Secret World Legends

 PC
  • Release Date: Jun 26, 2017
User Score
5.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 51 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 51
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 51
  3. Negative: 23 out of 51

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  1. Corvwyn
    Aug 31, 2017
    9
    Story:
    If you're interested in story, this certainly is the MMO for you. You will get to explore different kinds of settings and mythologies, in a zombie-infested New England, Egypt, Transylvania and Tokyo. You can play solo for most of this content, except dungeons and some select areas. The story is certainly a large part of why I give TSW such a high score. If this was
    Combat: It    Story:
    If you're interested in story, this certainly is the MMO for you. You will get to explore different kinds of settings and mythologies, in a zombie-infested New England, Egypt, Transylvania and Tokyo. You can play solo for most of this content, except dungeons and some select areas. The story is certainly a large part of why I give TSW such a high score. If this was

    Combat:
    It does have MMORPG combat with a hotbar, with a slight twist. You use two weapons, and can combine active and passive abilities from these. Each weapon has a weapon speciality, which works pretty well and adds a bit of variation.

    Monetization :
    This is a free to play game, so naturally it has monetization features, like loot boxes and patron status. As far as I've seen you don't have to pay to enjoy the game, unless you want to get better gear faster, or pay for patron status each month to get more xp and ability points.

    Disclaimer: Since I bought the lifetime subscription of the old game I'm a lifetime patron in SWL, which gives me more xp and ability points. This may influence my opinion of the monetization.

    This is a free to play game, so you can easily find out yourself by just playing it.

    TSW -> SWL:
    I played through most content in the old version, so here's some info. You can play through the story much faster, since the beginning zones have been made much easier, which is a good idea. Combat is more fun with the added specialities, and more focused. I like the change. Even though I liked the old ability wheel, it had too many abilities with minimal bonuses. You can also transfer some of your cosmetic items with a transfer service, although this expires September 4th. Most of the story content from the old game is now back, and came trickling regularly when SWL was launched.    … Expand
  2. HarveyHallow
    Jul 6, 2017
    9
    Secret World Legends is an MMO with an original theme and great story, filled with cutscenes. Besides combat focused quests it also offers stealth and puzzle/ARG style mystery quests. While it’s character designs are laughable in 2017, it’s environment can be stunning. SWL is an MMO that you should play slowly rather than racing towards end game content. If you like the month of OctoberSecret World Legends is an MMO with an original theme and great story, filled with cutscenes. Besides combat focused quests it also offers stealth and puzzle/ARG style mystery quests. While it’s character designs are laughable in 2017, it’s environment can be stunning. SWL is an MMO that you should play slowly rather than racing towards end game content. If you like the month of October you’ll like this game.

    Old game comparison

    Secret World Legends is a relaunch that aims to reach a larger audience than its original version. In doing so Funcom both improved things, like it’s combat system, but also dumbed down the game immensely. It’s original leveless progression system and unlinair open world have been turned into a “This is where you should go now.” type game for the sake of accessibility. I’m pretty sure it’s easier now to pick up for a certain type of players, “MMO Nomads” I call them. They need games that are easy to pick up because they like to pick up and drop an MMO every month or week, and if said MMO doesn’t follow their formula it will not even be given a chance. It hurts to see some of this game’s character wasted in an effort to appeal to these UnGreATFuLL mORtaLs…

    Its F2P payment system

    I’m happy to say SWL isn’t a pay to win game. Nothing is locked away behind a paywall and there is no exclusive overpower gear. The game does allow you to pay for faster progression and weapon upgrades. You can buy inventory space and extra travel speed with both ingame earned and premium cash. And the game features a monthly subscription with some benefits like extra dungeon keys and faster repeatable quest cooldowns.    … Expand
  3. Ryha2000
    Sep 22, 2017
    10
    The reboot may not be a 'new' game, but it is a better version of The Secret World in every way.* The game is the same open world, it has a new but equally open progression system. The new system pretends to have levels and classes, but that is mostly an illusion for players more comfortable with levels and classes. The new system does prevent you from creating some builds that wereThe reboot may not be a 'new' game, but it is a better version of The Secret World in every way.* The game is the same open world, it has a new but equally open progression system. The new system pretends to have levels and classes, but that is mostly an illusion for players more comfortable with levels and classes. The new system does prevent you from creating some builds that were possible in the old system, but mostly it helps you not create a broken and unplayable ccharacter, which is something that happened a lot in the old system and caused players to hit a difficulty wall and stop playing. The Class system just starts you out with a playable character and you can start deviating from the classes pretty much immediately.

