Rayman Legends Retold Terasa Seperti Remake yang Tidak Perlu Terjadi

I've felt off about Rayman Legends Retold since its announcement. It's a remake of Rayman Legends, the best game in the platforming series, but the original game still holds up surprisingly well 13 years later. I can't help but compare Retold to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced--another remake of a 13-year-old Ubisoft title--in that neither feel necessary. And having now played Retold for just under three hours, that feeling isn't going away. Retold feels like an excellent framework for what the series should look like going forward, but the original Rayman Legends already established that sentiment back in 2013.

Retold is held back by being a remake. The game rebuilds the original Rayman Legends to look and sound entirely new, with a 3D art direction and completely new cutscenes that have voice acting. The remake also incorporates an actual antagonist to give the story a conflict, creating a throughline that never existed before and that now culminates in a sixth game world that has brand-new levels.

These are all great changes, but Retold is still mostly just a repeat of a game from 13 years ago. So as much as it looks new, it doesn't feel all that new. Now, obviously, if you've never played Rayman Legends before, then Retold is a brand-new game for you. And in that, I can see the appeal. But for someone who has played Rayman Legends, I couldn't escape the feeling that Retold was retreading ground I had before.

But even if you haven't played Rayman Legends, Retold will likely still largely feel like a dated platformer for you--it plays like a platformer from 13 years ago. I played through levels in which I had to time when my greenbottle companion Murfy should take a bite out of a wall so as to make space for Rayman to jump through it to the next platform, as well as top-down shoot 'em up sequences from the back of a flying dragon, and underwater segments where I needed to avoid the slowly moving vision cones of enemy turrets. I love the variety, but these challenges have been done in a ton of platformers before, and it's disappointing to not see Retold attempt to evolve the platformer formula in some way--or at least beyond what the original game could accomplish back in 2013.

At the very least, I was pleased to play through two of Retold's new music levels. These levels feature memorable songs as the background music and task you to command Rayman and friends to jump and punch to the rhythm of the song--Castle Rock and Mariachi Madness were my favorites in the original Rayman Legends, which use Ram Jam's Black Betty and Survivor's Eye of the Tiger respectively.

Those levels are the best part of Rayman Legends, and it's clear that they (and the new ones) are going to be the best part of Retold. These levels tend to be visual delights, but more than that, they lean into what makes mastering the levels of rhythm games like Crypt of the NecroDancer and Beat Saber so gosh-darn satisfying to replay over and over. I'd play a whole Rayman game that was just levels like that, maybe with the formula evolved to incorporate multiple pathways and tougher timing challenges. That's the direction the series should go, and it's baffling to be only getting a remake of the series' latest console/PC entry rather than see an evolution of what that entry did best.

Alas, for now, I must be content to just replay the few music levels I can in Rayman Legends, as well as look forward to the new ones coming in Retold. These joyful snippets of platforming satisfaction are fantastic, but I'm not sure getting a remake was the best option for us getting more of them. I'm still not convinced that Rayman Legends needs a remake at all. A sequel though? Absolutely.

Rayman Legends Retold has been delayed but it's still coming this year. Originally planned for October 1, the remake is now scheduled for December 3, when it will launch for Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.