The Magic Lies In The Potions – Hidden Dragon Legend
Hidden Dragon: Legend is a 2.5D action-platformer developed by Chinese studio MegaFun Games and published by Oasis Games. Set in a dark and mystical version of ancient China, the game blends hack-and-slash combat with light RPG elements and classic platforming mechanics.
This is another title where the naming convention 101 should have stepped in for sure, it probably sounded amazing in Chinese, right? HIDDEN DRAGON LEGEND (Insert screaming Chinese voice here), but in English, these words don’t go too well together.
The Legend of Hidden Dragon does sound better, does it not?
My point with this opening is that this game was nearly skipped because of the name. Luckily, the summer sale on PlayStation Network made me interested due to the super cheap price tag of $3.99.
Hidden Dragon is one of those 2D/2.5D old-school styled beat ’em up brawlers with platforming elements that we used to love back in the day, one of the first games I played in this genre was called Ninja / Ninja Mission on the C64/Arcade and Amiga.
The concept is pretty straightforward, as you basically fight your way through each location, and after that, you will do some climbing and jumping and so on, and then you will get to a new enemy encounter. You keep doing this until the end of the stage, where you will encounter a boss.
Yes, at times Hidden Dragon Legend does indeed feel like one of those old classics, for better and for worse, sadly.
Hidden Dragon Legend starts off really bad, I’d go as far as saying that this is almost a game breaker, and the reason for that is simple, the general feeling of movement and controlling your character in the prologue is stiff and unresponsive.
The prologue is short, and while it does have a meaning, it must be said that this could have just been a video instead; it would have been better to just start when you get into the action.
Playing a Ninja(?) with a limp is NOT FUN.
To everyone: Just play through it, try to forget the opening and start enjoying the game from the first chapter instead.
When the game starts to get fun is when you get to show your combat and button skills. The game will get very difficult at times, and you will have to learn how to fight to stand a chance.
The way the levels are built up works great as a motivator to keep pushing on, most battles in the first few hours are set up against everything you have learned early on although some boss battles can be downright unfair until you start checking your weapons, skills and potions menus, more about that later on.
Hidden Dragon Legend does look very dark and boring in the screenshots here, and yes, you shouldn’t expect a visual explosion at all in the game, but there’s something about the style that “just works” better when you actually play it.
All the enemies in the game got one of these pretty stylish presentation animations/screens. You will encounter the enemies frequently, but you will only see this thing the first time you encounter them.
One could go as far as saying that there ain’t enough enemies in the game and that most battles will feel repetitive at times, but this is an old-school type of game and this is a typical and common feature, right?.
The number of enemies ain’t a problem at all, all of them are different to each other with sometimes a very different type of fighting style too, which means that you need to actually think when fighting several types of enemies at the same time.
This is the most important menu in Hidden Dragon Legend is this one and without this, you will be literally f*ck*d. It took me quite a while before I realised that there was such a menu in the game.
How hard can it be, right? Press Options and select Potions and then Buy Potions, right?. Well, for some reason, this little tutorial went past me, and it nearly broke the game for me (read: an awfully difficult boss battle ahead!). So this is my best tip for YOU: There’s a buy potions menu that you can access before any battle in the game, make sure you have 10 Potions there.
It seems that this game ain’t a console exclusive, right? USE GAMEPAD to get a perfect control experience… OK, but this is a PlayStation 4 game, and I doubt this game actually works with a steering wheel.
Hidden Dragon Legend ain’t a huge game or anything, I used 5-6 hours to complete it on standard difficulty, but once you complete it’s supposedly when it gets even better as there’s a level system for weapons and skills that you will bring with you into a NewGame+ mode.
The length is never a problem with the game, and it felt like it was a good time to quit when the game’s end scroller ticked in.
This boss battle was nothing short of epic. Imagine if a game had this in 1988, this battle reminded me a lot of a certain boss battle in Ninja Spirit, well, not really, but there is something about this boss design that made me think of Ninja Spirit from IREM, nonetheless.
One thing, though, the game tries too hard to be old-school here, so the battle is pretty much not as epic as it looks.
There are quite a few cutscenes throughout the game. While you can skip them, doing so will likely cause the game to crash—at least that was my experience. It’s safer to just watch the videos and hit the Quick Time Events when they appear. The scene shown in the screenshot above, for example, crashed multiple times when I tried to skip it.
Some of these cutscenes are actually pretty cool, while others are more forgettable. The voice acting? It’s pretty rough—but intentionally so. It leans heavily into the cheesy charm of old-school video games and those over-the-top ninja movies from the ’80s. And for me, it absolutely nailed that vibe.
Is Hidden Dragon: Legend a good game?
For me, it’s one of those “it works for me” kind of titles. It had the potential to be much better, but even with more polish or scale, I doubt it would’ve climbed into classic territory. This isn’t a timeless gem—it’s the kind of game that will likely fade into obscurity over time.
That said, it’s clear the developers were aiming to capture the spirit of those late ’80s and early ’90s action games. As an indie effort, it tries hard to emulate that retro feel, though the execution is a bit uneven. Honestly, Hidden Dragon: Legend probably would’ve been a tough sell even back in the PlayStation One era—it’s very much an acquired taste.
I genuinely enjoyed my time with it and would recommend it to fans of the genre, but that’s about as far as it goes. It’s a passable game—fun in bursts, worth picking up on sale, but nothing to rave about.
