-like robot. All the usual stuff.

If you’re not into this type of game, you’re not into this type of game. I, however, very much am. I love the hacking, I love the combat, I love the strategizing! Figuring things out ahead is fun for me, but it’s also fun to just wing it sometimes.

Then again, that’s a good way to get your recruits in the hospital, or arrested.

You might’ve also noticed I’m playing as the same recruit in all of these screenshots. Yep. As soon as you find an Albion employee, you’re just good to go. A construction worker might be nice, maybe even a Clan Kelley member. But you don’t need them, especially when one of your recruits barely takes damage. Thank you, Physically Fit attribute!

As for the characters and the story, not much to say. Other than your recruits, Bagley, and Sabine, everyone else is a pretty big asshole. The villains have no redeeming qualities, which I guess is gonna make it better when I finally liberate London and beat them to a pulp?

It’s a personal preference, but I do love me a morally grey villain. And, there is one, but they only last for one chapter. Won’t get into it, cause, you know, spoilers. But it was a nice change of pace. Too bad they only last one chapter.

All in all, it’s an Ubisoft game. Nothing impressive, but for fans of the Watch Dogs franchise, it’s *chef’s kiss* it.

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Autumn

Cybersecurity advocate, game / anime reviewer, and hobbyist author.