I did a “current impressions” review on Watch Dogs Legion not long ago. Since then, I’ve beaten the game! Woo! It was definitely an experience, and now I’m ready to show spoilers and throw some serious complaints. I’ll be separating this into parts, so you don’t have to worry about where you left off.
Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.
Part One — Recruiting
Watch Dogs Legion is all about the “play as anyone!” mechanic, and it shows. There’s even a few missions where you’re forced to recruit.
Obviously, though, you’ll want to recruit beyond those missions as well. Maybe for a Clan Kelley enforcer in order to get uniformed access and a suicidal spider-bot that runs to an enemy and explodes. Maybe for someone with a police contract so you don’t stay in jail as long. Or maybe you just want someone that dies randomly. Who knows.
Whatever the case may be, recruitment is… not all that repetitive, actually. Sure, some things are similar, but you’ll usually find that the game spices similar missions up with new locations and challenges.
It’s not perfect, obviously, but it’s better than just having three missions on repeat.
…Speaking of repeat!
Part Two — Kidnappings
Don’t you love it when you’re just strolling along, kicking fascists in the head, when suddenly your robot AI tells you one of your operatives just got kidnapped? Yeah, me neither.
If you piss someone off in the game, they might be inclined to kidnap one of your operatives. Meaning you cannot use them until you rescue them. But rescuing them first requires you to get data from a specified enemy.
It’s the same damn thing.
Every time.
And it happens a lot.
Honestly, you’re better off killing people in this game. Using a shock weapon against them or a non-lethal takedown will just make them hate you. And, get this, there’s no way to recover from a “hates DedSec” status.
Yeah. If someone hates you, they hate you. End of story. Nothing to help with in the deep profiler, no way to persuade them, you’re kinda just fucked if you wanted to recruit that person.
And now you’ve also got the anxiety of “oh boy, which one of my operatives is going to get kidnapped next?”
It’s really just not fun. It was fun the first time, meh the second, and agonizingly repetitive the sixth time.
I’ve been pretty light on spoilers so far, but this next one drops so many spoiler bombs that it’s probably considered a massacre. Last chance to leave if you haven’t played the game.
Still here? Alright, let’s move on to the story.
Part Three — Story
It’s fine.
It’s exactly what you expected from it, and that’s about it. There’s no (good) plot twists, nothing you wouldn’t have guessed from trailers, and nothing you would never expect to see in a Watch_Dogs game. There were so many chances for the story to take a turn and surprise me, but it didn’t. There was only one surprise, and I hate it. More on that later.
It feels like Ubisoft was playing it very safe with this story. That’s not a terrible thing, but I wish they’d try harder. Zero Day’s final action was so similar to Damien’s that it’s practically cheating.
Mary Kelley having a human trafficking ring came to no surprise to anyone, and the way you end it falls flat. Because, yes, Clan Kelley totally did not set up backup servers or anything. Why would they do that?
Bagley’s death is also nothing to behold. It’s tragic, emotional, and then you find out Bagley is fine post-credits and all of that was for naught. God forbid your actions have consequences.
In terms of the rest of the story… it’s fine. A bit generic, but it’s fine. The gameplay makes up for it ten-fold.
Part Four — Villains
Arguably the worst part of the game is the villains. No redeeming qualities, no regrets, and no personality.
The thing about Watch Dogs: Legion’s villains is that they don’t feel like people, they feel like characters. They don’t have anything that makes me feel like, “oh yeah, that’s a person, I can see someone acting that way.”
Mary Kelley was the most stereotypical villain possible. She didn’t even try to justify herself, she just likes power and seeing people under her control. Maybe money, who knows. She also falls under the mentally insane category, and we get no backstory about her. Thanks, Ubi.
The only one who fell close to this was Skye Larson. She had a good reason for doing what she did, albeit with terrible execution. (Not to mention, she was probably mentally insane.)
Nigel Cass is on the same boat. Stereotypical, generically written, power-hungry supervillain. Ubi tries to give him some meaning in his last moments, with him talking about how “he used to believe in people, he got a good man killed once,” then he just dies. Poof. Gone. No further elaboration, nobody brings it up, just… yeah he used to believe in people, sure. Admittedly, there might be more to this in the prequel novel, but I highly doubt it can make up for Ubi’s terrible, terrible last minute attempt to give Cass some morality.
Sabine being revealed as Zero Day was… well, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it was bullshit. It felt so fucking forced. There was no foreshadowing or anything like that. Ubi tried to hide that by having Bagley say “oh no wonder she wiped me.” Bagley’s memory got wiped because Albion was storming the area. Not only that, but both Bagley and Dalton agreed to having Bagley’s memory wiped. But, sure, let’s pretend that didn’t happen.
Part Five — Characters
I won’t be counting recruits in this part of the review. They all have different personalities and in a regular playthrough you may not even come across some. All on the same page? Great.
Bagley — Your personal assistant and a totally-not-stolen artificial intelligence for DedSec. He’s your guide throughout most of the game, but also a great source of comic relief. He’s cracking jokes all the time, even in his last moments. He’s honestly my favorite character in the entire game. His death is truly an emotional one, until you realize he’s actually just fine somehow.
404 — She’s fine. I like her, she’s well-written and does a good job at playing devil’s advocate from time to time. After her chapter, you don’t talk much to her at all apart from the final mission. I guess that’s fine, as she’s only meant to give you missions from there on out. I wish she got more screen time, though.
