Rayman Legends Retold Hands-On Preview & Impressions (PS5) – If there’s one of Ubisoft’s franchises that has fallen slightly to the wayside in recent years, it’s Rayman. For being the character that many associated with the studio in the early 2000s and 2010s, it’s been over a decade since he starred in his own dedicated game. Outside of being a DLC character in his own spin-off, time hasn’t been the kindest to the limbless icon, but that appears to be changing from this year onwards.
Rayman Legends Retold is a reimagining of the adored Rayman Legends, and aims to recontextualise that game into the start of something new for the Rayman franchise at large. Despite familiar level design and gameplay, it’s clear that Rayman Legends Retold is aiming to be a bit more than just an alternate take on a classic.
Rayman Legends Retold Hands-On Preview & Impressions: Something Old, Something New
The original Rayman Legends came off the back of a fantastic reboot of the series, returning to a 2D style and forgoing the 3D style of Rayman 3 from 2003. It returned to basics and placed the focus squarely on the platforming. I remind you about Rayman Legends to expressly highlight the difference in angle that this version of the game is exploring, being more interested in being a brand new start for the Rayman mythos.
Despite having beaten the original game nearly four separate times, I couldn’t tell you anything about the story of Legends, and that’s very much by design. In contrast, the major push for Rayman Legends Retold takes the original world of Legends and stitches it together into something more narratively cohesive, with a new villain and threat threading the story together. While you’ll be familiar with the vast majority of stages in this game in terms of their design, these levels are now situated in actual hub worlds that thematically match their areas, rather than the central gallery from the original game.
This small contextual change has massive ramifications for the type of game that Retold actually is, and is reinforced consistently throughout, and based on my chat with Loic Gounon, was a very clear point of focus for this project.
My time with the game was largely spent in fully 3D recreations of the first two worlds of the game, being the Old Teensie Kingdom, and the Stinkbog. Gameplay itself sticks largely to the same perspective as the original, with an incredibly faithful movement and perspective system that focuses on enhancing detail rather than reinventing the wheel. Backgrounds are full of details that were absent in the original style, and this further cements that sense of “place” that is at the heart of Retold.
Being blunt, my familiarity with the source material did a lot of work in carrying me through this session. For all of the visual spectacle and gorgeous new look for the game, I worry that it might impact the readability of certain secrets down the road. Rayman Legends has some of the most intuitively hidden secrets in a platformer that I’ve played, and overcomplicating the visual style is a bold decision that may make these secret nooks that much harder to find.
I sit and wonder how new players will adapt to this style. Interestingly, Murphy has also remained totally unchanged in this interpretation of the game. This character was designed for completely different controller real-estate, so I was expecting to see this aspect of the game adapted. It not being changed was interesting, but not altogether bad. I actually find the asynchronous action with Murphy to be fairly engaging, so I’m pleased it’s back.
As well as revisiting familiar levels, this preview session did give me a brief sampling of the revamped story in the form of a gorgeously animated cutscene with dialogue, and brief exchanges before and after certain stages. I’m yet to get a sense of any broader direction, but I can immediately say that the cast sounds the part, thanks in large to the return of David Gasman, and Billy West as Rayman, and Murphy, respectively. The legacy of the series is very much being honoured here.
This isn’t to say that Legends Retold isn’t bringing it’s own bevvy of new stuff to the table; this retelling of the game introduces an entirely new world of levels to play that have been built from the ground up for this release. In addition, every world is now bookended by a new type of level that sees you riding tamed dragons to travel from one world to the next. These aren’t too dissimilar to the mosquito-riding levels from Rayman Origins, just with a hell of a lot more going on in the backgrounds.
As an extra wrinkle, I’m certainly not opposed to these levels appearing as a way of connecting the world together, but I’m also a little bit worried that they might be visually overstimulating in some regards. To 100% complete these missions, you need to beat them without getting hit once, and my worry is that certain obstacles blend into the background that bit much, with the new style.
When everything looks as detailed as it does, it gets tough to tell what’s coming towards you and what’s just set dressing. It’s a visual language issue that might resolve after some more time with the final game. Saying that, I did manage to beat both levels without a single tap during my preview, so maybe this is a worry about nothing.
This was where my session with Legends Retold concluded, but that’s not all of the information that I gathered on the day. I sat down and had a good chat with Rayman Brand Producer Loic Gounon about the new game and the future of the series.
Most pressingly, he confirmed to me that all of the original music levels from Rayman Legends make a return here. Given that a lot of those tracks are licensed, I was chomping at the bit to know whether or not we’d be jamming to Black Betty, and The Eye Of The Tiger again, and it seems that we’ll be getting our wishes granted. These levels have been similarly reimagined for a 3D perspective, but maintain their sharp timing that so many love.
As well as this, we got talking about why this game was the chosen starting point for Rayman going forward after 30 years, and the answer was indicative of a far greater vision for the brand. Essentially, Rayman Legends represents the fullest version of the Rayman world that has been put to games yet, and there was a desire to double down on this version of the Glade of Dreams as the basis for something far greater in the future. This does mean that a small handful of levels that simply don’t fit into the world have been cut, but what levels they are I couldn’t tell you. Every other level has been remade, and the cut levels are substituted with brand new content that wasn’t in the original game.
I was initially a part of the crowd that questioned the necessity to remake this game over something like Rayman Origins, but I can at least understand the grander vision. Even if it means touching parts of the Rayman mythos that might be better buried – looking at you, Rabbids.
I left my preview session with Rayman Legends Retold feeling pretty positive about the game overall; despite being an incredibly early build of the game, it certainly feels like Rayman Legends. If you played the original, it’ll be like jumping back into a familiar pair of shoes, with just a few new things to discover. Changes are broad, but don’t alienate the original source material.
This approach to adaptation makes me curious as the game moves into some of its more abstract zones, but so far, I consider myself optimistic for the return of Rayman.
Rayman Legends Retold is currently due for release on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC on October 1st, 2026.