New Legends' story is nothing we haven't heard before.  China has been under siege for over a century.  Just when it looks like this may be the end, Roa Kahn (no relation to Shao Kahn) manages to unite the Middle Kingdom.  He claims the throne as China's new emperor and restores peace to the ravaged nation.  Not a moment later, an evil being entered.  That being formed an alliance with Xao Gon, and together they attacked and abolished almost every clan territory in China.  The Soo Kingdom, located in the far reaches of China, is one of the few clans still alive.  The heroes within its castle's walls are China's only hope...

New Legends' gameplay redefines the word "choppy."  It's a disgrace to the Xbox and a disgrace to next-gen gaming in general.  There will always be choppy games, regardless of how powerful the latest consoles are.  But at times, New Legends is actually worse than choppy.  The game is filled with dialogue that loads off of the disc whenever something triggers them.  This, for some unknown reason, causes the game to slow down so much that it freezes.  Yep, you heard right -- freezes.  The game has an extremely hard time recovering from this disaster, one that plagues your movement from the moment you start a mission, to the moment that you die or turn the game off (whichever comes first).  I am not exaggerating.  I've played most of the games available for the Xbox and GameCube, and more than 1/4 the games available for the PlayStation 2.  None of them (except for Summoner) were as disappointing as New Legends.  The gameplay is good, but it's impossible to enjoy.

I've only played one other game in the last 12 months that slowed down almost as much as New Legends.  That game was Quake 3 for the PlayStation 2, a port of a two-year-old FPS, not a brand-new game developed specifically for the console.  I know that voice-overs take a fairly large amount of processing power (or so I've been told), but if they can play music, voice-overs and other impressive sound effects in a racing game without losing a single frame, New Legends should be running at a constant 60 frames per second.  It barely reaches 30fps though.  The framerate issues continue with the camera.  In most games, especially on the Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2, the camera-centering button smoothly adjusts the view in real time.  In New Legends, the camera shifts from one view to the next, as if it were a movie switching scenes.  Not only that, but the processor has to work even harder to switch the view, and if there's any dialogue being played, you can be certain that the game will slow down.  When no dialogue is being played, New Legends runs fairly smoothly, but that smoothness doesn't last nearly long enough.  Don't misunderstand what I said before.  Xbox is not to blame for New Legends' flaws.  When programmed properly, Xbox can do just about anything.  I'm not saying that New Legends was programmed improperly, but it's pretty obvious that something went wrong in the game's development cycle.  It wasn't rushed to the market, so there's no excuse for New Legends' flaws.  I wouldn't be as critical if they were direct gameplay flaws, because not every developer can make a perfect-playing game on the first try.  The gameplay is fine though...until the flawed elements begin to affect the way the game is played. 

The only other next-gen game that I can directly compare New Legends to is Dynasty Warriors 2.  Although not perfect by any means, DW2 seems like a next-gen masterpiece when compared with New Legends.  DW2 crammed more than a dozen fully-rendered characters onto the screen at once, and the gameplay was consistent throughout the entire game. 

Not surprisingly, New Legends does not look like an Xbox.  The pictures on the back of the box are somewhat misleading because most of the game does not look that good.  The main characters have decent animation, but the rest, especially each run-of-the-mill enemy you come across, are not.  90% of the backgrounds have about as much detail as the average washed-out Nintendo 64 game.  Maybe New Legends was originally planned for release on the Nintendo 64, or maybe it had a really, really low budget.  I could speculate all day long, but that isn't going to make the game look or play any better. 

It saddens me whenever I have to tell gamers to avoid a game like the plague, but it's impossible to recommend New Legends.  I can't recommend it as a rental either because it isn't fun to play for the average rental time period (five hours).  I gave New Legends several chances.  I struggled with the controls, the camera and every other part of this poorly constructed game.  I wanted to enjoy it and I thought [hoped] I would, but not every game can be good.  New Legends is not an acquired taste, so I doubt that anyone will be engrossed by this game.  Fighting fans are going to have to wait a while longer for something new and unique to play.  Fortunately, there are plenty of other great games to keep us occupied until then.

Gameplay: 4.3
Good gameplay + too many distractions = a game that's extremely hard to enjoy.

Graphics: 3 
It's really hard to believe that THIS is an Xbox game.  Playing New Legends after experiencing games like Dead or Alive 3 and Rallisport Challenge is like trying to watch Mortal Kombat Annihilation after seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Sound: 4
The dialogue is not very good, and for the price we had to pay to hear it, I would have liked something comparable to Metal Gear Solid.

Difficulty: 6.9

Concept: 7 
New Legends had a good concept, one that I hope to see used again in the future.  The execution wasn't bad either, so maybe if they speed up the framerate (as well as the gameplay itself) and add more action, a great sequel could be made.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 4.5
I hate that I don't like this game, because I really wanted to.  Given the fact that money is required to buy/rent New Legends, it isn't worth playing.  Borrow this game from a friend if you absolutely must try it, but don't spend your hard-earned cash on it.