X-Men: Legends is an action-RPG with a twist: instead of controlling a sole protagonist, you run around with a whole party of four heroes, where player can control one of them at a time, while the other three are directed by the AI. You can also select different members into your party from a list of 11 mutants from Professor Xavier School for Gifted, including such iconic characters as Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm and so on. Some characters could be unlocked at later stages.

The game story starts with a discovery of new young mutant, Alison, who has a powerful ability - a control over the Earth's magma layer. And human-hating Brotherhood of Mutants is quick to try to capture her to enlist into their numbers. X-Men manage to fight them off only to discover it was also just a part of their plot - to free their leader, an evil mastermind called Magneto from his long-term imprisonment.

The game plays as many traditional ARPGs with an emphasis on direct control and action. Every mutant has four primary battle skills that command their unique abilities plus some that are shared among all of them. It could be anything from Cyclops' optic beam, Gambits' deck of cards or Storms' massive tornado attack.

The N-Gage release shares many similarities to a PC and console game from Raven Software, however the graphic engine and in-game perspective are totally different - instead of fully 3D, almost top-down view, Barking Lizards version has a traditional isometric view with a prerendered world. There are 24 missions in a whole and the game features voice-overs and has some FMV cutscenes from the "bigger" edition. X-Men: Legends could be played either in single player mode or in cooperative multiplayer.