How accurate is the DC Gauntlet Legends

[Zoltor]

When compared to the Arcade version.

The PS1 version was changed a lot, however the only change the DC version seem to have got, was you need to be lv 25 to unlock the upgraded class(instead of of 10).

Is there anything else they changed for the DC version, that differs from the Arcade game?

[sketch]

I'm going off of memory (for both the DC and arcade), but I remember thinking the graphics on the DC looked very close in quality to the arcade. Of course, my memory has been known to be faulty

I hardly played the arcade machine, so I have no idea if the level design is the same...

[A Black Falcon]

I love Gauntlet Legends and Dark Legacy, both games are games I've played for many hours, like a lot, and I consider true classics. Unfortunately, however, the DC version just isn't worth it. Its flaws are too big.

However, while I have played the arcade games a good bit (got at least halfway through Legends in the arcades, for instance), that was a long time ago, so I'm fuzzy on how that played, mostly I can compare the console versions...

But essentially, DC Gauntlet Legends isn't Gauntlet Legends, really. Basically it's a bizarre hybrid of Gauntlet Legends and the first half of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, and as a result isn't really worth playing compared to N64 Gauntlet Legends or GC/Xbox Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (PS1 GL and PS2 GDL are inferior ports compared to those versions).

While the graphics in DC GL are indeed nice, that content... while the Battlefield, Skorne's Cathedral, and Underworld levels are just as expected from Legends, the four levels before that are not -- instead of being the four worlds of GL, that is the Mountain, Castle, Town, and Frozen Plains, in that order, it's four of the eight worlds of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy that you play -- the Mountain, Castle, Desert, and Forest stages. The other four worlds of GDL are not in the game, you just play those four and then go to the final areas. This means that you play four of the easier worlds, but never get to the harder ones, making DC GL shorter and easier than other versions of the game.

I'm pretty sure that some of the levels in DC GL have some slight differences from the same levels in other console versions of GL and GDL that I have played, but it's not nearly enough to make up for everything else wrong with this version.

Also, in addition to the four GL characters and their hidden upgrade versions, the four new basic-level characters from GDL are also playable, so you can play as the Jester, etc. The hidden upgrade versions of the GDL characters, however, are not in the game, just the four for the original GL characters.

So basically, up to this point, the main problem with the game is that it basically feels like you're playing half of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, followed by the end levels from Gauntlet: Legends. Why do that when you could play a normal version, like the much longer GDL console versions?

That's not the worst thing about DC GDL, though... the worst thing, in my opinion, is that there is NO FOOD FOR SALE IN THE SHOP. Now I don't know for sure if the PS1 or PS2 versions of GL/GDL have food for sale, but the N64 and GC/Xbox games do, and it's crucially important. Without it, about the only way to heal is to extremely tediously replay easy levels over and over, to refill your health... it's just miserable, don't even bother and play a better version of the game!

Also, like the PS1 and PS2 ports, but like the arcade original, you can't save items. Items you buy are on a timer, when they run out they are gone. On the N64, GC, and Xbox, you have an inventory and can disable items, saving and storing them for later use, which is a great, great feature to have.

It is at least largely bug free, unlike most copies of GC and Xbox GDL (they have some very irritating bugs), but I'll take the bugs if it gets me a complete, and much more feature rich, game.

Oh, none of the home versions have the constantly decreasing health meter that the arcade version has. The NES/Genesis/etc. ports all did have it, and it was very frustrating in a system without quarters to give you more health. I think that getting rid of that in all the home ports was a really good idea, these games would not be nearly as much fun otherwise. I mean, I did like the arcade Gauntlet Legends, great game... but the home ports are just more fun, thanks to no ticking-clock decreasing health bar.


