Formula Legends is an off-brand arcade racer with a Formula One theme, developed by the same team that brought us Paw Patrol Grand Prix and Gigantosaurus: Dino Kart. Indeed, it’s true that the majority of 3DClouds‘ production seems to be racing games for a very young audience. For those of you who aren’t eating spaghetti with your hands anymore, Formula Legends may seem like an easy game to pass on paper. However, Formula Legends may end up being a dark horse in the race if you enjoy the lengthy and illustrious history of Formula 1 racing as well as video games like Art of Rally, Circuit Superstars, and Micro Machines.
A little sluggish handling style, some irksomely inconsistent AI, and the absence of multiplayer interrupt the fun, but this colorful, toy-like arcade racer never fails to impress with its cute and developing approach to showing the many, many periods it represents.
Formula Legends is not meant to compete with contemporary Formula One series like Codemasters, as evidenced by its cartoon-like visuals and large car caricatures. Those games are primarily intended for die-hard fans who want a realistic style, but they are also sufficiently adjustable to be accessible to younger players and newcomers—in fact, it is one of their true advantages. Formula Legends, on the other hand, is still extremely serious about paying homage to the sport of Formula One in a deliciously complete way that older fans can enjoy, while F1 2025 aims to be a realistic simulation of a contemporary elite sport, similar to its contemporaries on the basketball court or football field.
Goes Hammerton through
With a career mode that spans seven decades, starting in the 1960s, Formula Legends takes a greatest hits approach to the history of the world’s top open-wheel motorsport. The majority of these decades are further divided into several mini-eras that encompass the early, mid, and late stages of these periods. Throughout each championship, the drivers, car models, and teams they compete for are continuously switched up. There are entrance points in every decade, but many of these titles are locked until you finish the one before it. This strikes a nice mix between providing us with a ton of content to unlock and allowing us to move freely between the various eras as we see fit.
To unlock the most recent car and driver combinations in Formula Legends, you won’t need to go back in time to the late 1960s and now, which spans about 70 years of racing. If you want, you may do a vintage championship, move into the 2020s, and then return to the 1990s. You will continue to unlock additional stuff throughout this time. Everything has been carefully thought out.
Note that there are no licensed cars or driver names in Formula Legends because the game is totally unrelated to real-life Formula 1. Some of them go beyond what constitutes a good pun to the point of being a little too cryptic or unclear; the development team might have used one more edit pass to detect eccentricities like Alan Jones. Overall, it’s adorable stuff, even though Al John moved to New Zealand from Australia in the 1980s for no apparent reason.
Turn Around
The fact that Formula Legends doesn’t always hold up on track is a disappointing aspect of the game. I can get into a really decent rhythm on some courses, especially after learning the layout’s turns after a few laps. On far too many other occasions, though, it’s hard to get the beat right without swaying back and forth as I try to adjust my line as it emerges from corners. I believe the cause of this is that the steering has a strange lag, as if it isn’t responsive enough. It can occasionally make abrupt direction changes, like chicanes, which can be quite annoying. It does require some acclimatization to the slightly delayed angle change.
Because it most closely resembles Art of Rally, I prefer to play Formula Legends from the farthest camera option (a cockpit camera is included, but I didn’t find it to be my favorite perspective). It also seems to be at its finest in this position; a more top-down view lessens the numbness in the handling model. The distinction is that Art of Rally is not up against a swarm of other AI vehicles, and one of its main drawbacks is Formula Legends‘ AI vehicles.
The impact that even a small interaction with your AI opponents can have is really frustrating. In essence, if you bump into a car outside of you while turning a corner, your steering will be totally overridden, causing you to understeer straight into a wall or off course. Even a slight bump from behind will cause other cars to drastically slow down, trapping you behind them. With only three levels (easy, regular, and hard), the inconsistent AI is a major annoyance, particularly because there isn’t a multiplayer feature where players may compete against friends.
The primary issue is the wide variation in their skill levels among circuits. It was very easy for me to maintain the normal AI behind me during a race on several tracks, and occasionally I was able to drive out to fairly significant leads. On other tracks, though, particularly the Monaco version in Formula Legends, they appear to be incredibly faster for no apparent reason. You can simply lower the difficulty for such tracks, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Regretfully, once the difficulty level is decided, it cannot be changed for any following races during a championship.
An AI system that we could tweak with a little more detail would greatly enhance Formula Legends.
An AI system that we could tweak with a little more detail would greatly enhance Formula Legends. Given that Formula Legends racing involves pit stops, unpredictable weather, and tire wear, something similar would assist in maintaining the pack closer together. It’s wonderful to have to consider your pit stop strategy during a race, but if we could figure out a method to make the racing more frequent, it would be much more stressful to make those last-minute decisions to pit (or remain out for one more lap).
Verdict
One part Art of Rally and one part Micro Machines, Formula Legends is a sincere and always endearing unlicensed tribute to seven decades of Formula One racing. Formula Legends has me completely engrossed in discovering and unlocking its many racing eras, and I was prepared to endure its sluggish handling and its annoyingly inconsistent AI racers to experience it all. The game features tracks, engine notes, and even visual filters that change drastically over the decades.
