Legendary Eleven Switch Review

Legendary Eleven Switch Review by SwitchWatch

Developer- Eclipse Games

Publisher- Eclipse Games

Release Date: Now

Price as of Article: $9,99 USD, £8,99 GBP

Game code provided by Eclipse Games

Eclipse Games are behind Tachyon Project, which was a great little game, so I had pretty high expectations from this small studio for Legendary Eleven. I am a massive football fan. If I didn’t run a website and youtube channel on Nintendo Switch games it would certainly have been football. Back in the day I was addicted to the wonderful Sensible Soccer and Kick Off.

When ISS came out on the SNES I lost many hours to it. We then had the Pro Evo versus FIFA, with each year one trying to out do the other. I was always a Pro Evolution Soccer fan and I would love to see a version on the Nintendo Switch! With the World Cup around the corner was Legendary Eleven going to be the football game to satisfy my itch for gaming football. Let’s find out.

The game is kept simple, you can choose to play either friendly matches with a friend or against the CPU. There are a number of options to choose from for example the time a match lasts, weather and the referee. You can choose from a number of international teams, of which there are 36 in total. Teams range from all over the world.

In championship mode, you can choose from several cup competitions encompassing the World Cup, European Cup, America Cup, Asia Cup and Africa Cup. There is no league mode or online mode in this game.

Once you choose your team’s thing starts off rather well. It’s an arcade football game and passing the ball feels pretty good. Putting moves together and finishing it off with a goal feels great like any football game should. You can take powerful shots by holding down the shot button but this leads me to the first thing I really dislike about the game. When holding the shot button the player just stops until you release the button. This gives the opponent time to tackle you so only do this when you have plenty of space. It felt very unnatural! Tackling and getting the ball back is just as frustrating with the mechanic being very inaccurate and clumsy.

Pulling off a special bicycle kick always results in a goal, which can of course turn a game, and there is nothing you can do to stop it – which again is not something I found to my liking. You can play through balls, long passes, crosses and pull off bicycle kicks, headers and all the other wonderful things in football. It has replays if you want to watch back your goals though these were in no way as smooth as you would expect.  There is also a morale system where players will react to the crowd, referee decisions and so on, I can’t really say it affected the game that much. Unfortunately, the game is also terribly glitchy.

For starters the AI, at times, run around like headless chickens, players will stop making runs, goalkeepers will tackle their own teammates and tackles will go unpunished from the referee and then inexplicably you will get a red card. Now, again, I am always thinking about the fact that the game is an inexpensive indie game so, of course, it’s not always going to be perfect. However, this game is currently broken.

I started a European Cup tournament and in match three, against Portugal, I was 1-0 up.  Then at the start of the second, half I lost total control of my players and the timer stopped. I paused the game and resumed only for the timer to restart but the game was stuck. I waited for the timer to reach 90 minutes and I won the game. I thought it must have been a one-off crash but nope. In the Semi Final against Italy, I went 3-2 down but never had the chance to recover as the games bug hit again and that was it, I was out of the tournament. This happened various times and I was never able to complete a tournament. I tried friendlies and again, against Argentina, the game just broke midway through a thrilling match. That was enough for me folks.

This game without any bugs would likely be ok to play for a few games with a friend, or against the CPU, and you would probably enjoy it even though it’s not perfect. However, in its current state, it’s a broken mess.

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Visually the game has a cartoony style based on the 1980s, it’s basic but pretty pleasant to look at.  There are differing weather conditions like snow and rain. Flags wave in the background and you can see the crowd. The animations are ok but the ball collision detection does not always look the best. Instances when the player picks up the ball to put it down for a free kick and he is picking up air always looks funny.

Performance is terrible as the game is full of bugs and the game crashes frequently. We have since received an email from the developer taking full responsibility and they have submitted a patch, for the crashing at least. The problem is they don’t know when this fix will be approved. In my opinion the game should not be released at all and should be delayed for the good of the consumer.

There are some nice touches, like the reminder of the Panini stickers that can be used to change some of the power ups you receive in game like Bonus Endurance Midfielders or Bonus Skill Attackers.

Unfortunately, the audio is also problematic in areas, while there is some commentary, the commentator only comments when there is something important which happens in the game like Foul, Free kick, Penalty, Corner and so on.

Some countries are not even announced, for example when I played versus Poland it was Spain versus and then silence. Very odd indeed and just shows that this game required a few more months in the oven. It feels like it was rushed so that it would be out before the World Cup and that’s just not a good thing and it’s a real shame.There are some nice stadium chants from time to time but overall the sound design feels unfinished

The game is keenly priced but that doesn’t really matter right now. At £8,99 if it had not had a game breaking bug then I would have said it’s a rather average football game that will give you some hours of fun, especially with a friend. With all the bugs present I just cannot recommend it right now until it is fixed. I would hold off a few weeks until Nintendo approve the patch.

 

Pros

Crisp Passing

Decent Visuals

Spectacular goals

Cons

AI is all over the place

Full of glitches

Game Breaking bug present