Should You Buy Watch Dogs: Legion?

Watchdogs card
We are legion. (Image Credit: Ubisoft)

If you can see yourself obsessing over building the perfect team of random people you meet on the street and trying out different tactics to complete missions you'll have a lot of fun with Watch Dogs: Legion. It's not perfect by any means, it's kind of shallow, and missions often feel the same, but Watch Dogs: Legion by Ubisoft is overall fun but not groundbreaking.

  • Developer: Ubisoft Toronto
  • Publisher: Ubisoft
  • Availability: Xbox One, PS4 and PC, Xbox Series S/X and PS5 (on launch)
  • Release: October 29, 2020
  • Price: €60

The bar for triple-A games seems to get higher and higher each year and while Ubisoft's Watch Dogs: Legion has a GTA vibe to it, one may ask is this all that next-gen gaming has to offer? At times the missions seem generic and literally every mission ends in some kind of drone war, so if you do not enjoy flying a deadly little killing machine then Watch Dogs: Legion is not the game for you.

Drones Are the Name of the Game

Watchdogs drones
The Drone Keeper (Image Credit: Ubisoft)

You can fly them, you can hack them, you can shoot at them, you can disable them and you can hide from them. Driving a car? Look there’s a drone! Walking down the street? Look a drone is following you! Sneaking into a hallway? Use your drone to peak around the corner.

Drone play is central to the game and is your universal answer to any problem you may have. Drones can't be avoided and at first, you may hate them but if you can't beat them, you well as join them. The drone-play in Watch Dogs: Legion is somewhere in between good and repetitive, so it really depends on what kind of gamer you are.

Choose Your Band of Thugs

Watchdogs agent
I choose you....guy who is good at shooting! (Image Credit: Ubisoft)

In what feels like people-Pokémon, you can encounter talented strangers while you explore the urban jungle and recruit them to your team. You may grow attached to your new Pokémon, I mean fellow human and citizen of London, or you may just simply use them and ditch them when another better-skilled person passes you by. It’s a very fun and immersive system as strange as it may feel when you abandoned your driver for another driver that simply has a faster car. You will learn to let go of the baker that simply has a normal car for the former spy with a fast car equipped with spy-tech.

Watch Dogs: Legion really makes you scan every person you meet while playing. Adding a kind of never-ending but fun gameplay loop as you craft the perfect band of thugs. You got your driver, your hacker, your drone pilot, your shooter, and the list goes on. It sometimes feels like you're playing an Ocean's 11 simulator as you search for a guy that is perfect for the job. It's great fun finding a new agent and a new approach to a mission. as you expand your DedSec roster.

Generic Furtisic Dystopia

The story feels very meh, and sometimes a little unrealistic. In Watch Dogs Legion, the hacker group DedSec has been framed for terrorist bombings in London allowing for an easy reset button for the game’s previous story. A private military firm named Albion now polices London and will sooner kill you than arrest you. There is an evil tech company, drug lords, human traffickers, and more bad guys for you to take down. You will never question your actions as you hack your way into the mainframe and download the evidence. It’s fine not all games need to be morally gray or face you with hard decisions because sometimes hackers want to hack and that's what Watch Dogs: Legion does the best.

Our Verdict

If you are looking for a mix between Pokemon and GTA where hacking and drones are your solution instead of Poke-Battles and SMGs then Watch Dogs: Legion is for you. Look at about 30 hours of gameplay to complete the main story and endless hours of hacking fun and side missions to test your assembled team of would-be thugs. So is it worth the 60 Euros, most definitely!

EarlyGame has you covered whether it is hacking the mainframe or spying on an evil tech giant stealing your metadata. Actually, we can't help you with any of those things but we do cover gaming and esports!

Paul Hayes

I did my BA in English Lit. and Language Studies at Western University in Canada and I use to play MTG competitively, but sadly to no success so I write instead! If a game doesn't challenge me, it's not the...