The Legend of Dragoon
PlayStation
As a giant fan of JRPGs, the PS1 era was a glorious time for me. I got to play through so many outstanding games in the genre, many of which still stand as some of my favorite games of all time. Xenogears, Final Fantasy VII, Breath of Fire III, Parasite Eve, Vandal Hearts... those were just a few standout titles. You would think The Legend of Dragoon would have been right up my alley. But no. I never played it. In fact, I never even heard of the game.
I don't know how it slipped by my attention. I was an avid PS1 owner who would spend a ton of time reading video game magazines and looking at titles on the shelf at Blockbuster. I could spend hours going through the shelves game by game and reading the boxes and what was on the back of all of them. How did I never hear of The Legend of Dragoon? I know it came out late in the life cycle of the PS1, so maybe that's a reason. Maybe it just didn't get promoted enough? I don't know. You'd think I would have at least read a review of it in a video game magazine, or seen a preview of it. I'm certain it would have piqued my interest. But no. Nada. I wouldn't hear my first mention of this game until 2021, and this came out in 1999.
Needless to say, once I found out about the game, I wanted to play it immediately. People really seemed to like the game based on the reviews I had read online. And the screenshots looked beautiful. I ended up buying this on the PlayStation Network for the PS3. And there it sat in my collection for a few more years. I finally began playing it in 2024. I made it nearly through the end of the first disc when I simply lost interest, for one reason or another. I moved on to other games, and once several months passed and I realized "oh yeah, I should finish Legend of Dragoon," the game's plot had vacated itself from my memory. I couldn't remember even the slightest thing about what the game was about. So I again moved on and started playing other things.
But you know me! I'm not one to give up on a game I've started, unless it is Jet Force Gemini or The Outer Worlds. But those games I didn't like. I actually liked Legend of Dragoon from what I had seen of it. I decided to come back and start a new game from the beginning. And this time, I would play the PS4 version so I could earn trophies in the process. Say what you want about them, but trophies are a good motivator to get me to finish a game. I don't like leaving them uncollected. And there is always something satisfying about hearing that little ding whenever you earn one.
I would end up playing through The Legend of Dragoon in its entirety on the PS4, but it was a slog. It's not even that I didn't like the game. There was just something about it that I didn't quite connect with. It would take me three months to play through the game this time around, full of off again/on again starts and stops. Finally, a week or two ago, I threw my hands up and said "I'm going to finish this game, damn it!" And I put my foot to the pedal and I forced my way through the last two discs of the game. I finally ended up finishing it just the other day, over a year and a half since I first fired it up on the PS3.
I obviously have much to say about this game, so let's jump in. There's a lot of good and a lot of bad to unpack.
Story:
Legend of Dragoon takes place in a mystical fantasy world full of knights, kings, and dragons. The main character of the game is Dart. Dart is off on a quest to hunt down the mysterious black monster that killed his family. Dart returns home to find his village destroyed and his girlfriend Shana taken by enemy forces.
On a quest to rescue Shana, Dart teams up with the mysterious Rose. He also meets up with Lavitz in the prison while rescuing Shana, and these four decide to start working together. They discover that they hold the power of the Dragoon. 10,000 years ago there was a war between humans and dragons and winglies (a flying humanoid creature that inhabits the world of the game). Humans came out on top after learning how to harness the power of the dragons themselves. The humans who could do this were called Dragoons. Well, now in the present day, these Dragoons are called upon to save the world from an even bigger threat.
I am really not going to go into too much detail when it comes to the story. I don't want to be sitting here writing all day. I also don't want to give a more loose attempt to recap the game, as I am sure I would be missing out a ton of things. So all you get is the very basic premise of the game and nothing more. If you want to know the fine details of the game's plot, you'll have to play it yourself.
That said, I wasn't truly enamored by the game's story, nor did I really care about its characters. I'm kind of surprised, because clearly they go through a lot of trouble to give each character a unique look, backstory, personality, and fighting style. But I just couldn't really bring myself to care about any of them. Even when (spoiler alert) one of the characters is killed off Aeris-style at the end of the first disc, I didn't really give two shits. There are several callbacks later on in the game to this character that are clearly meant to tug on the heartstrings, but I wasn't having any of it.
For me, RPGs have to possess a strong story to keep me motivated and keep me going forward. Perhaps that's why I struggled to maintain interest in this game.
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Gameplay:
As far as PS1 era RPGs go, this one is as basic as it gets. You walk. You talk to people. You buy items and weapons at stores. You equip your character. You sleep at inns to rest. You go places and talk to NPCs to advance the story. You fight enemies. You level up. You get items out of treasure chests. If you've played any of the PS1 era Final Fantasy games, nothing you see here should surprise you.
