Gameplay

Legendary

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki

The Legendary shield, as per Halo: The Master Chief Collection's release.

"You face opponents who have never known defeat, who laugh in alien tongues at your efforts to survive. This is suicide."
— Description from Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and Halo: Campaign Evolved.

"Tremble as teeming hordes of invincible alien monsters punish the slightest error with instant death... again and again."
— Description from Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4[Note 1]

"Your enemies outnumber you greatly and are hunting you down. Can you survive their onslaught?"
— Description from Halo: The Master Chief Collection

"Death around every corner. Reload often."
— Description from Halo 5: Guardians

"Face insurmountable odds and an overwhelming enemy force. This is what legends are made of."
— Description from Halo Wars 2

"Run, little Demon. Recommended for fans of Jackal Snipers."
— Description from Halo Infinite

Legendary is the highest and most difficult setting of Campaign gameplay in every Halo games to date, aside from the informal "Mythic" difficulty which is Legendary with all Skulls active in Halo games that feature them. The Legendary difficulty is also featured in Firefight, Skirmish, and Spartan Ops games.

Summary[edit]

The original Legendary shield.

In the original Halo trilogy, legendary difficulty is symbolized by an Elite skull with a bullet pierced on the cranium, two crossed combat knives and a shield bearing the Marathon symbol, though the symbol is not visible behind the skull. In Halo 3: ODST, the symbol is adjusted to a human skull with two crossed Suppressed SMGs in front of the same shield with the Marathon symbol, now slightly visible behind the skull. In Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the original legendary symbol returns, but these games, along with future titles, lack the Marathon symbol on the shield. In Halo 4, the shield and the combat knives have been redesigned while the skull of a Promethean Knight replaces the previous skulls.

Legendary is regarded as a significant challenge, even for veteran players. Overwhelming enemy firepower, superior enemy numbers, and increased enemy intelligence make up most of the challenge, but several specific changes, varying throughout games, also add to the difficulty. Most allies are practically useless aside from creating distractions. The player must play cautiously and conservatively to succeed, but even with appropriate tactics and practice, the player will die very often and may require some luck to succeed. The increased difficulty does not come without rewards; many details, such as pieces of dialogue, cutscenes, and music, can only be heard or seen on Legendary; in particular, most Halo games feature an additional scene in the ending cutscenes, which is only shown on Legendary, often referred to as "Legendary Endings". Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, and Halo 5: Guardians feature such endings. Several achievements, challenges, commendations, and career awards reward players for accomplishing various tasks on Legendary difficulty in addition to the achievements for simply completing every mission on Legendary.

Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo: Anniversary[edit]

In the first Halo game, the differences between Legendary and other settings is relatively numeric. The player does not face unique or different enemies yet they face many more enemies who are tougher to defeat and endure. Many of the same strategies that work on other settings work on Legendary in this game except that the player has to be extremely careful of his/her own weaknesses. This is where the Noob combo comes in handy, with use of the Plasma Pistol and M6D Magnum.

General differences[edit]

  • Player shields are half their Normal resistance. A few hits from plasma will often drain them completely.
  • Enemy shield resistance is strengthened.
  • Extremely weak health. One melee from an enemy in front of the player will often prove fatal.
  • Player shields and enemy shields recharge faster - twice as fast as when on Normal difficulty.
  • Enemy health is doubled.
  • Sangheili: Twice as many Sangheili appear as on the Normal difficulty. Sangheili Major are encountered at a ratio of about one of every three Elites encountered, improving enemy forces. An area that had two Sangheili Minor on Normal should have four to five Elites on Legendary with one or two of them being Majors. Their shields can take 28 rounds from an Assault Rifle before lowering.
  • Unggoy: Twice as many Unggoy appear than on the Normal setting. Around half of the Grunts encountered are Unggoy Major.
  • Enemy Grunts and Elites throw grenades frequently, much faster and almost always accurately. The grenade detonation timers are cut in half.
  • Firing Rate : All enemies fire their weapons much faster and more accurately. In particular, Kig-Yar will fire long streams of 10-15 shots with high accuracy. Kig-Yar will also charge their plasma pistols much more often proving deadly in combat.
  • Agility : All enemies move much faster and will rarely allow a player to stick them with grenades. Sangheili will often do their dodging maneuver immediately if hit, making it very difficult to make consistent hits on them to drain their shields.
  • Stealth Sangheili: They are always encountered in packs of four to six with few exceptions.
  • Flood: The Flood are now armed 90 percent of the time. Their deadly melee attacks will drain shields by half. Many more of them wield Shotguns and Rocket Launchers than before. Only a couple of Infection Forms can completely drain your shields, and an explosion from a Carrier Form can kill you instantly if your shields are completely or partially drained.
  • Allies: Marines are virtually useless. They will constantly get stuck with grenades and most are easily killed by the enemy's increased rate of fire. Their returning fire only inflicts minimal damage on enemies. Their AI is increased significantly, still to little effect.
  • Sangheili Zealots: appear more frequently throughout the game. Incredibly, it takes 21 shots from an M6D Pistol to remove their shields alone.

Specific differences[edit]

  • The Pillar of Autumn:
    • The player does not go through the controls section at the beginning of the level, the game assuming that anyone choosing the highest difficulty level has gone through it before. Instead, they will wake up and leave the cryo section immediately. This also occurs on Heroic difficulty.
    • Johnson's speech changes in the beginning of the level.
    • The player has immediate access to the motion tracker and Frag grenades.
  • The Truth and Reconciliation:
    • Upon entering the loading bay, 4-6 Sangheili Zealots will ambush the player and the Marines in addition to the standard waves of Unggoy and Kig-Yar which pass through the hallways. There will also be a couple of Mgalekgolo.
  • 343 Guilty Spark:
    • The shotgun is no longer available early on in the game. The only way to pick it up is to kill a Flood combat form that was holding one or from one of the dead Marines from the third room with an energy bridge.
  • The Maw:
    • The player only has five minutes to get to the Longsword fighter after destroying the Pillar of Autumn's engine core as opposed to the usual six minutes.
    • The player will get to see the non-canon secret ending.

Awards[edit]

In Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary:

Halo 2[edit]