(note - XBox GDL is virtually identical to the GC version. The PS2 version is not the same though, and has no item storing like the DC and PS1 versions of GL.)
I think I'll always love N64 GL the most, even if GDL is almost twice as long... part of that probably was that it was the first version I had, but it has features no other version has. It has item saving, which a few GDL versions have, but without the bugs of those versions (in GC GDL 1.0 items are invisible when you start the game each time after you load, so you need to go enable and then disable each one to make them appear in your inventory, just one of the game's bugs), and without GDL's stupid hidden and changing timer -- in the N64 version you can see how much of each item you have, and you know that it'll always decrease at the same rate. In GDL though they changed things so items don't last as long against bosses, which is of course where you'll need them the most.

Also, in N64 GL, you can sell any item you pick up. In GC GDL, though, you can't do that. For no apparent reason I can understand, there are some items you can sell and others you just can't. It's pretty annoying, I don't want that stuff, I want to sell it for health or something!

Oh, and one level from GL doesn't appear in GDL. It's one of the airship-style levels from the Plague Town. I have no idea why it was removed. Many other levels were added, four worlds' worth, but why did they drop a stage?

Also, the interface isn't as good. On the N64, you move around the panel display with the C buttons. You can display your character stats (including your experience and how much you need to level up), which of the special boss weapons you have, how many of each kind of bonus coins you have (from the bonus stages), and your inventory. You unlock the hidden characters by getting all of the coins in the bonus rooms. Bonus coins are permanent, so if you get one once in a bonus stage you have it, and if you fail to get all the coins all you need to do to is get to the bonus room again and get the rest of them, easy enough.

In GDL, you can't look at your stats while playing. Instead, they only appear when you beat a level, or maybe only when you level up. This means that there's no way to know exactly how much experience you have or how close to levelling up you are. Also, while you still unlock the hidden characters by getting all of the coins in bonus rooms, the coins reset each time -- you must get all coins in the time limit or next time you'll have to start over from scratch. It makes getting hidden characters much, much harder, I don't think I like the change.

Also, over time you gradually start getting less and less XP from easier enemies in GDL, so eventually you get none. If you want to reach max level (99 in all GL and GDL games) you'll need to use Deaths. On that note, GDL has two different kinds of Deaths, Red and Black; one drains 100HP, the other a level. Using halos to get a level from the level-draining deaths is the easiest way to reach max level, it's just not as fun as getting max level was in Legends. (In Legends, there's only the health-drain Death, if I remember. I forget whether the DC game has one or both.) Legends does not have decreasing XP rewards as you level up, as far as I know.

Thanks to the 20-odd added levels GDL probably is the best version anyway, despite all the flaws, but the flaws are significant.

(Oh yeah, and PS1 GL is the worst version -- it's the only 2 player only version of Gauntlet Legends or Dark Legacy. Worst graphics too, and no item saving...)

[Rusty Venture]

I loves me Dark Legacy.

I think the baddie generators got kinda insane in the later, harder worlds (borderline tedious) that resulted in hacking away at individual levels of upwards of 30+ minutes, but it was fun and funny.

SWEET NUTRIENTS!

[Zoltor]

To A Black Falcon: Thanks, and well that sucks sigh. Also yea ofcourse, life draining so wouldn't make sense in the home version.


Sigh, looks like I'm just better off saving, and buying the Arcade Cabinet.

I use to have GDL for the PS2, and while it was ok, hm I don't know(or remeber the exact details, as this was years ago), but not only did I not like it anywhere near GL for the Arcade, I was generally disappointed as well.

Yea, no food in shops=epic fail

Yea, I looked up some info on the PS1 vwesion, and there are so many changes, It's not funny.

[goldenband]

A Black Falcon, thanks for that detailed post. My girlfriend and I did a couple playthroughs of Gauntlet Legends N64 over the past year (once on Normal, once on Expert), and I was considering getting the PSX or DC version just to check it out. Sounds like I don't need to do that. I'm not sure if I'll get Dark Legacy for the GameCube -- I was considering it, but it might be too long for our tastes, and the bugs you describe sound annoying.

BTW we never bought food in the shops -- too expensive! We just would replay the first level, sell excess items (and buy Armor), and repeat. None of the monsters do that much damage, really, and I don't think we ever bothered out maxing out our health once we got past Level 30 or so.

