Watch Dogs Legion – PS5

In Watch Dogs: Legion, players find themself in a dystopic London where technology is supressing the population. DeadSec is up to its usual antics and sticking it to the man. Get ready to recruit any partygoer, model, hitman or grandma and build your unstoppable hacking Legion.

Liberating London

Watch Dogs: Legion starts with DeadSec trying to stop an explosion at the Houses of Parliament. However, they soon find out it’s a trap and another hacker, Zero Day, is setting them up to take the fall. After this event, DeadSec is left with a huge mess to clean up and a lot of factions to stop. One being the military company, Albion, who are governing the city. It really is like stepping into a Black Mirror episode.

What makes this game unique are the characters. You can recruit anyone in London to your DeadSec cell. That means any Joe Bloggs off the street can go toe to toe with the enemy and appear in cutscenes. Each character is voice acted and can be customised. However, their skill set can’t be changed. As you can recruit anyone, this changes up the game. Need to break into a police station? You won’t take Granny Sue who has low mobility, instead you might opt for Billy who works for the Bill. With access to his police uniform you can walk in and out disguised.

Like the other games in the series, Watch Dogs: Legion is political. It explores living in a surveillance state, human-trafficking and unethical experimentation. It tries to blend the tones of the last 2 games into one package. It has darker moments like Watch Dogs but the voice acting, and hammy villains give it a satirical shine.

Even though Legion has a plot bursting with great ideas, the execution of them never quite hits the mark. And by the end I was left slightly disappointed.

Meet The Recruits

Out on the streets of London you can use your phone to scope out new recruits. Once you find someone you like, you chat to them, do a mission, and then they’re on your roster. This recruit can then go on any mission, and they’ll appear in cutscenes, fully voice acted. This was a fun mechanic, and I enjoyed seeing all my recruits appear in important moments like they were always meant to be there.

You can also unlock recruits when you regain control of boroughs. These recruits have great skills like the spy who comes with their own James Bond car and silenced pistol. Unlocking boroughs was one of my favourite things to do as I loved finding out which specialist, I would get.

Recruits can get hurt, imprisoned or even killed. I have to admit, I had the death feature turned off. After losing beloved survivors in State of Decay, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it in Watch Dogs. But my hackers did get hospitalised and arrested a fair bit. In time, I recruited a paramedic and a lawyer to reduce time-outs.

When inactive, hackers can be seen milling about the world. You can also see other Londoners who are linked to members like friends, family and spouses. I even had a few moments when they were kidnapped, and I had to rescue them. These elements made it feel like a living world.

Yet it wasn’t all good. Due to the nature of recruitment. These characters didn’t always add up. Voices didn’t match faces and animations were minimal. The voice acting took away from plot as characters had jovial tones during serious scenes. Finally, as there was no main character tying the experience together it was difficult to invest in the plot. Characters lacked depth and growth. If it wasn’t for the humorous AI, Bagely, this game would have lacked a strong narrative voice.

Exploring London

Gameplay is much unchanged from previous games. Player’s roam around the world and hack objects. They can steal money, set traps and stun enemies. The Spiderbot is also back to cause mayhem. It’s a tried and tested formula.

However, the games missions are repetitive. After 10+ hours, you know every mission type. These can be jazzed up by tackling them in different ways. Go in hacking, fighting or in plain sight but ultimately their DNA is the same – Head to location, hack target or console, escape the area.

In Legion, combat is noticeably better than its predecessors. Some recruits can slam it down like John Wick and hand to hand combat is rewarding. Not everyone has moves but the ones that do are satisfying to play, especially when visiting fighting pits.

Multiplayer

When multiplayer was added it was buggy and patches ensued. It boasted an experience like fan favourite GTAV. Players could roam the city and take part in mini games with their friends. They could also try to complete the tricky Tactical Missions. Later the multiplayer introduced the Undead Mode. This comprised of finding packages in a zombie infested London.

In short, the multiplayer should be good, but it isn’t. It isn’t a multiplayer you can play without friends. And to successfully complete the Tactical Missions you need 3 friends to help you out. Lobbies have long wait times and playing with randoms is laborious. Most people I ended up with had their mic cracked up to full volume with sounds of their TV in the background. Annoyingly, they always stumbled into zombies which made the Undead mode unplayable.

A bit like the main game. The multiplayer had great ideas behind it, but the execution was average at best.

Final Verdict

Watch Dogs: Legion was an interesting entry to the series. It tried something new. It let players choose any character from the world and turn them into a hacking activist. Each of these characters came with their own skills, voice, and could feature in any cutscene.

However, the recruitment mechanic was Legion’s downfall. At first it was a novel idea and one which was fun to play around with. But after several hours this flashy selling point grew troublesome. As any character could be introduced into your Legion, they lacked depth. Despite each one being voice acted, this acting fell flat during some of the game’s darker storylines.

Additionally, the game tried too hard when releasing its multiplayer. When it was finally released, it was buggy, basic, and lobby times were slow. It offered a worse version of GTAV. The Tactical Missions were the multiplayers saving grace but if you weren’t playing with friends, it was awful.

I may be sounding salty, but it wasn’t all bad. The gameplay was solid and there were fun mini games to play throughout. The environments were well made, and I enjoyed exploring this dystopic version of London. Recruiting may have had its issues, but I did enjoy building my Legion and finding recruits which had special skills. There were also some shining moments in the narrative and plot twists I didn’t see coming.

But overall, something was lacking. Much like the other Watch Dog games this felt generic, and a lack of main character made it vanilla. The recruitment feature is a novel aspect and one which will keep you entertained for a while. But Legion isn’t something to write home about. It’s a well-made and enjoyable experience but not a must play.

Editors Note: This is a review for the Gold Edition, which includes the full game and season pass as well as the Resistance Edition, which includes the full game and resistant pack.