Legend Bowl Review – Review

I have been so starved for portable Madden that I put too much time into the PC version that constantly crashes and runs like garbage on Steam Deck last year. I exist as an entity on the prowl for a meal that satisfies my male desire to call plays dotted with Xs and Os. I crave the arcane feeling of simulating an entire season of football just to see the numbers go up and down on my virtual army. So when I heard Legend Bowl – a retro-looking football game headed up by an ex-Madden developer – was coming to Switch, I got very excited. Unfortunately, that excitement dimmed the more I played, even if the foundation shows promise for future seasons.

While Legend Bowl might initially conjure up feelings of Tecmo Bowl, the actual feel and gameplay is closer to Madden, specifically the old ‘90s 2D style. You have a full playbook with a variety of plays as the camera is behind the quarterback from an aerial vantage point. The controls took a little bit of getting used to but definitely felt familiar to me as a Madden veteran. This was all very promising as I queued up my first play. Then I snapped the ball and the game moved like molasses by default. It felt like every player with the ball had the speed of B.J. Raji (or William “the Refrigerator” Perry if you want a non-Wisconsin reference). Runs of a yard or two took eons. Breaking free in open space made every 10 yards you ran feel like an eternity. Thankfully, there is an option to tweak the game speed, but even with a faster pace, this is a game designed with slower intent in mind. It’s a bandage (a patch, if you will) and not a full salve.

Legend Bowl is a game that looks like it should be an arcade sports hit, but it tries too hard to lean on the simulation side while losing sight of arcade immediacy. My attempts at multiplayer with friends fell flat, with some of the biggest issues coming from the pace and the finicky nature of passing the ball. A toggleable pass assist option helps a lot, but the default makes throwing the ol’ pigskin effectively lean too much on precision. In a football game I don’t need to be reminded of how difficult it is to play quarterback (I can just watch that game where the Broncos played a backup wide receiver at QB for that); I want to feel like I can be an All-Pro, especially when playing with friends. This game did not have the staying power a lot of recent successful arcade sports games have had, which is very important since it lacks online play.

Aside from the moment-to-moment gameplay, the depth of the franchise mode is impressive. As I said at the top, I’m a sucker for seeing the skill numbers of my team go up and down during a sports season. The 32-team league and 17-game schedule that comically apes the real NFL is engrossing in a way that Madden has slowly gotten away from in the past few years. The franchise mode, as well as the tournament mode and other options, add a high degree of customization to Legend Bowl that is welcome. I just wish I liked playing the actual game more than I do.

The structure in place here is encouraging though and I hope Legend Bowl has a future as the football video game landscape is dire, especially on Switch. Refining the gameplay or deepening gameplay options and tutorials could go a long way into making this an arcade classic. To bake in a relevant sports metaphor, this game is like the first season after moving on from a franchise legend. You could wind up with a losing first season but end up with a first-ballot Hall of Famer when their career is over. Or this could turn out to be a bust and get the head coach fired. Only time will tell because there is a lotta ballgame left.