It's time to build your post-apocalyptic car with bazookas and set off into chaos! Sounds fun? Crossout Legends offers us just that. This is a spin-off of the original game Crossout from 2015, a free online title for PC and consoles, known for its combination of vehicle building and PvP battles in the style of “Mad Max.” After a full ten years of evolution, updates, and added factions, we finally have the Nintendo Switch version, packaged as “Legends.”
Building, destruction, and a dose of improvisation
For those who haven't heard of the original, Crossout revolves around assembling your own death vehicle and sending it into arenas where we fight against other players. All parts of the car – chassis, wheels, engines, weapons – have their own statistics, and the special charm is that they are also destructible. Hit an opponent in the wheel? It falls off. Hit their cannon off their shoulder? They no longer have a cannon. It often happened to me that I ended up without my robotic legs and stood there like a loser, shooting until I was taken out. Sometimes they take all my weapons, but hey, I can still run away and buy time for my teammates. This way, every battle gets a dose of improvisation and strategy; you're not just there to shoot everything you have, but to decide what to take down.
First steps: choose wisely!
The tutorial guides you through the basics of three possible vehicles – there's the fast buggy, armored tankette and bizarre robotic walker. Each has its advantages: the buggy is fast and agile, ideal for hit-and-run tactics, the tankette is tough and slower, an option for the front line, while the robot combines height and futuristic design, looking like a walker from Star Wars, deadly from a distance. I tried all three in the tutorial, but when I entered a real match, the game locked me into the last vehicle I tested. I wanted to be the fast and agile buggy-ninja, but ended up as a sluggish mech robot. A new approach to vehicles unlocks later through grinding, so choose carefully.
Buggy, tankette, or robot. Choose wisely, as you're stuck with that vehicle
Pew-pew to victory
Gameplay is easy to imagine: we drive our frankenstein vehicles and crash into each other in a 6v6 team deathmatch. The goal is either to blow up all opponents or capture their base. Matches are short, usually ending in a few minutes, which gives the game that special charm, “let's do one more, we'll be quick.” The combination of fast rounds and diverse maps gives the game a solid “pick up and play” vibe. However, after a longer time, it becomes somewhat tedious, and the controls often work against you. Driving is stiff, vehicles behave as if they have concrete wheels, and the camera sometimes works against you, especially when things get complicated and quick reflexes are needed. Minimal communication with the team is possible, but in my experience, most will do what they want.
Assembly master somewhat helps with assembling the basic skeleton of the vehicle
Grind, grind, damn grind
In theory, Crossroads Legends is a brilliant concept. In practice – a huge grind. While it's fun to combine different vehicle parts and test their synergies, most parts are locked behind tedious grinding or microtransactions, which stifles the game's creative potential. Many parts are locked, progress is slow, and the sense of freedom that should be the heart of the game is reduced to waiting or investing real money. Additionally, the progression system is unnecessarily complicated. Each vehicle part has its own power score, and the sum of those scores determines matchmaking. Combining parts quickly becomes a chore, not a game. Moreover, the game often warns you when you assemble something “incorrectly,” instead of teaching you what you can actually do through some tutorial.
One of the many offers upon morning login – buy, buy, buy
Free-to-play hell
The main problem with this game is precisely that it is free-to-play. I can't even start the game without being greeted by 4–5 windows: buy premium, try the new battle pass, here’s a special offer, subscription, a super car offering you these great items... All at once, immediately, without subtlety. I know this is the model that keeps the game running, and there are really decent F2P games where it’s not shoved in your face, but here it’s so aggressive that it feels like an annoyance, not an additional option.
When you dive into manual vehicle assembly, it is often unclear what you can and cannot do until the game warns you later
Port with minimal effort
Although it carries the name “Legends,” this feels more like a port of the mobile version with only basic adjustments for the Switch. Navigating the menus is slow, with a million options and an overly complicated approach to building vehicles, blueprints, and factions. Graphically, the game beautifully conveys a dusty, apocalyptic atmosphere, and the maps are diverse and tactically designed, but compared to the PC version, this looks like a game from the PS3 era. Sharp edges, simple textures, and somewhat hollow effects. The game is an obvious mobile port that hasn't put much effort into shining on the Nintendo Switch.
The ambiance effectively conveys the post-apocalypse, but washed-out textures and 30 fps still disrupt the atmosphere
Crossout Legends has a good foundation: the idea of building your own vehicles and participating in fast PvP battles is still fun. Matches are short, explosive, and initially appealing, and the destruction of parts gives the battles a certain depth. However, that depth quickly dries up. Grinding and monetization dominate to the extent that you feel like fun is in last place. If you want something for a quick PvP fix on the go and don’t mind endless “buy this” pop-ups, it might be worth a look.