    Content wise the new system has reworked the way that the main quest line progresses to give you more guidance through the story and help you not miss cool plot points. That said the quests haven't really changed, just the way that they are linked together to make your experience more rewarding if you just follow those quests. You can still run off and investigate the world in your own way if that's how you like to play.

    The new combat system feels much better and is much more engaging. It's more 'twitch based' so for the most green gamers it's probably a bit harder...

    The free to play mechanics are what they are... they mostly don't get in the way while giving players that want to spend money meaningful things to spend it on. I have to say that as a parton I think I am advancing a bit too fast for my taste, it makes the game a bit easier than I would like for a horror game.

    That star up at the top for 'better in every way'... ok, so having the free to play mechanics don't make the game better, but they don't get in the way of the good parts and the developers tried every other option. The game launched with a subscription to support the continuing amazing story... not enough people subscribed. They switched to buy to play with the ability to buy the new content... but not enough people got to the end of the free content and bought the content packs... they added lots of content to the cosmetic store and that did ok, enough to limp along for a while... but in the end they needed to retool the game from the ground up as a free to play game if they wanted to continue developing the story.

    And what a story! Now with the relaunch we can look forward to new content starting at the end of this year! Thank you FunCom for not giving up on this game!    … Expand
  4. Iindie
    Aug 13, 2017
    10
    I for one find the reboot interesting and the economic way more viable for Funcom. You can only go so far in the failing F2P model without hitting hard limitations and since a large percentage of gamers do not want to participate in either real life economical models or ,god forbid , virtual ones they end up fuming and spewing, well at some point ,in all socialist economies, youI for one find the reboot interesting and the economic way more viable for Funcom. You can only go so far in the failing F2P model without hitting hard limitations and since a large percentage of gamers do not want to participate in either real life economical models or ,god forbid , virtual ones they end up fuming and spewing, well at some point ,in all socialist economies, you eventually run out of other's people money and F2P illustrates just that. Now I agree the subscription benefit is negligible but previous inception was way too indie economically and F2P and moderate P2W might be enough to save the title.… Expand
  5. flappycat55
    Jul 17, 2017
    10
    just try the game out for yourself, it's free. All the 0's are just people on the hate train or disgruntled old TSW players. Some seem like they didn't play the game past 30 minutes with some of the statements they made. Or are just pissed that a F2P game has microtransactions - shocker. The only legit thing I've seen is that the customer service was bad for the first week but now it'sjust try the game out for yourself, it's free. All the 0's are just people on the hate train or disgruntled old TSW players. Some seem like they didn't play the game past 30 minutes with some of the statements they made. Or are just pissed that a F2P game has microtransactions - shocker. The only legit thing I've seen is that the customer service was bad for the first week but now it's fine and a week after launch they had a huge patch addressing 90% of the concerns of the playerbase.… Expand
  6. Serenityinaz12
    Jul 16, 2017
    9
    meh, lot of reviews from angry vets, no surprise. I didn't care that much for it originally but the reboot is very good. Combat is way more fun, the story is great, dungeons are fun, the loot upgrade idea is cool. I'm having a blast and have ditched ESO for this.
  7. diardi
    Jul 31, 2017
    10
    Obviously some angry veteran TSW players have given this reboot a undeserved low score. There was a lot of booing when the relaunch was announced. This is the developer's way of giving their beloved game a prolonged life, so they can continue to tell the story. And what a story it is, just wow, it's obvious they put a lot of heart into making it.

    I'm a new player in SWL and I think it    Obviously some angry veteran TSW players have given this reboot a undeserved low score. There was a lot of booing when the relaunch was announced. This is the developer's way of giving their beloved game a prolonged life, so they can continue to tell the story. And what a story it is, just wow, it's obvious they put a lot of heart into making it.

    I'm a new player in SWL and I think it is a wonderful game! If you like story driven MMOs, and want to try one with a mature and modern setting, this game is for you! It's F2P! All content is F2P! (and there's a lot of content!). People who say there's pay wall everywhere is full of ****, you can play through the entire storyline and reach max level without paying a single dime. It just takes a little more time that's all. The storyline is fantastic and so is the atmosphere; creepy and dark. Brilliant voice acting and the cutscenes are very often humourous.

    I love what they did with combat, the reticule targeting is awesome and does not take long to get used to. The number of available attacks are limited though, and you have to chose your setup of active and passive abilities carefully. I sometimes wish I had one or two more available action buttons though, as I find myself wanting to use more skills than there's room for on the action bar.

    The Patron system looks fair, for 12.99$ you get one free cache key per day for opening loot caches that starts dropping when you reach lvl 15, bonus xp, bonus in-game currency when completing missions and bonus skillpoints for opening up weapons and their accompanying skills.

