Just hearing the name ‘Redwall’ fills me with warm, fuzzy feelings. Brian Jacques’s kids series was something I discovered late, being a teenager ensconced in a school library with nothing else to do I read through several on long lunch times. They were beautifully realised worlds of anthropomorphic protagonists, with a surprising amount of depth given the target audience.
Something I’ve craved is that fond warmth of the books in interactive form and it has surprised me that it hasn’t been attempted properly before, and that there is no franchise already.
Well, if The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is anything to go by there is a good reason that no one has attempted it before.
A third person stealth/exploration game, Legends of Redwall is focused on one of two protagonists (the player gets to pick at the beginning). Sophia and Liam are trainee scouts in Mossflower, after their induction, tragedy strikes with rats arriving to ruin everything.
The game then unfurls across multiple acts with Liam and Sophie stealthing, puzzling and chatting their way back to each other.
I’ll start with the good. The voice acting and writing is solid, for fans of the series there are appearances from known faces. The build up to the first novel feels additive to the original text, and I think that some people will get a lot out of watching all the cut scenes and dialogue on Youtube.
The character models are decent and definitely evoke the source material that I have a fondness for.
And that’s your lot reader.
Legends of Redwall lacks in pretty much every other department. The character animations are stilted, with the main characters waddling and running everywhere in an unconvincing fashion. The environment art, if I was being charitable, look like Claymation models.
But I am not being charitable with reused textures everywhere and threadbare foliage every area looks unloved, dull, and uninspiring. With good level design, or art direction, the lower poly models could have looked like a choice, but they are put in such bad light I can’t wonder if this was a joke to someone. I was often made to look at low textured areas on purpose and it made Legends of Redwall look miserable.
I think I could have forgiven all of the lacking artistic design, if Redwall was actually fun to play. It isn’t.
The game has some hub worlds to explore, interspersed with stealth/action areas. The hub areas are sparsely populated and the puzzles therein involve wandering around and collecting stuff. There is nothing in these moments that make them interesting.
The stealth is even worse, with the Redwall using an innovative ‘smell’ system. The idea is that the player can track specific fragrances, and also see which way their own scent might blow and give the rats a clue to where they are. In practice, going into scent mode means being inundated with a tons of colours that waft all over the place. It is a overly busy and detracts from clear communication required for stealth, something the stilted animation and movement makes even worse.
Conclusion
I genuinely feel for the team that worked on this – it is a licensed product that is much loved in the UK. It is hard to please people engaged with any franchise. But I don’t think I am being precious when I say this game is abysmal in everything but the narrative.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