[Da_Shocker]

I loved the DC the version.

[A Black Falcon]

To A Black Falcon: Thanks, and well that sucks sigh.

Also yea ofcourse, life draining so wouldn't make sense in the home version.

Tell that to the people who left life drain in every pre-Gauntlet Legends home port of a Gauntlet game, such as the NES, Genesis, Lynx, various computer, etc. versions... it was awful, but it was there in all of them.

Sigh, looks like I'm just better off saving, and buying the Arcade Cabinet.

I use to have GDL for the PS2, and while it was ok, hm I don't know(or remeber the exact details, as this was years ago), but not only did I not like it anywhere near GL for the Arcade, I was generally disappointed as well.

You should try GC or XBox GDL. They definitely have flaws, but fewer than the no-item-saving PS2 version, and all of those new levels are worth playing.

Really, I love the ability to permanently save items and then use them when I want to, without that feature the game feels like it's really missing something... why they left it out of a bunch of the home ports, after putting it in in the first one (the N64 version was the first home port), I have absolutely no idea.

Yea, no food in shops=epic fail

Seriously, as soon as I saw that I pretty much stopped playing, I enjoy DC GL otherwise, but without that, it's going to take far, FAR too long to heal, it'd be a ridiculous pain just to heal each time that it didn't need to be. I have no idea what they were thinking...

Yea, I looked up some info on the PS1 vwesion, and there are so many changes, It's not funny.

Yeah, PS1`GL is pretty bad, from what I've heard... but I'd expect the N64 to have a better version than the Playstation. I'd just have expected the DC to be able to outdo the N64, which is why it's disappointing that, graphics aside, it doesn't.

(Oh yeah, and N64 GL has Expansion Pak support, so it does look better with the expansion pak than without it.)

A Black Falcon, thanks for that detailed post. My girlfriend and I did a couple playthroughs of Gauntlet Legends N64 over the past year (once on Normal, once on Expert), and I was considering getting the PSX or DC version just to check it out. Sounds like I don't need to do that. I'm not sure if I'll get Dark Legacy for the GameCube -- I was considering it, but it might be too long for our tastes, and the bugs you describe sound annoying.

(Note -- I'm comparing N64 GL to GC GDL here, because those are the main versions I have.)

The worst bug is the crash bug, sometimes when one of the pop-up messages appears the game hard freezes. I believe that exists in all versions of GDL. The invisible inventory bug is annoying, but really is just a minor nuisance. There were three revisions of GC GDL, and I think the (rarer) later ones fix at least some of the bugs, but you can only tell them apart by a number printed (small) on the disc itself somewhere... maybe in the barcode or something, I forget exactly.

If you really love Gauntlet the Dreamcast version is a little amusing, with graphics the quality of the GC/Xbox/PS2 versions but with that bizarre hybrid design features-wise, but it's just a curiosity and really isn't worth it unless you get it cheap, and have played Dark Legacy before too I'd say and just want to compare (and like the series).

I would recommend Dark Legacy. It's not an incredibly long game, I think it took me 30 hours or so my first time... I mostly played in Hard difficulty, except for the bosses I dropped it to Easy because the bosses in these game are insanely, insanely hard. It is a longer game than Legends, though, since there are eight worlds instead of four, and an additional level at the end too, with just that one airship stage removed. Also I don't like the progression in GDL quite as much -- I think that Legends is the better starting point for a new player, the Mountain makes a lot more sense as the first world than the new first world of GDL. GDL's first level is new, and it's really long. ANd then the other levels of that world are longer too. Basically GDL splits the "plague" and "airship" parts of the Town world in Legends into two separate worlds, adding new levels to each, and puts the "plague" one in as the game's first world. Why they thought that that was a better introduction than the Mountain world I have no idea, but I think they were wrong.

And yeah, I much prefer N64 Legends' ingame interface (being able to see your XP and stats while playing is great), the lack of bugs, the fact you can sell all items, etc...

