There has been a steady stream of 4X games in the last year, and it takes a certain type of person to indulge in this particular genre. Coincidentally most of these titles are set in space, which seems like the best environment to explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate ad nauseam. Legends of Pegasus is the latest 4X title to hit the digital store shelves, brought to us by a new team from Germany called Novacore Studios. On the surface it looks to have everything you would need in a strategy game of this nature (spaceships, colonization modules, and particle beams) but it ends up being a mish mash of ideas stripped from previous games. Riddled by bugs, Legends of Pegasus is a shell of a game that does nothing for the genre and requires little of you attention.
I have to give credit to Novacore Studios for attempting to add a storyline to the experience. There is a reason why 4X strategy games don’t have storied campaigns, as it is very difficult to corral players into a story while still giving them the freedom to explore the galaxy. Legends of Pegasus takes a page out of my favorite show, Battlestar Galactica, and has you commanding the remnants of the human race who were driven from Earth after a surprise alien attack. In search of survival, you command a small fleet that must assemble the pieces back together through colonization, technology research, and of course fight off the imminent alien force that is threatening your very existence. The story is given to you though talking portraits in game and when you hit certain milestones, you are treated to a motion comic that elaborates on the current events. There are three playable races: the survivalist humans, the insectoid Anthrox, and the cybernetic X’or, each with their own four episodes. There are predictable plot twists and unimagined characters making the overall story experience lackluster, proving again that 4X games don’t need a plot.
The story is told through a series of stills with spoken dialog.
The Human campaign serves as the tutorial which is uninformative at best. You’re presented with text popups that do little to teach you the game, and the mission descriptions sound something like this, “Expand your fleet.”. The Achilles heel of 4X games is that they are complex, so learning the systems is of utmost importance. A simple objective of eliminating an enemy threat is frustrating when the game expects you to know how to manage your economy. If you complete an objective before you are given that actual mission, you will have to start from scratch and begin from step one. What it comes down to is that the tutorial is terribly designed and does nothing but waste your time instead of teaching you how to play the game.
The combat requires little to no strategy. Point your guns and shoot.
Legends of Pegasus borrows from it’s predecessors in every way, but manages to screw everything up in translation. The user interface is ripped straight from Galactic Civilizations, but gives you a watered down version that does not present the information you need. The look and feel comes from Sins of a Solar Empire, but the camera control makes it nearly impossible to navigate the galaxy properly. This year’s Endless Space does turn based strategy properly where Legends of Pegasus makes you painfully click End Turn until something significant happens. The majority of the game is turn based where you will manage your economy, build your empire, and command your fleet. However, it shifts into real time when you enter a battle. There is little strategy to be seen in the battles, as every fight had me ordering every one of my ships to fire on the enemy until it was killed and nothing more. It could have also been the fact that I was unable to properly select my units because it didn’t register with the game, or that there was mutiny happening (I couldn’t tell). Don’t worry though, the voice overs will add to the suspense by letting you know that their shields are down every damn second to the point at which I had to turn them off. All of this is baffling to me because it does not take much for me to enjoy a game like Legends of Pegasus but it turned out to be a cacophony of elements thrown together with little care.
Aside from the gameplay, the management of your federation is overly cumbersome. The economy portion does little to help you plan properly, and if you are not taxing your citizens you can end up with a debt that makes it impossible to build anything else. I’m no economics major, but I’m willing to bet that isn’t the most efficient way to run things. On that note, who is making people PAY for things when the survival of your entire race is on the line. The technology tree is a simple list that doesn’t tell what you are actually getting from researching things like “electronics” or “special ship design”. There is no overall tech tree to help you focus your empire or give it some sort of plan or direction. My actions felt aimless, and it did not feel like I was having an impact on the scenario. Good thing the AI is pretty brainless, as their idea of a strategy is to send a single frigate my way every 10 turns.
The UI is cluttered and leaves out critical information.
As for the co-op experience? You can create a custom skirmish and invite a friend to play, but only if you hate this friend. The skirmish mode does away with the story and feels more like a proper 4X, although all the shortcomings still stand. You and your partner can command a fleet to take on the AI in a struggle for galactic superiority. Don’t go looking for friends in Legends of Pegasus because the multiplayer is empty. Late into the night you can maybe find someone playing, but connection bugs will make your attempts to find a co-op partner as useful as screaming in space.
The sense of scale is there in Legends of Pegasus but it does little to fill the void. What you are left with is an unpolished strategy game that does nothing new for the genre. There was an opportunity to improve on the competition but the lack of polish and design flaws demonstrate that its wings were clipped before it had a chance to fly.