The Legend of Legacy Walkthrough, Part 1: Getting Started in the Forest Ruins

Main Walkthrough

Welcome to The Legend of Legacy! A turn-based RPG that's a lot harder than it looks at first glance, The Legend of Legacy is a combat-filled trek through a dangerous world. You'll need to keep your wits about you the whole time, and that includes making good decisions - the first of which is choosing your main character.

Character Selection

The first thing you need to do when beginning a new game of The Legend of Legacy is choose a main character. There are seven potential protagonists in The Legend of Legacy, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. You’ll eventually get all of them in your party, so you don’t have to think too hard, but the game’s dialogue changes based on your choice.

There isn't a massive difference between characters, as far as stats go. They all level up in subtle, different directions, but you can make a character go any way you like if you equip them properly. Still, if you want optimal builds, go with what seems immediately obvious - Garnet and Owen are both good tanks, for example, while Liber is the speedy, ranged type, and Eloise is good with magic.

Regardless of who you choose, you’ll automatically be paired up with two other adventurers. The identities of these adventurers changes depending on whom you pick as your starting character:

• If you chose Meurs, you’ll get Bianca and Garnet.
• If you chose Bianca, you’ll get Filmia and Eloise.
• If you chose Liber, you’ll get Eloise and Meurs.
• If you chose Garnet, you’ll get Owen and Meurs.
• If you chose Owen, you’ll get Garnet and Filmia.
• If you chose Eloise, you’ll get Owen and Liber.
• If you chose Filmia, you’ll get Liber and Bianca.

Virtually all of these teams are well-balanced, and each one has at least one strong, defensive character who can absorb hits for everyone else. Again, you’ll eventually get all seven characters, so your starting team won’t last for too long if you decide you don’t like your starting lineup.

Forest Ruins - Clearing

After a lengthy introductory sequence - which you can skip, if you’re playing this game for the second time or more - you’ll wind up at the entrance of the Forest Ruins. A well-armored fellow give you the Forest Ruins Map, displayed on the screen for your convenience (on the bottom screen, if you're playing on a 3DS). As you explore current map gets filled in, and a percentile on the map screen steadily grows. You can sell these maps to merchants later at a premium, so it literally pays to explore every inch of every area.

You’ll soon get the chance to move around. (Note that you can’t open the menu yet. Yes, you’ll have the chance soon. First you need to beat this small dungeon.) To your left is a guard, and if you speak to him he’ll allow you to rest and restore your health. Head northeast and you’ll get into your first battle.

Combat

Battle in The Legend of Legacy should be familiar if you’ve ever played an RPG. Game time is divided into turns, and at the beginning of each turn you choose actions for your characters that are carried out immediately thereafter. Destroy all enemies and you win; lose all of your health and you die. 

If a character falls during battle they are revived immediately after, but their maximum health is be slightly reduced until you get them some rest. To avoid this, have the character with the Medicine Box equipped use it to heal injured characters before they fall victim to enemies. This might not seem like a big deal now, but battles get really hard as you progress through the game, and you want everyone in tip-top shape. Characters continue to take damage when they fall if targeted, reducing their maximum health once revived, and if that character's max health is reduced to zero you'll get a Game Over. 

The main difference between The Legend of Legacy and other RPGs stems from its Formations system. Formations allow your characters to take up different roles in battle, and can affect how much damage they do and how much they take, among other things. At the moment you have two formations. They have different names, based on your characters, but all more or less boil down to ‘Attack’ and ‘Defend’. Later on you can create more Formations, once you have a greater variety of Stances available.

While fighting your characters use Skills to damage enemies. Skills are based upon a character's equipped weapons and armor, and if you spend enough time using a particular Skill it can level up - and potentially unlock other, better Skills. The stronger the enemy, the more likely you'll get any sort of level-ups, whether for your stats or your Skills. It pays to diversify your characters so you can deal with a range of different situations. More powerful Skills may expend SP, limiting your ability to abuse them too much in battle, so use these attacks sparingly. Unlike HP, which is fully restored after combat, SP restores at a rate of one SP per round.

