Review: Official Sets - Glatorian Legends

The Glatorian Legends in canon are rather straightforward, simply put they’re Glatorian who were assumed to be more powerful, unique, and integral to the overall narrative of Bionicle. They often possessed additional abilities, distinct armor designs, and unique weapons. Basically they’re an expanded subset of Glatorian characters.

Packaging

The packaging is very similar to what we saw with the Glatorian, just with a different canister top. The front shows off the sets in front of their environments along with the general set information.

The back of the canisters show off all of the Glatorian Legends next to one another along with a lot of text and a small advertisement for the Bionicle Legend Reborn movie.

Model Reviews

Kicking things off is Stronius who is of course a Skrall elite. His overall look is very rocky, too much to the point where he almost doesn’t look like a Bionicle. That thought aside he does look great as a set and I like how they continued the red and black color scheme, this time opting for dark red pieces buried beneath the black. Without a doubt the highlights of Stronius are the helmet, shoulders, and weaponry. The helmet has a very unique look and ditches the tail we saw on the previous Skrall representations. The shoulders contain massive armor pieces that add a ton of bulk to this set. And in his right hand Stronius carries a really fascinating club that just looks deadly in battle.

Just like we saw with the Glatorian, and this is the case for all of the Glatorian Legends, there are Thornax Launchers and Life Counters. The Thornax Launcher functions pretty well, I just imagine it’s very easy to lose the ammo. And the Life Counter feels a bit out of place but adds a valuable play feature to the sets.

Ackar comes in hot with a color scheme I wish was copied over to the other fire tribe sets with his pure red and orange look. This color scheme is just so vibrant and reminiscent of early Bionicle, I love it. The actual build for Ackar is pretty simple and there isn’t anything out of the ordinary. His helmet isn’t quite as good as the previous fire tribe helmets we saw with Raanu and Malum, but there is still a slight gradient printed on it. I’m sure this piece is used in other sets but the flame piece used in Ackar’s left hand is the biggest I’ve ever seen and invokes a ton of power. Unfortunately my Ackar had a broken silver piece, so I had to improvise the connection to his left hand.

Next up is probably the most fascinating of the Glatorian Legend sets, Vastus. Vastus follows the dark green and lime color scheme but includes a lot of molds which I would’ve associated with a water tribe member. I guess you can think of Vastus as more of a swamp creature. Speaking of that mold the helmet looks amazing. It has a sense of wisdom to it, like more of a reserved fighter. The detail is just magnificent here and goes perfectly alongside the shoulder armor, which are lime pieces of a very similar but not identical mold. The one thing about Vastus that bothers me is the weapon. It looks great but really restricts movement at the arms, so much so that it’s tough to even post the model. I wish this were one of the weapons where we could opt to not have the staff connecting the hands, but unfortunately that’s not an option.

Moving on to Kiina, this set does a great job of translating an amphibious appearance to the lone water tribe set from this group. The mask has less detail than we’ve seen from other ones this year, but the aesthetic of it is quite unique and telling. Just like we saw with Ackar, Kiina is a pretty straightforward and plain build, and can be a bit forgettable, but by no means is it a bad set. The tridents Kiina carries are a bright spot for this set with their intricate shaping and detail.

Gelu caught me a bit by surprise with the color scheme including so much navy, I would have guessed that they would have stuck with the light blue and white look. Overall this set has a very striking Inika similarity, which I don’t love since we’re trying to move on to new stories, but it still looks good, no denying that. The weapon pieces look pretty good, but compared to what we saw last week I wish the silver portions were white.

Character aside this set looks pretty nice, but it being essentially the set reveal of Mata Nui is a bit disappointing. I know there’s another version out there, but to not get gold with Mata Nui when we saw it with Glatorian sets last week is a bit of a gut punch. Compared to the other Glatorian Mata Nui is the smallest and his weapons are the least interesting by a considerable amount. The Mask of Life looks good as always, but once again we need this in gold not bright light orange.

Current Pricing & Final Thoughts

If you want to pick up any of these sets for yourself, the general price is around $20 per set in used condition, with that price bumping up to around $70 in sealed condition. However Mata Nui goes for around $140 sealed, just a heads up. With their price being similar to the Glatorian I would recommend the Glatorian over their Legend counterparts, but these are still some pretty good sets.

Overall the Glatorian Legends are good sets, but I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed after how good the Glatorian were. The Glatorian Legends are more of a typical group of 6 we’re used to seeing from the Toa lines, and don’t go nearly as far as the Glatorian do in being bold or different. If you don’t have the Glatorian, I’d say to get those first, and then move on to these guys. But if you do decide to get these first, you’re still getting a good group of sets.

Score: 7.4/10

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