X-Men Legends

The X-Men Legends series launched in 2004, developed by Raven Software and published by Activision as a cooperative action RPG built around Marvel's mutant heroes. Players assembled a four-member X-Men squad, and each character — from Wolverine through Storm to Cyclops — carried its own skill tree and equipment, with free switching between them mid-fight, either solo or with friends dropping in and out. Isometric hack-and-slash combat, exploration of underground complexes and villain hideouts, plus solid RPG trappings like leveling and loot made it one of the first titles to successfully pair a licensed superhero roster with a genuine action RPG rather than a shallow brawler.

A year after the original came X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, which expanded the story with a thread inspired by the Age of Apocalypse comics and let players control some of the villains alongside the heroes. The sequel offered a larger roster to choose from, a reworked skill and combo system, and also released on PSP, while the first game stayed exclusive to GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Both games shared the same top-down view and the same up-to-four-player co-op philosophy that defined the whole series.

Although the series never continued under the X-Men Legends name after its second entry, its formula for cooperative superhero RPGs became the foundation Raven Software and Activision built on a year later with Marvel: Ultimate Alliance — leaving the legacy of both X-Men Legends games clearly visible across the whole superhero action RPG genre that followed.