Secret World Legends is a niche game, with great lore and story, some interesting quests and mysteries to solve, but suffers from a lack of player base and an over reliance on gotcha’game cash shop manipulations.

By Scuttle Gamez

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The Game:

Everything is true, and nothing is real. Anything you can imagine going bump in the night or hiding in the depths of society is probably a whole lot more than just your imagining in the Secret World. That means vampires, ancient sun gods, a Stephen King style island of mysteries and the dead drifting in from the sea is what you’ll find here. It’s a wonderful, horrifying, wondrously-horrifying, thing to see all crammed in one world to experience.

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Enter Stage Right: The Bees

You start out in Secret World by making your character, with semi-decent customization available, and choose a faction you’ll be joining. More on that later. For now, the game starts with a bee floating in through a window to your sleeping form and burrowing its way into your mouth and soul. Congratulations, you’re now a superhero.

Joking aside, that really is how the game starts, and how your character becomes more than just another human with their eyes on the ground, oblivious to the Secret World around them.

See, that bee is a magic bee. It’s a gift from Gaia, mother earth. And now that you’ve gained her blessings, you’re up for grabs by one of the three Secret World’s factions: The Templar, the Dragon, and the Illuminati.

Each faction has their own flavor and flair, and will appeal to different sorts of gamer. The Templar are stalwart and serious, the old guard of the world. The Dragon are a mystery, even to themselves, and enshrouded in chaos. The Illuminati, well, their out for themselves and have no qualms about that fact.

Enough with the setup! Let’s get to how the game actually plays. In short, this is an action oriented MMO. Once upon a time it was a pure tab target mmo, but since then it’s been updated to feel a bit more like a 3rd-person shooter with mmo elements.

Most of your time in the Secret Worlds will be out in one of the major theme park style zones and questing. These quests are more narrative driven than most MMOs though, and will have you solving mysteries, working on real and difficult puzzles, and fighting a plethora of interesting enemies.

The base game is free, which comes with all of the actual game content, but there is a ton of cosmetics up for grabs via bundles players can purchase.

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The Good:

The lore and depth of the Secret World is what I most enjoyed during my play. The characters are all interesting and fun, the locations visited were dark and mysterious, and chalked full of legend, and the overarching story itself had me wanting more at every turn.

Quest variation is another big plus. There are Three types of Quests: Main Mission, Action, and Investigation / Sabotage, with side quests being a technical fourth type that are mostly short and just there for added lore or experience.

Main Missions are nothing new, as they just constitute the main story of the game. Action quests are more akin to a typical mmo in style. You’ll usually have to fight some enemy at some location and such. Investigation and Sabo are where things get interesting. These quests have you solving puzzles that would make even the smartest at times sweat, and sabo missions turn you into a agent of your faction sneaking into locations and finding clues to various mysteries needing solved. And adding icing to the cake is that there are tons of achievements to unlock in the game relating to these quests, and more, and cool outfits and titles to earn by doing so.

Finally, I really appreciated that all of the main game content was actually free. There were time locks out that can be skipped for money, boosters of all kinds, and a ton more pay-to-win style mechanics at play, but I never actually had to pay up. Things took longer without buying in, that’s for sure, but everything was free if I was willing to go it on my own.

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The Mixed:

Speaking of micro-transactions, there are a ton of them in this game. There are bundles to buy full of cosmetics, experience boosters, item level boosters, more, and even a full premium membership too. You’ll never forget that these things are there to buy either, as the game throws them in your face often with messages on what you missed out on, or how much more something costs due to not being a subscriber.

Since the game is free, and all the content can be experienced regardless, I don’t put this as a bad. It came close though.

Another mixed element of the game is simply that it’s dated. The graphics are fine, but nowhere near current generation, and the player base is pretty small. You will 100% miss some cool parts of the game due not not being able to get a full party to experience them.

Finally, the UI is pretty clunky. After an hour or two I was fine with it, but it’s not something that you’ll be instantly comfortable with.

The Bad:

There is one form of micro transaction I left out, loot boxes. Worse than just loot boxes is that those in the secret world are of the kind that you need a key to open. So, you can and will often find rare boxes in the world that go to your inventory, promising cool loot and gear, then find that you need to buy keys to open them . . . . it’s annoying and blatantly manipulative.

The biggest downside of the Secret World is not it’s monetization or dated graphics though. Nope, it’s that little has been added to the game since going free to play. They’ve added a new chapter here or there, and they keep running events on a schedule, but nothing amazingly new has come to the game. It looks like The Secret World is on life support from its developers. They’ll toss something out once in a while, but nothing close to what other games of this genre offer.

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The Verdict:

I really enjoyed my time in Secret World Legends, but I was constantly reminded of how it could have been so much more. The monetization was annoying and in my face, the game play was dated, and I kind of doubt this game will be around in 5 years.

Fans of the weird and the wild might want to take a run at this free game now, because it just might not be there someday soon. It probably won’t be your main game though, and if you’re not very interested in the game’s lore and feel, skip it for something newer and with more future ahead.