Relic hunters legends is a Saturday morning cartoon reincarnation of Destiny if it hadn’t had it’s butthole torn apart by Blizzard.

I have a flashing weak spot for looter shooters. They hit my critoris in just the right way. But it wasn’t until relic hunters legends that I realised theres practically no top down twin stick options that scratch the same itch that Destiny managed too back in it’s hayday.

I played the beta for legends a few months ago and I’ve been itching to tell you about it ever since. But I wanted to get a little further into this early access title before giving it the rathole seal of approval just in case three hours into the campaign it tries to offer me NFTs or something.

Well fund the Taliban and call me a Clinton it turns out it’s actually pretty good. legends has paid early access for a couple bucks, and no cash shop to speak of at the time of writing.

I went back through rogue snails previous entries after the beta to see if the other games could tide me over, unfortunately they couldn’t. They all feel like mobile practice rounds for the real thing. And that isn’t to say they aren’t great.They were good enough for fans to want to kick-start legends. Rebels In particular is actually pretty sweet but doesn’t quite scratch the itch.

For an early access title it sure feels finished to me though. Shooting guns is finger licking good, the campaign feels all there and there’s enough to do every day to keep me entertained for a while.

So what have we got. A main hub area to trade with other players and test out weapons. A campaign. Various levelable relic hunters with stats and ults to level who all feel functionally different. Instanced mission nodes. And Guns with more random buffs than a gay porno.

I particularly like the loadout screen which looks incredibly familiar, and you rely on a gear score to know whether or not a challenge is right for you. You can upgrade your favourite gear, and the games lets you know ahead of time to not be shy about upgrading parts your into, because you can always merge that gear into newly dropped stuff just fine. No buyers remorse here!

It has drop in co-op and it isn’t rare to land into a public mission already underway. You can play solo just fine but it’s always sort of a relief to have random friendos helping you in a public match.

Levels have secondary goals of random resources sprinkled around and chests of extra loot tucked away as a reward for poking around.

My very first match was with someone who’d obviously already spent a lot of time ingame, which is hectic because I was playing day one here. They were patiently showing me around the map to all the loot I definitely would have missed. Even typing sweet little nothings to me as I kept missing my skill jumps to get to harder spots. Yeah there’s ingame chat and emotes too.

So that’s my way of saying 10/10 community. Would community again.

The story exists but I’m always surprised at the range of emotions the relic hunters team aims for. But it will always been secondary to how good the gameplay is. All you need to know is that the mighty ducks are a bunch of time fucking arseholes that need you to mass genocide them.

Rogue Snail have managed to create a toit little product. I’ve heard about polishing turds before but they’ve managed to compress a turd into a diamond.

If you were wanting a new game to play with your 3 friends, or just something to turn your head off for as you get into the zone of dodge iframes and killing tons of dudes then you should probably check out relic hunters Legends.