Seventy minutes with Rayman Legends Retold settled one thing for me: the levels I remember from 2013 are still there underneath a fresh new coat of paint, and the paint is thick enough that I stopped comparing after the first level. A few weeks ago I got the opportunity to partake in a hands-on preview of Rayman Legends Retold via Ubisoft’s remote setup, a preview build streamed from one of its PCs to my desktop at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Anything I say about feel has that normal remote play delay in the way, which is of course annoying for a platformer, but it wasn’t too bad.
My session was built around one realm. Ubisoft dropped me into a save partway through Mystic Mesa, in the world the original called Fiesta de los Muertos, and I played it front to back: four platforming levels, one invaded level, the realm’s new dragon ride, a chase level, and the boss. After that I switched over to Rayman Origins: Enhanced Edition, the 2011 game that comes alongside it, for about 15 minutes. I did not reach The Iron Shell or the new Land of the Livid Dead in my play session despite them being available due to limited time on my end, so this is a preview mainly based on Fiesta de los Muertos.
An all new (3D) world
The first level I finished was, well, a kitchen. Giant forks, a spiked mace on a chain, a halved watermelon I ran through while knives punched in from the outside, a sausage that doubled as a moving platform for a pair of imps. If you played the original that may even sound somewhat nostalgic. But in practice the camera now tilts and pushes in, the watermelon has wet depth to it, and the seeds I dodged were sitting inside the fruit rather than drawn on top of it.
Snakes on a Cake was the level the remake really shined for me. Murfy digs through cake walls on a button prompt(the game spells him “Murphy” in this build’s on-screen text) and the back half sends you up the inside of a tooth-lined snake as a small winged, gold-glowing form.
There be dragons (we can ride)
Mystic Mesa’s dragon ride is a full 3D race rather than a side-scrolling flight. A rival dragon flew ahead of me breathing fire across the course, and a string of bead checkpoints with crowns tracked the race along the top of the screen. The route dove from the dunes into a kitchen seen from above, straight through the grinning mouth of a giant taco, and out through gear machinery throwing sparks before a dusk lagoon finish. It took under five minutes and was the only part where the remote delay really was a nuisance, because aiming fireballs precisely while soaring through the skies with even just a little delay was not ideal, but also not the fault of the game of course.
Next up I tried What the Duck, the Invaded version, which cost some Lums to unlock from the hub. It was for sure the hardest four minutes of the session, but an absolute blast. A giant chef with a metal sombrero stirs a vat of chili at the start, and from there the level is a sprint: the chef breathed fire across a confetti festival while I bounced across a rolling watermelon, across a checkered tablecloth with a mariachi band of mushrooms and a coordinated rhythm I had to maintain to survive against the giant luchador.
The hub
Each realm now has a walkable hub rather than a painting gallery. Mystic Mesa’s is a sunlit desert with a suspension bridge strung with lights, cacti in party hats, a musician strumming in a corner, and a bank readout in the corner that sat shows your accumulated Lums and coins.
M. Victor Velour runs the costume shop from the hub, with menu tabs across four different heroes, allowing you to sort through priced and locked outfits per character. I of course equipped one called Assassin Ray and wore it for the rest of the play session (duh).
An expanded boss encounter
After the ride, a hub character called the Bubble Dreamer put the realm’s ending to me as a choice. “Is it time to grapple with the Guardian of Mystic Mesa? Or will you pry open the mysteries of The Iron Shell, first?” I chose to battle the luchador, of course. Murfy chimed in about El Luchador having deserved to lose his title, then a chase level sent the masked giant after me through candy-tiled corridors, throwing bones and a skull while mariachi mice played on.
Wrestling with a Giant opens on a cutscene of all four heroes in the ring and Barbara getting knocked clean out of her boots. The fight itself started on a single podium that splits into three platforms as it goes, and El Luchador cycles through grabs, hovering fireballs, and two flaming whips that sweep in from both sides of the ring. The window to hurt him is when he leans in and you climb onto his masked head. After a few attempts I successfully took down El Luchador, and a short scene afterwards showed a hooded figure holding a glowing orb, which is as much of the new villain in Retold that the preview build would let me see.
Origins enhanced
Switching to Rayman Origins: Enhanced Edition gave me a nostalgic but enhanced blast from the past. The Glade of Dreams hub now has picture frames that show a live look into a level with an Expand prompt, and the game is still visibly the flat UbiArt original with a sharper edge. I spent my time in Moseying the Mountain, which still has the idol-gong platforms, the spiked creature bursting through the ceiling and the “Hold R2 up slopes to perform wallruns” tutorial line you will remember from the original.
It’s certainly an enhanced version, but also keeps that unique style, truly making the actual Rayman Legends Retol and Rayman Origins: Enhanced Edition feel like completely different games rather than say two versions of the same.
Rayman Legends Retold now lands on December 3, 2026 at $39.99 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC, with Rayman Origins: Enhanced Edition in the same package. As someone who never really got to play the original, this simply feels like a steal for how much actual game there appears to be, not to mention how smooth it feels. Even fans of the original will have enough new to see to justify the purchase, plus the added element of an enhanced version of the original for some nostalgia!