Kaitlin Lau — Part of the police department but goes on the side of DedSec until the Metro Police Department gets their shit together. Again, she only exists to give you missions, so there’s not much to say. I know you do a story mission or two for her, but I can’t remember them so they probably weren’t important.
Part Six — Visuals
Alright, enough negativity, let’s talk positives. Watch Dogs: Legion’s strongest point is its visuals.
From the lighting to the quality, everything in this game is pretty top-notch stuff. I played on a 1366x768 monitor, so I don’t get the best resolution, and that’s why some of these images look a bit pixelated. (Don’t worry — I’m aware my monitor is long overdue for an upgrade.)
I’ve seen gameplay with raytracing on, and it looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Since I have AMD, I don’t get to use raytracing, but still. If you’ve got a card that can… you’ll love it, I promise. Everything feels so amazing and it’s a huge upgrade from the previous entries in the Watch Dogs franchise.
There’s not much to say about the graphics other than to show them off, I guess. So, here, a collection of my favorite images from the game.
Part Seven — Extra Activities
I wish they had more flare.
Darts, keep-up, drinking, whatever. Those are some things that might be fun to do in your free time, but you won’t bother with them much. You’ll do em once, say “oh that’s cool”, and then forget about them for the rest of your playthrough.
My favorite extra activity, however, has to be turning boroughs defiant. Not only do you get a new operative, but everyone in that borough likes you more. Unless they’re Albion or Clan Kelley, because… yeah.
It’s a great turn for the Watch Dogs games. No other game in the franchise has done this, and I can’t wait to see if they do it again. Every final mission for turning boroughs defiant is always amazingly fun. I looked forward to them.
I was hoping there’d be some special dialogue or great reward for turning all the boroughs defiant. There’s not. Everyone just acts like it’s a normal day. So… I was disappointed. But I shrugged it off, it was still fun.
Open world events are pretty nice, too. Whether it’s beating up an Albion soldier who just threw an innocent to the ground, or bashing in the head of a Clan Kelley loan shark looking to “collect”, it always feels satisfying. This is the only Watch Dogs game I don’t mind getting a wanted level in.
Part Eight — Gameplay
It’s not that much different from Watch Dogs 2, but it’s different enough.
You can’t hack every drone by default, you need to unlock the ability to do that with tech points. You can even hijack turrets! Flying with drones is fun. With certain drones, like the CT drones, you can also do major damage to whoever is trying to gun you down.
Having different operatives really switches up how you strategize what to do. I played it safe for most of the game and used uniformed access, but found the game was a lot more fun when I got a Spy and Hitman. Going in guns blazing sounds stupid, but it can be really fun.
Different operatives also have limitations. For example, if your operative doesn’t come with a lethal weapon, then they can’t use lethal weapons even if another operative has them. If your operative only has a pistol, then they can only use pistols alongside non-lethal weapons.
Some operatives also have special weapons nobody else is allowed to use. The spy has a silenced pistol, the construction worker has a nail gun, the street artist has a paintball gun, you get the idea. It really makes you think, “how do I want to go into this?”
Part Nine — What I’d Change
Let’s make a list.
- Make Zero Day be someone else, like Malik. Imagine that, you’re meant to believe that Malik is not Zero Day, only to find out he really is. So who’d you lock up? One of his relatives, made to look like him. It makes sense, too. Dude was a spy, he’d know how to trick the enemy.
- Give the player more motivation to turn boroughs defiant. Having a new operative is cool and all, but you can find those operatives on the streets. Maybe award more tech points, or give a special weapon skin, or even a new weapon to play with!
- Make Nigel Cass’ boss fight harder. I didn’t touch on this because it wasn’t all that bad, but it’d be nice. He gets in this chunky suit of armor then just goes down in three shots. The scene wasn’t powerful, it was a laughingstock.
- Two words; portable radio. They got rid of this feature that was present in the first two games and I was angry about it. There’s so many good songs in the game but you have to be in a car to listen to any of them. No thanks, I like going on foot sometimes.
- Save in-game photos to storage drive. They don’t save anywhere except your save file, so there’s no easy way to view them unless you open the game. Even then, there’s a huge border around them. Why, Ubisoft, why?
- Give villains more personality and morality. *slams table with fist* I want more backstory for Cass and the Kelleys! I don’t know anything about them other than “they’re bad”. Give me some reason to like them so I can actually feel like I defeated a person and not an AI.
Epilogue — Conclusion
Final Review: 8/10
Would I recommend this? Only if you’re a current fan of the Watch Dogs franchise. I feel like it won’t appeal much to new players. I’d say definitely play at least Watch Dogs 2 first. Don’t worry, you won’t be missing out on anything important in Watch Dogs 1. The games are connected but, at most, they just reference each other.
I, myself, found Legion very fun and filling. Yeah, it doesn’t have the best writing, but the gameplay is fun and that’s what counts most. I’d also say wait for a bit, because the game still has quite a bit of bugs to work out.
TL;DR — It’s great for a Watch Dogs game, but meh as an overall game.
PC Specs
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700K @ 3.6Ghz
Storage: WDC WDS100T2B0C-00PXH0 w/ NVMe
RAM: 16.0GB DDR4