    Give it a try, it's free after all ;)    … Expand
  8. captaintowers
    Oct 21, 2017
    9
    The voice acting for the various characters and atmosphere was very good and the selling points for this game. I had played the original TSW and played endgame then and recently come back to play the FTP version on steam of SWL.

    What's new - I noticed there was new tutorial that made the story make more sense at the beginning and taught you a few basics. Combat seemed similar to    The voice acting for the various characters and atmosphere was very good and the selling points for this game. I had played the original TSW and played endgame then and recently come back to play the FTP version on steam of SWL.

    What's new - I noticed there was new tutorial that made the story make more sense at the beginning and taught you a few basics. Combat seemed similar to before but you have less hotkeys to bind skills to. They changed the skill trees for active and passive skills by removing the high number of skills from the wheel system. I also noticed that combat survival seems easier now regardless of how much you pull, big pulls by mistake used to kill you easier.

    The 3 main currencies - Aurum for real cash, Shards for selling anything to vendor and used to teleport, and MoF which you get from doing completing Challenge Quests daily and for trading on Auction House and for exchanging for Aurum.

    Overall, have been enjoying back to the game. I still think its a good game with some value. It does have an active community, I did see player characters running around in the zones I were in. They are still running holiday events. Bottomline: if you liked TSW before you'll probably still like SWL. If you didn't like TSW you still won't like it. A good value MMO that went FTP. Final Score is a 8.5.    … Expand
  9. TantFuriosa
    Jan 6, 2018
    9
    One of the best MMO's out there. The quests are awesome, investigation quests in particular, and the community is super friendly. The characters you meet are excellently written. Also if you're a woman or LGBTQ person into being treated as a human being this is the MMO for you. I'm not a fan of the combat system, but the good quality of everything else makes up for it.
  10. Thyreli23
    Mar 13, 2021
    8
    This is the one MMO i keep coming back to, as its quests, storylines, characters, music, and overall environment just stays interesting and intriguing. This game truly is one of a kind, and I applaud the studio for revamping the title, and breathing new life into it. Sure, the game has its hiccups from time to time, but it truly is unique. If you're interested in the occult, conspiracyThis is the one MMO i keep coming back to, as its quests, storylines, characters, music, and overall environment just stays interesting and intriguing. This game truly is one of a kind, and I applaud the studio for revamping the title, and breathing new life into it. Sure, the game has its hiccups from time to time, but it truly is unique. If you're interested in the occult, conspiracy theories, and spooky content in an MMO setting, please give this game a try. Good thing is you can run through the storyline solo without having to rely on other people.… Expand
  11. Kervin619
    Apr 10, 2023
    9
    This is one of the best massively multiplayer online role-playing games I ever played since senior and one of the best games that is an RPG with guns and magic combined in a modern-day setting.

    Secret World. Also known as Secret World Legends is absolutely the most addictive game I ever played for years. And I absolutely enjoyed shooting with actual guns at monsters, zombies, and some    This is one of the best massively multiplayer online role-playing games I ever played since senior and one of the best games that is an RPG with guns and magic combined in a modern-day setting.

    Secret World. Also known as Secret World Legends is absolutely the most addictive game I ever played for years. And I absolutely enjoyed shooting with actual guns at monsters, zombies, and some other folk legends, the character creation is absolutely fun and comforting. And one of the best parts of the game is the cutscenes. Because seeing those cutscenes in missions felt like I already just bought the game. Plus most side missions are replayable too.

    The only thing that I really didn't like are the green investigation puzzle missions. Although this was supposed to make it realistic and challenging, it just ruins the fun.

    Still. I want to replay this game all over again.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

87
#87 Most Discussed PC Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 9
  3. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. CD-Action
    Sep 25, 2017
    75
    I’m glad that Funcom decided to release Secret World Legends and gave me the chance to experience this unique MMORPG after I missed it 5 years ago. [09/2017, p.36]
  2. PC PowerPlay
    Aug 17, 2017
    80
    Writhing out of its niche, slithering, roiling tentacles endlessly grasping for the larger audience it most definitely deserves. [Issue#264, p.64]
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  3. The Games Machine
    Aug 9, 2017
    70
    Secret World Legends simplifies and makes more accessible one of the most intriguing and captivating online worlds ever created. Unfortunately, graphics feel pretty old (which they are), and Funcom never managed to find a good balance between a story-driven experience and the MMO gameplay dynamics. Anyway, a good online action RPG that can be enjoyed with some friends.
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