X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (PSP)
X-Men stories often focus on the tense societal struggle between humans and super-powered mutants. While Professor Xavier seeks peaceful coexistence between humanity and mutantkind, the villainous Magneto instead believes mutants are superior to humans and aims to subjugate or eliminate them. While this conflict is at the heart of many battles, the first mutant, the ancient being known as Apocalypse, cares only for one thing: survival of the fittest. With every person on the planet in danger as Apocalypse musters his forces to enact his ethos across the world, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse sees an unsteady alliance formed between Xavier’s X-Men and Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants, this action role-playing game sequel letting you play as both the heroes and the very villains they fought in the previous entry.
Much of the story of X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse focuses purely on a war effort against Apocalypse’s growing army. While things kick off with Apocalypse capturing Xavier and Magneto’s daughter Polaris to trigger the alliance of two usually opposed sides, once Xavier is freed in the game’s opening, the adventure becomes a globe-trotting journey to attack Apocalypse’s servants wherever they may be. You’ll get some interaction between the X-Men and Brotherhood, mostly in mission briefings where they’re often barely able to keep from going at each other’s throats in a way that does start feeling repetitive since the bickering doesn’t lead to many interesting interactions, but the plot at least will take you to a range of locations familiar to X-Men fans. While the Savage Land won’t make much use of its dinosaurs and the New York City streets aren’t all that unique in concept, you’ll also head to places like the Madri Temple with its eerie religious mysticism and encounter the more malicious mutant Morlocks in the New York sewers. Places like some off-shore platforms not only allow for cameos from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury but also provide a battle with the giant robot Sentinels, and the base of operations between missions will have characters like Shadowcat, Beast, Mystique, or Angel to talk to while you find yourself in locations like the old Weapon X Facility or the X-Mansion.
The voice acting will give the individual characters some life, Patrick Stewart reprises his role of Xavier from the films while the voice actors tasked with more animalistic characters like Sabertooth, Wolverine, and Grizzly are not afraid to go for growls or seethe appropriately. A lot of the adventure will just be a cavalcade of recognizable faces for fans of the comics, the story mostly presenting new characters like the Stepford Cuckoos, Omega Red, Sauron, or Bastion with only the barest of reasons to explain why they are present, which is often just Apocalypse promising something if they serve him. There is at least some piqued curiosity for seeing who the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse will be and a bit of intrigue about a potential betrayal from someone within the uneasy alliance, but it is still mostly framing to allow for the action RPG side of the affair to throw new faces at you to vary up the action.
When it comes to which characters you can play as in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, you get a surprisingly large bunch right out of the gate. There are 15 characters to pick from for your team of four, with most of them being expected X-Men like Wolverine and Gambit but some less standard picks like Bishop and Sunfire as well. The Brotherhood is only represented by four characters, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, Juggernaut, and Toad being your options if you want to play as the villains, characters like Sabertooth and Mystique sadly saved for story roles instead. Every character you can play as will come with a basic punch and kick combo as well as heavy hitting variants you can mix up a bit to do launching strikes or stuns, this looking particularly amusing when a character like the weather-wielding Storm or master of magnetism Magneto elects to instead fist fight their way through danger. Every character can also use their superhuman abilities in combat as well, a power meter limiting it so they can’t always rely on their mutant powers all the time.
When you’re just starting out, some characters do get a bit of a short end of the stick. Bishop is well known for using firearms but must level up a fair bit before they become a reliable part of his arsenal, and projectile users initially deal paltry damage that makes it hard to justify not just relying on your fists. Over time though your heroes and villains will grow as you invest their stat points, get new gear, and most importantly invest points into new abilities and passive boosts. Most character will eventually find their footing, and you can set up to four powers for quick and easy use per character as well as being able to swap them out without opening menus even though it is a tad slow. Characters who start out feeling humble can start becoming powerhouses if you spread their ability points right, like Juggernaut being able to so quickly regenerate power he can use his powerful smashes to tear through enemy ranks with ease. Cyclop’s eye beams will eventually become a great way to tear down foes with a rapid fire assault even if it leaves you low on energy, but you can find health and power refills around often enough and use them as needed in a fight. Even a character like Toad who might seem unassuming with his tongue strike and gunk spit will get powers that greatly assist the team, his Secretion powering up attacks so much that certain characters can start taking out foes in a single blow. Since your team consists of four characters you can swap to them as suits the situation or help cycle them so that mutant powers are being used regularly, the computer controlled partners still helping and thankfully fairly competent. You can play with other humans though, a team of up to four players able to cooperate, although the PSP release may be one of the more inconvenient ways to play co-op because everyone would need a copy and there is some tangible slow down and frequent load screens. Almost like it was compensation for the hurdles, there are four unique unlockable characters in the PSP version, Cable, X-Man, Cannonball, and Dark Phoenix all available should you tough it out and find their hidden comic books within levels.
