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.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Two players can build up a galactic empire to take on the AI in a struggle for space superiority.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.