Secret World (Legends) – Relaunch & Headstart

Secret World Legends has launched with its head start for owners of the original Secret World on Friday. I had been looking forward to this day, but unfortunately, my left hand is still injured. This means that I couldn’t play much yet, but I did create my character, at least.

I decided not to read too much about the changes they made to the game beforehand. I never really got into the original version, so all of that probably wouldn’t mean much to me anyway. What I did not like about the game previously was its combat system. Hearing that they would change some things about the combat made me get excited. The game itself has an awesome atmosphere and I’m so in love with the game’s soundtrack! So no matter what they changed, I just have to take a look at the game again and hope that I now like the combat system better. As I said, I couldn’t play much yet, but I did play through the tutorial and got to take a glimpse at the new combat. I must admit I didn’t really get the pistol system: Other than shooting (of course) and having skills to deal damage with your pistols, there is also an additional weapon feature which is something like a roulette. When both sides show the same colour you get some bonus damage for some time. Either way, it felt good to play and I really like when games have an active dodge system which makes everything seem a bit more fluid.

The feedback from the community about Secret World Legends has been pretty mixed so far. One big criticism was the amount of character slots. I did buy the original game which came with 3 character slots. They already said that they will not continue developing the original game, so you do not have much of a choice as only Secret World Legends will continue being developed. When I started the head start and saw that we only get one character slot for free, I was rather disappointed. Also, one extra character slot costs €10 which I find a bit steep considering I already did by the original game and – as I said – the original game doesn’t get developed anymore so Funcom actually wants us to play the new game instead. I saw some heavy criticism about their decision and was hoping that they would read the feedback and react accordingly. Thankfully, Funcom did react and they decided to make a change: If you link (they call it to “transfer”) your original Secret World account with your Secret World Legends account (this has to happen before sometime in August!) you get a total of 3 character slots for free. So that made me really happy to see! :)

Other criticism concerns the new character creation screen as they actually removed several features here. The reason stated was clipping issues, but I don’t really see how bigger or thinner lips or a differently shaped nose can cause clipping issues. Still, while I did play the original game a bit, I never played it that much, which means that I never got attached to my original characters. I did come up a new character that I really like, so I am content here. But I do see all the point other players make here.

Another thing that was thankfully cleared up in a positive way is that some European customers who spent money in the game’s store were charged more than was shown. For the European Union we have a law that all prices either need to include VAT or it needs to be clearly stated that VAT is not included yet and will be added on top. Neither was the case, but some people’s receipts showed a higher price than the website had stated. Thankfully, this was apparently just a display bug and they weren’t actually charged more money. This also means that the price that was originally shown is also the price that we really need to pay and VAT is already included here.

Altogether, I am cautiously optimistic for the game and I really hope that they’re going to do well, because what I have seen so far is really awesome and I really really hope that I can get into the game properly now. It’s such a fantastic setting and as I already said the atmosphere is amazing and I really want to explore that world!

(Please note: Some pain in my wrist is gone, but I still can’t use it much, so I’m still relying on speech recognition software for the most part to get this blog post written! Odd words are caused by that. Bad grammar and punctuation is my own fault, though. :p)