Combat is not random. Enemies appear on the field, and you have the opportunity to run away. Study enemy movements and you can often flee without getting into a battle. If you get into a battle that you don't like and want to run, you can - but you'll be forced back to the beginning of the area. Yes, not the current map, the entire area.

Ready to explore again? Not just yet. First we'll have a look at another important aspect of The Legend of Legacy: Treasure-hunting.

Treasure

While you're exploring The Legend of Legacy you will find treasure in a variety of forms:

• Treasure chests
• Sparkles
• Objects of note
• Droppped by enemies

With some exceptions, treasures found on the map always seem to be randomized by the game. Quite often you won't even find chests or sparkles where they're listed in here, because they don't always pop up in the same spots from game to game. Both chests and sparkles appear to respawn after a while, so going through areas a second time can prove helpful.

What does this mean for the guide? It primarily means that any chests the guide points out may or may not be where you'd think. The guide will focus more on where you may find treasure points, and let you check for yourself. Try not to get disappointed if you investigate a spot and don't find anything.

Forest Ruins - Clearing

Back to the Forest Ruins. Now that you've fought a few enemies, perhaps we should look into some helpful details on the local fauna:

• Warrior Drones. Their Jaw attacks sting, but not too badly.
• Wild Familiars. They can use Fire Calling to boost their attack power or Wind Calling to assault your party. Wind Calling can Stun your party members, which is a major pain. Go after these first, as they have little HP. There's a stronger version of these enemies called Spectral Souls, as well.

Putting someone out front with the Block Skill should keep your party members out of danger. Overall, this area isn't too perilous.

Northeast of where you got into the first battle is an emptied lake. The path splits in four ways here. Start by head left, then wandering southwest. There may be a Chest down here. North of here is a conspicuous monument to investigate. Up and to the left of the monument may be another Chest. Keep following the path northeast and then north to potentially find a third Chest. This pathway loops back to the emptied lake if you go south of the last chest.

Head back to the lake. Travel south and the path splits again, though you might as well take a right, as further south just loops back to the same spot. Ahead is a large, odd-looking shell. Investigate it to find a Fragment.

Wander northeast a bit and you’ll see a shining mote against a heap of rubble. These Sparkles sometimes net you items, as we mentioned above, and... sometimes... they'll just get you ambushed by monsters. Avoid checking sparkles if your team is in rough shape.

This should more or less complete the map of the Forest Clearing. If you wander to the northeast you’ll find two heaps of rubble, both of which provide exits from this area. The more northern path leads to the Singing Grove, while the lower exit leads to the Forest Tomb. The Forest Tomb is too dangerous for you right now, so you should avoid it for the moment and come back later.

Forest Ruins - Singing Grove

The same enemies haunt this section of the Forest Ruins, so you’re not facing any great perils just yet. The only exceptions are the debuffing Shadowcats, and they’re still not a big deal. In a small nook to the left of the entrance you may find a Chest, and northeast of the entrance you may find a Sparkle.

Head east. You’ll hit a crossroads. You can head all the way east to find another ‘ancient device’, but you can’t do anything with the thing, so forget about it. Loop north, wander all the way around the map to the west side, assuming you want to complete your picture of the whole area. There’s a stone statue in the northwest that triggers a nasty fight if you get too close.

Dreadwing

Your first boss! Dreadwing is only difficult if you fail to defend your strikers. Dreadwing uses the following attacks: 

• Normal physical attacks
• Fang, a single-target physical attack
• Wingflap, a physical attack against your whole party

Dreadwing likes medium-hitting attacks that do around 40ish points of damage to unprotected characters. Have your defensive main absorb damage with the appropriate formation while the other two attack. Heal if necessary using the Medicine Box, but... it shouldn’t really be necessary. Dreadwing doesn’t have much health. 

You’ll receive a Singing Shard for besting Dreadwing. This clears the first section of The Legend of Legacy, granting you access to Initium, a vital stop on your journey.

Part 2: Initium

Main Walkthrough