Format: Advance
Genre: Dungeon Crawl
Developer: Pocket Studios
Publisher: Midway

Gauntlet, Gauntlet Legends on the N64, and Gauntlet in the arcades were all great games. It stands to reason that anything named gauntlet would be good or decent as a game. This one goes to not only show that's an inaccurate statement but proves beyond a questionable doubt that coasting off fame won't make a good game. To start out with this one, where to begin where to begin.... Oh I know, the ever present SOUND of the game. The quality of the sound of this game is so earsplittingly bad, from the music, to the effects, that the company who did the sound never listed off a single person in the credits. Oh but it gets better. The company that did the sound ripped off elton john's company name making it virtually impossible to find information about them. I suspect that whoever was behind the sound of this game probably took all the money midway gave them, and ran off with it and outsourced it all to the mexican drug cartel. Music can take an otherwise mediocre game and make it playable, but the reverse is also true and proves true with this game. Every single track in this game is horrible, but the ice world's track specifically made me think twice about hitting the power down button immediately. I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt that Gauntlet Dark Legacy has THE WORST soundtrack on the entire GBA. I've played 60-ish game so far and there are about 900 more to play, but there's no possible way for any other game to have a worse soundtrack than this one. I could write a book about every possible way they screwed up the audio but I should do this review it's fair due and talk about the gameplay. The game follows the typical Gauntlet Legends style where you have a few worlds, each world has 4 levels and a boss in it, and there are "hidden" runes in each world. The big issue with this game however is that each level is FRIGGIN MASSIVE!!! On top of the size of each level, there's no map. What makes this one even more of a slog is that unlike gauntlet legends, you don't have any "special skills" like hypershot, avalanche, or the flying skull move(I played wizard). This means your entire arsenal is whatever your attack button is. Most of the classic items are in this game, 3way shot, reflective arrow, the halo, food, poison, potions, keys, gold. Most of those are pick up and instant-action, meaning you can't save them, potions and keys you can save up to 9 on hand. Gold has no use in this game. It begs the question of why gold exists. In other ports gold has a use, that being to give stat upgrades at sumner's shop. This game doesn't have sumner's shop. 2 Flavors of death exist in this game as well, black death which will steal your exp and red death which will steal your health. Speaking of powerups though, this game loves to do a lil middle finger a lot of the time by putting the powerups you need BEHIND the wave of enemies they are designed to be used for. If you're too close to an enemy (which happens alot) you'll also not be able to use some powerups like rapid-fire or 5-way shot. The game takes place on an isometric field as well, which makes reflective shots almost entirely useless, and aiming is a real pain in the butt. All this combined makes the game very tedious to get through and beat, even more so if you miss a rune and have to replay the entire level AND beat it again. Quitting out of a level resets all stats to before you entered it. The first boss(Dragon) was actually the toughest boss in the game. Not that an immovable boss is all that hard, but getting combo locked into a wall tends to eat chunks of health away. This game doesn't really have any redeeming qualities.. it's not even multiplayer.

Hot Tips: Midway is the LJN of the GBA

All in All, this game gets a 2. There was no love or effort put into this game, in any way shape or form. Even completing the game, you have to manually go into the main menu to get to the credits, AND have to manually A-button through the credits. The sound and music is that of hell breaking free.