Look, I’m trying my best these days not to start everything with some kind of personal angle, but sometimes the subject simply demands it. In this case, it’s the fact that Rayman Legends is easily one of my favourite games of all time – definitely my favourite 2D platformer of all time – and that’s a fact that matters when it comes time to tell you about my experience playing Rayman Legends Retold.
I was recently invited to Ubisoft’s offices in Sydney to play around three hours of this comprehensive and surprisingly ambitious remake of the incredible 2013 original, which is (now) due out on December 3, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 and PC.
The preview build we had access to allowed us to experience three of the final game’s six realms, with pretty much all of the Mystic Mesa realm available and then a selection of stages from Iron Shell and Land of the Livid Dead. Keen fans will probably notice than none of those names are strictly familiar, but rest assured that Mystic Mesa is essentially the original’s third realm, Fiesta de los Muertos, Iron Shell matches the fourth, 20,000 Lums Under the Sea – and Land of the Livid Dead is an entirely new realm that outright replaces the Livid Dead Party realm as a big “finale” world.
One of the reasons for all this shuffling/rebranding of things is that Rayman Legends Retold completely recontextualises the original game’s setting, weaving a new, animated and fully-voiced story and swapping out the simple rows of paintings for a fully laid out world map with level hubs that Rayman and friends can properly explore and mine for their own secrets. Loading into the game for the first time, it’s clear how big of a departure this is and how much it adds to the game before we’ve even started playing a level. There’s a Pixar/DreamWorks-esque quality to the new Snowdrop Engine-powered 3D visuals and the hugely-increased scope of the world that brings out all of the oddness and whimsy that has always made the Rayman games special.
One of my unfounded but early concerns with Legends’ transition away from the short-lived UbiArt engine and into the same technology powering the likes of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and The Division, was that some of the original game’s tight controls and fluid platforming might be lost. Thankfully, at least as far as I can tell, the game feels exactly like it always has, with muscle memory keenly kicking in as soon as I dropped into a level and instinctively hit all of platforming lines and scrounged up every last hidden Teensie with barely a beat skipped.
It’s also clear right away how the collaborative teams at Ubisoft Montpellier and Ubisoft Milan are reinterpreting the existing art. The new rendering digs offer a stark difference in detail and depth, with seriously stunning environmental art that draws from the original work without feeling either too different or too derivate, it’s clear the teams love this world and have thought about it from every angle this fully-3D engine affords. Coupled with the new cutscenes, it’s a vastly more “cinematic” experience but one that doesn’t trade away the old charm. That continues through pretty much every level I played, to the point I could spend 1000s of words gushing about everything I saw, but I don’t have that kind of time. A special shout-out to all of the underwater stuff, though, which looks phenomenal.
I’m also not going to spend time going over how every existing level compares, suffice it to say that they all play superbly and pretty well in line with how I remember them, albeit with those super lovely visuals. But Rayman Legends Retold is more than just the same levels with a facelift, and adds whole new stages and ideas across the board. Some of these that I was able to experience include brand-new music levels, which I was very excited about. If you thought that nothing could ever live up to the Black Betty music level from Legends, you’d be right, but this new Macarena stage comes pretty darn close. I’m especially fond of the way it transitions from the Macarena we know, to some Alpine yodelling, and then closes it off with a bunch of Italian food and a subtle switch to “Heyyyy, Macaroni!” …Wonderful.
Another bit of brand-new gameplay comes by way of the Dragon Ride levels, which are entirely original to Legends Retold and take advantage of the new engine’s added perspective. Played like classic rail shooter arcade games, these see you ride a dragon (naturally) across dangerous terrain, navigating or shooting fire at obstacles as you attempt to carry a cohort of Teensies to safety. As a sort of reverse to the usual Teensie-collecting stages, you start each Dragon Ride stage with all of the possible Teensies, and lose one each time you take a hit, meaning your only way to 100% these is to get through them completely unscathed. Doing that was no small feat in my preview, so it’s nice to know there’s still fresh challenge to be found here even for veteran players. The Dragon Rides also appear be the transitional levels as you progress to each new realm, so there’s some good context to bad from them as well.
Finally, I was also able to sample a couple of stages from the Land of the Livid Dead realm, the sixth and final area and one that’s entirely new to Retold. This realm re-introduces the ever-changing character of Betilla the Fairy, who now absolutely towers over Rayman and crew, and grants them the power of Light, which adds a whole new gameplay element baked into this realm’s stages. With the ability to shoot beams of light, in one level I’m able to manipulate magical tree branches, causing them to grow or shrink away as needed, in another I can blast away chunks of tainted terrain (much like Rayman’s pal Murfy chews through cake in What the Duck?) to temporarily create new paths. I’m curious to see what else this ability allows me to do in later levels, but so far these new maps fit right in with all of the established ones and certainly offer up a decent test of your platforming skills.
Bonus Preview // Rayman Origins: Enhanced
In addition to everything I just went through, my time at Ubisoft in Sydney also allowed me to mess around a little in Rayman Origins: Enhanced, which is a 4K remaster of Legends’ immediate predecessor that comes bundled in with Rayman Legends Retold. There’s definitely less to say about this, given it’s not the complete rework that Retold is, but it’s still worth talking about.
Origins: Enhanced retains the look and feel of the original version, but there are some handy differences here. New quality-of-life improvements include input remapping, cutscene skipping and the ability to speed up end-of-level summary screens, and even extend to some new accessibility stuff like collectible spoilers, infinite-health and even free-flight options that appears after multiple failures. There’s also new concept art to unlock, standees to take fun screenshots with and a bunch of new character skins and other goodies.
But the thing that dabbling in Rayman Origins: Enhanced did for me, more than anything else, was highlight how far Rayman had come in the progression from Origins to Legends. And in turn, how the move from Legends to Legends Retold genuinely feels like it could match that sense of progress and the idea that it’s the perfect launchpad for a future of amazing Rayman games. Clearly the latter didn’t happen last time, with a 13-year gap that’s ending in this remake, but there’s so much more now in Legends Retold for Ubisoft to draw from in re-establishing Rayman as one of the greats.
Flights were provided by Ubisoft for the purposes of attending this preview event
Born into the world of video games through SEGA, and in particular Sonic the Hedgehog, Kieron’s gaming tastes now consist of the latest, shiny AAA thing, an indie darling or two, and an embarrassing number of hours of Balatro.