On that note, some more differences between GL and GDL. I prefer GL's simpler level unlocking system where all you need to do is find those Obelisks. In GDL you need to collect colored coins to unlock each world, which you get in the worlds before that point. Collect enough and that world unlocks,etc. You also need to collect these other special items, though, to unlock the wings of the building that have some of the worlds in them. To get these you have to beat special bosses in the levels, that aren't in GL./ These aren't "world boss" hard, but they're tougher enemies that you'll have to fight a bunch of. May need to replay levels to get enough. Oh, as far as the Runestones go, both titles are pretty much the same -- there are the same number of them, in GDL they're just spread out across all of the levels.

Oh, N64 GL v. GC GDL have quite different save systems. In GL, each character is a separate save slot. You save each character as a separate file. Once you unlock hidden characters, you can switch to one of them and play as that character, but if I remember right, you can't switch back to your original character after switching to a bonus one, which was kind of odd (not certain about that). You could also start a new game as a bonus character, though how you had to do it was, if I remember right, a little strange (you couldn't just select them from the list, you had to load a game with them unlocked and then start a new game or something like that...). You could also change your character's name at any time. You could save to controller paks in any of the four controllers. All characters within a file share a level and stats, so you can switch characters, but your character stays at the same level they were at. You need to make a new file to start again from level 1.

In GDL, though, the game creates one save file, which must be on a card in slot A. In this file you get eight save file slots. Each save slot has a single name which will apply to all characters, and you CANNOT change it, which is really dumb. Within this named file, you have access to all characters, and each is entirely separate, and starts from level 1 -- so essentially you're getting 16 or 17 characters (8 default, 9 unlockable; GL has 4 default, 5 unlockable), each with their own progression through the game, in each one of those eight slots... all tied under one display name.

There are plusses and minuses to each of the two systems, I'm not sure which is better. The "you can't change the name" thing in GDL is stupid), but you get a lot more characters for your space, which is nice.

I also prefer the GL bonus room system, as I said. But still, GDL has lots of new levels, some of which are really cool, and any Gauntlet Legends fan, I think, will ultimately like the game, despite its drawbacks. Some of those new levels were just so awesome that I do love Dark Legacy, despite all of my complaints. That last, Joker-themed world had some crazy stuff in it...

BTW we never bought food in the shops -- too expensive! We just would replay the first level, sell excess items (and buy Armor), and repeat. None of the monsters do that much damage, really, and I don't think we ever bothered out maxing out our health once we got past Level 30 or so.

Don't use the inventory items (special weapons) you pick up. Disable them and sell most of them in shops for money. It's a good way to get cash. Food is expensive, but in terms of how long it takes to get to full health, not nearly as much so as the time consuming method you describe there, and that's the only way to heal in DC GL...

I also rarely bought special weapon stock, most money goes to food and, sometimes, stat ups. What I don't sell I save for bosses, because they're much harder and the special weapons can be really useful there.

[Zoltor]

If I ever met them I would, that's for sure(back in the day, I wanted to make myself like the Guantlet games on the NES, but sadly, I just couldn't).

Ok, perhaps I'll pick up the GC version(shouldn't cost much anyway), to give GDL another try, and yea saving items is a big deal.

Yea, the least they could've done was restore your HP when you clear a stage, if they're not gonna even sell meat in shops.

I guess I could try the N64 version(atleast for the mean time), but yea wtf, the DC is basically designed to play perfect ports of Arcade games (that's what the damn system does best for crying out loud), so I don't know why the developers were screwing around(sigh I was hoping there would be a perfect port for the home).

[fahlim003]

With respect to Dark Legacy, there are different versions on GameCube & Xbox - can you physically inspect one or the other to properly identify them or do you need to inspect them on a computer/in-game?

[bultje112]

this video sums it up well. dreamcast version is very different but very good in a different way.

[Leynos]

I honestly hate Dark Legacy how a lot was changed for the worse to me. Legends is my choice but I know I'm in the minority.

[StuOhQ]

this video sums it up well. dreamcast version is very different but very good in a different way.

That was a great video. Thanks for sharing!