Upon starting up Legasista, the first thing you’ll probably notice are the lack of arms and legs. Your in-game character is basically a floating head with disconnected hands and feet reminiscent of Rayman. It’s something you’ll soon get used to, but still, implied appendages are not for everyone. But beyond the simple character design, the game really does look better than its screenshots. You’ll see dynamic lighting effects as you walk through the dungeons, and the world is quite rich in color. When everything is moving and working together, the simple look of the game is not a drawback at all.

Though there’s lots of text in this game, most of it is voiced. The audio is in its original Japanese format, but you still get the emotion and feel behind everything, even if you can’t understand it. The background music is rather classic JRPG fare, including a pop song to accompany the intro. The game doesn’t break any new ground, but it is a high quality production.

Legasista is the story of a young man named Alto who explores ruins in the hopes of curing his sister from a mysterious condition. The ruins of Legasista are really the remains of ancient technology and research labs. Science has become the ancient mythology and mystery of this world. He soon meets some strange characters that include talking bean sprouts (who would be perfectly happy if Alto would eat them) and androids. Together, they provide a bit of comic relief as well, especially since one bean sprout in particular has a huge crush on Alto. The technology of the past turns out to have a deadly side, however. Alto gains the trust of a "weapon" that could turn on him at any moment, yet he continues on in the hope that it might cure his sister. Eh, it is a standard JRPG story, but it is entertaining.

The story is interesting enough to keep you going, and the big, animated portraits of each character help bring the acting to life. That’s good, because this is a pretty intense dungeon crawler that requires some perseverance and motivation to get through. The sheer number of concepts you need to learn for this game is staggering. It can be fun, but it can be tedious.

When you do get really deep into this game, there are plenty of features. One particularly cool one is the ability to create your own character. For those that like a challenge, there are random dungeons that can go up to 100 levels deep. You can somewhat control the difficulty of these dungeons, so if you want to go for the most rare equipment, you can head straight for the big challenges.

Legasista is a real-time action RPG, so there’s no time to take a break and contemplate your next move. Since it has these action elements, there’s an element of difficulty introduced. You’ll need to master timing and the actions of each weapon in order to make it through the messier, crowded dungeons. Of course, since this is an RPG, you can always go back and grind if the going gets too tough.

The other main element that makes this more difficult than your typical traditional RPG is the complexity of the game. More on that later, but suffice to say that this is not a game you’ll pick up and start playing in 30 minutes, or even a few hours. In fact, you’re kept in a tutorial dungeon for quite a while in the beginning of the game.

Legasista is one of those games for people who love rules to their games. I mean this game is rules on top of rules. For example, just look at one of the first concepts you’re introduced to about items. If you find an item in a dungeon, it will disappear as soon as you advance to the next floor. There are, however, items that don’t disappear, but you’ll have to survive and hang on to these items until you beat the entire dungeon. You’ll be able to use that item when you return to your homebase in the Railyard. There are still other items that you can use right away, and that remain permanently with you. However if you use these "yellow" items, you risk lowering the permanent durability of the item unless you wait until you leave the dungeon. Perfectly simple, right?

There were some concepts about the game that were just not intuitive at all. A line moves along your various health and durability bars as you take damage. You’ll take damage depending on where the line goes. And just when you think you’ve got a concept down because you’ve got previous experience in RPGs, this game throws in two or three more rules to remember. However, if you like delving into these kinds of rule-based games, there is plenty to learn in Legasista.

I can’t say Legasista sucked me in. Rather than an addictive feel, the game feels a little overwhelming at first. For some people, all you can see is the wall of menus, text, stats on top of stats, mana bars for clothing slots: it’s more like doing your taxes than gaming. The mix of action and RPG elements feels unique enough to warrant diving in. It’s just up to you whether you would like to let that happen.