While previous entries largely followed a lone protagonist, Watch Dogs Legion has poised itself as an innovative spin-off to the hacker-centric action series, featuring a large open-world London and an entire city’s worth of playable characters. In addition to the series’ Assassin’s Creed-esque parkour, combat, and story-centric mission structure, Legion has also heavily touted the ability to play as any of the game’s “millions” of NPCs, with each carrying their own special skills and personalities in the fight to liberate the locale’s dystopian state.

As the scale of such an experience is intriguing as it is staggering, the release of Watch Dogs Legion has some serious expectations behind it, especially as the game notably experienced a lengthy delay to ensure quality on day one. With reviews now beginning to roll in, a consensus appears to have been reached by quite a few outlets with many hailing the game’s “Play As Anyone” system as a polished innovation to the Ubisoft series. However, the rest of the adventure hasn’t been as highly-received, with aspects such as Legion’s well-worn gameplay, less-than-polished presentation, and simple approach to an open world becoming subjects of criticism.

Ars Technica – “Only A Few Feet Deep”

“In the end, the London of Watch Dogs: Legion feels a mile wide but only a few feet deep. What promises to be endless variety in character choice and hack-driven gameplay options quickly boils down to the repetition of the same old gameplay and plot tropes.”

Game Informer – 90/100

“Legion feels like the realization of the hacker fantasy the first Watch Dogs tried to capture. Between the fun team-building, fantastic mission design, strong narrative, and a gorgeous world, everything comes together in a largely entertaining and cohesive package. Whether you’re controlling a trained super spy or a gassy grandmother, Watch Dogs: Legion is a ton of fun.”

IGN – 80/100

“Watch Dogs Legion takes Ubisoft’s open-world hacker series in an interesting new direction by letting you swap between the inhabitants of a near-future London almost at will. There’s enough variety in the way different characters play to make that a good tradeoff for not having one traditionally progressing character with a fleshed-out personality, and playing with permadeath enabled ratchets up the tension of infiltrating heavily guarded areas. On top of that, the map is detailed and loaded with environmental puzzles to solve with a little help from your drones. Legion is technically a little rough, but its sandbox-style approach is a good idea that sets Watch Dogs’ moment-to-moment gameplay even further apart from the GTA series.”

VG247 – 60/100

“Watch Dogs fans and more die-hard anarchists among you might enjoy it more, but between the short storylines, underwhelming tech and mission types and the general “everything is on fire” vibe, it just doesn’t rate highly for me.”

VGC – 100/100

“Ubisoft Toronto’s ‘Play as Anyone’ system results in the publisher’s most unique open-world game in years. Just don’t take it too seriously.”

Watch Dogs Legion is out now for Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One with next-gen versions set to be next-gen launch titles for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. What do you think? Are you interested in “playing as anyone” in Watch Dogs Legion, or would you rather see this tech added to another Ubisoft franchise like Assassin’s Creed? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day!

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