There is certainly a technical tax for playing X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse on PSP, and there are glitches in some versions of this game where leaving too many item pick-ups on the ground can cause your save to fail to load, but the portal-making mutant Blink at least gives you the means to return to base almost whenever you need to in order to offload excess items. You also can only normally swap out characters at the save points in dungeons, but a Blink portal back to base can let you swap in new blood, the characters on the bench leveling up slowly but enough to remain somewhat feasible to bring in if you need to. Some areas will have bonus collectibles or brief trials that necessitate specific powers, a team usually benefiting from having members who can fly, make bridges, or push heavy objects so you won’t get stuck on a brief obstacle, the load screens really what makes the swaps somewhat inconvenient. Luckily, some characters like X-Man or Rogue can fill multiple power niches so you can keep your other choices a bit more flexible.
When it comes to combat, a good deal of X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse will be easily smashing your way through regular foes, but they are often accompanied by variants with special resistances or barriers that add a tougher foe to the scuffles. These more powerful baddies keep the regular fighting interesting as they’re more likely to strain your power reserves or better force out special skill usage, and the dungeons themselves can take on a range of different ideas like a complex maze of an ancient temple or the hectic timed missions of the weapons platforms. Some stretches can still be a bit repetitive, but new areas usually are stronger than you will be when you first enter them, adding some tension to the fights, especially since characters can only be revived at the somewhat rare save points or back at base. Tech bits, the game’s currency, can feel a little superfluous beyond being spent to revive the dead, but it also can help you equip heroes you’re rotating in or even buy level ups so they’re almost like insurance if you don’t want to stick to a main set of combatants. Bosses though really can range in quality and mostly in favor of being unique and interesting battles. A rare few can be shockingly easy with no clear gimmick, but others can involve various elements to keep track of and complications that push you to do more than just unleash your strongest attacks. Mikhail Rasputin fills his arena with so many clones of himself it can feel overwhelming. The Stepford Cuckoos help shield the more fearsome foe Holocaust so you have to split your attention between wearing him down and taking out his protectors. Abyss even gets an impressive airship battle where you have limited space to stand and even need to hurl bombs at an aircraft he leaps to mid-battle. Even a more standard battle like Sugar-Man with his many weapon-wielding arms can be tough if you don’t take the fight seriously, the boss encounters often a worthy payoff to your your time spent fighting through the rank and file to reach them.
There are some extra missions beyond the main adventure found in the Danger Room, these offering special rewards like easier ways to get character specific gear than random drops. These often quick combat challenges ask you to be efficient in eliminating your foes or performing an objective and can also be ways of boosting up characters to be more competitive, and there are even some special missions based on real comic stories added as a fun little touch. The load screens slow down the process of engaging with it admittedly, and it might still be wisest to play X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse on a home console version like GameCube instead if you go in knowing to be wary of the item glitch, but the breadth of content and a lengthy campaign with familiar faces still makes the PSP a worthy alternative whether or not the bonus characters interest you.
THE VERDICT: While the PSP version, especially in multiplayer, can suffer from slowdown and frequent load screens, the more exciting elements of X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse still come through. The range of playable heroes and villains grow into powerhouses with satisfying abilities and team synergies, the bosses mix up their formats to break you out of what works against standard foes, and even the regular enemies are regularly accompanied by tougher variants that apply some pressure during the sometimes straightforward dungeon crawls. With locations that shake up how exploration is handled and plenty of familiar faces for fans of the comics, X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse may not be telling a compelling story, but it sets up for its action RPG play to provide a good range of entertaining action.
And so, I give X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse for PlayStation Portable…
A GOOD rating. The PSP will definitely add some extra downtime to playing X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse as it needs to load and co-op especially add a little more slowness on top of that, but it’s not enough to bury what does work about this game’s design. A range of playable characters who do have distinct advantages and skills gives you reason to test out your options while the game only really forces you to swap if you don’t have appropriate mutant powers for the rare obstacle that requires specific skills. The bosses are where the action really shows off all it can be with them introducing new tricks to overcome or pushing you in ways dungeons normally won’t, but at least the tougher regular foes make the dungeon crawling more than just punching your way to the next objective. Some areas like the opening stretch in Genosha feel a bit rough, a lot of empty space and enemies aren’t hitting too hard yet, but the game does pick up and once you’re out of Genosha you’ll begin to have more interesting powers at your fingertips to make fights more varied and exciting. The dungeon sizes can be quite considerable even in chapters where you attempt multiple technically smaller dungeons in whatever order you choose, so breaking them up with more miniboss fights or perhaps additional sections where you must do something a bit more involved like protecting a character could break up some of the monotony that comes from the simpler fighting. Other elements like having more playable Brotherhood members or a story that does a bit more to contextualize its villains would be changes of greater scope, but X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse still works even despite the parts where it goes the simpler route because it put care and thought into the fundamentals of developing your teammates into a powerful fighting force that has some good opposition to go up against.
Perhaps it’s appropriate that Apocalypse’s mindset about only the strong surviving lead to a plot that is mostly about finding reasons to fight a wide range of strong foes, but thankfully the action can up the amount of thought needed to make it more than smashing recognizable heroes and villains together in endless fights. Leveling up your team gives you a good bit of control and potential to make the most out of your fighters, and there are enough points in the action-packed plot where your skills in handling your team or working with other players will be put to test to make up for the parts where Apocalypse’s weaker forces show they’re certainly not fit to last themselves.