Legendary Eleven Review

Legendary Eleven Review

Legendary Eleven | The new football season on Xbox starts around September with new versions for Fifa and PES but developer Eclipse Games changed that by releasing Legendary Eleven at the start of the year, months before the previously mentioned games. This retro-football game came out with mixed reviews on Nintendo Switch in June 2018 and now finds the green path towards Xbox One! Should we be glad? Let us find out in this review for Legendary Eleven!

Legendary Eleven

THE GOOD

  • Elegant menu presentation: It rarely happens with games but they totally nailed the presentation side of Legendary Eleven. Everything yells that you are playing a modern 90’s football-game. The menu’s are quick and transform you to a world where wearing chokers, crop tops and catsuits from the 90’s was considered fashionably cool!
  • Recognisable cartoon Visuals: I understand that the style from the players is something you can love or hate but it totally did the trick for me. The skinny players with long legs and arms and overall screen effect really helps to give the game much needed personality. Legendary Eleven had many unexpected visual treats like believable crowds, great snow-effects, realistic atmosphere and decent looking fields.
  • Collecting stickers: Winning cups with specific teams earns you stickers that allows you to improve your team. You handpick a few active stickers and experience the difference on the field. The concept is good, I have to be honest and say that I wasn’t really motivated to collect every sticker but I’m sure that some of you will enjoy unlocking them.
  • Controls: Accessible! Tried playing a PES or FIFA match as a newbie against someone who played for weeks? Well, you won’t have this issue here, sure the player who played before has an advantage but even beginners can enjoy and score some easy goals. You pass (A), you run (R2), you dribble (X) and you shoot/tackle (B). I’m fairly sure that 90% of the players understands the controls immediately, just how it should be with an arcade football game!
Legendary Eleven

Mixed Feelings

  • Shooting mechanic: The elephant in the room, or at least the weirdest thing about Legendary Eleven is holding the shoot-button for powering up your shot. The weird part about this is that your player doesn’t move and stands completely still while powering up, inviting defenders to tackle. I’m still not 100% comfortable with the mechanic, it isn’t an issue when you have your powershot available but regularly you’ll be standing still for a few seconds to release your shot towards the goal.
  • Online? LegendaryEleven is a game made to be played against real human opponents, that option is available locally. While I really appreciate that you have an online option too it is kinda weird that it is only against a friend and not against random players. While you can cheat the system by using Xbox’s social “find an online player” it still feels like a missed opportunity.
Legendary Eleven

THE BAD

  • AI: You are at the corner flag, deliver a fantastic cross towards the second post… and for the millionst time no AI player is to be seen. Frustrating how idiotic your teamplayers move around the field and playing against the computer (whatever the difficulty setting) can be a big sore eye if you have a tactic in mind. The goalkeeper is a joke, even bursting and stealing the ball, like World War Hulk would do, from a teammate. It just doesn’t make any sense. Even worse, and this has happened twice, the goalkeeper tackles his own teammate while he normally isn’t allowed to do that (official football rules) the ball magically flies away and ends up in the goal. It might be the easiest goal ever but stuff like this makes you want to remove Legendary Eleven from your harddrive.

Legendary Eleven | Score: 63%

We are glad to see a revival of the arcade football genre with Legendary Eleven, Eclipse Games did a decent job in delivering a fun and easy-to-play game with pals or alone. It is only plagued by some really terrible artificial intelligence, bringing the joy down from an otherwise good package.