Combat is probably the most unique thing about the game. When you are outside of a town, you fill up a meter above your character's head. It starts out green, but as you get closer to a random encounter, you'll notice it turns yellow and then eventually red. Not truly a random encounter, but close enough. I like being able to see and know when it is going to happen so I know if I have time to look around or hurry da fuck up.
Attacks are turn-based. You start with the basic Attack, Guard, and Item selections. Attacking is fun, because to land more powerful attacks, you must master timed button combinations during the attack sequence. Think of the timed attacks in the Paper Mario series. Each character has a number of these attacks at their disposal. The more you use them, the more you become "practiced" in them, and they start doing extra damage to enemies. You are constantly learning new attacks as you progress through the game.
Guarding is super important in this game, because a successful defense not only heals you, it significantly lessens the enemies damage when they hit you. You are going to need to learn to strategically defend in this game if you want any chance of beating it.
Last but not least, you can transform into a powerful Dragoon character during combat. These Dragoon-states have their own meter that you can fill up in combat. I believe these meters have three slots. If you fill up one slot, your Dragoon-state only lasts one turn. If you fill it all the way up, it lasts three turns. Dragoon states come in handy quite often, as they can unleash super powerful physical and magical attacks on your enemies. Some Dragoons can even heal your party.
Now that I've laid out the basics of the game, let me explain why I didn't like it that much. First off: the difficulty. This is a tough RPG. Much tougher than Final Fantasy VII or Xenogears. There are some boss battles in this game that deal out major damage. One bad move can end your game. And some of these boss battles take like an hour long to complete. Imagine getting to the end of one and then dying and having to do it all over again.
It is also very hard to level up in the game. Random enemy encounters give you very little XP. Yet boss battles give out obscene amounts of it. So the only way to effectively level up is to... kill bosses? But isn't that the point of leveling up, to make these boss battles easier? It feels like this game does things a bit backwards sometimes.
To offset some of this difficulty, I shamelessly used the rewind feature, along with save states. Ope, didn't do my combo correctly? Let's rewind and do it again. Uh oh, looks like I should have blocked instead of attacking on my last turn. Let's rewind and block this time so the boss doesn't wipe me out! Oh hey: the boss is almost dead. Should I keep attacking and hope I take him down, or heal my party? Hmm, I know! Let's keep attacking and then when the boss's turn comes up, rewind to my last turn before that to heal the whole party! If he dies before that, more power to me. Using save states and rewind, I was essentially able to manufacture a flawless game for myself. And even then, I still struggled.
I can't imagine going through this game without save states. It would have been absolute torture. And I haven't even mentioned the loading times yet. Overall, they aren't too bad. But when it is time to transform into your Dragoon, you better have a beverage handy. Same when you are doing a Dragoon magic attack. Like I said, it is not excessively bad. But when you are dying and having to do giant chunks of the game over again, you really really want things to speed up.
Like I said in the intro, it took me three months to beat this game. Every time I would get off of work and decide what I wanted to do next, I almost always picked the alternative instead of playing this game. It felt like homework far too often.
Graphics:
Graphically, this game excels. It is probably the best looking PS1-era RPG that I've seen. The art style is reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII, except done better this time. The character models aren't perfect looking, but that's okay because this game is over 25 years old. They look good enough. No one is going to be making memes out of how ugly they look.
The background art is what really steals the show. This game looks absolutely incredible with its landscapes. Everything from a simple forest to a small village to a bustling metropolis looks terrific. It truly feels like the world of a tabletop RPG come to life. There are so many places I would love to live in this game, like Donau, the flowered city. Or the village on the water where you ride a little boat from house to house, like you're in Venice or something. Or Indels Castle and the surrounding village, with its quaint brick houses and autumn leaves.
Not only are the backgrounds breathtaking, many of them are animated also. Waves crash, fire burns, smoke billows, magic energy pulsates. It may not sound like anything special on paper, but I promise you it really makes the game stand out and look better than all its 32-bit peers. You have to play the game to see what I mean.
Sound:
In addition to looking really good, this game has a great soundtrack as well. There are so many songs from this game that went right onto my video game music playlist. You are introduced to the pause menu music right away in the game, and it is straight up fire. I just want to let you know before we go any further that I am old and that is the very first time in my life I've described something as "straight up fire." So you know it must be good! The battle music is epic as well.
I'm going to post a link to several of my favorite songs from this game below, so you can listen to some of them yourself. The music is really, really good. Maybe not as good as Xenogears or FFVII, but surprisingly close.
Overall:
This game has so much going for it. I really wish I liked it better. Let's weigh the positives and negatives. The positives: it looks great, it sounds great, it's super atmospheric, the world of the game is very creative, it is easy to pick up and play, it has an intuitive timing-based battle system, and I like how there is a meter for random encounters. The negatives: the story isn't great, I didn't care much for the characters, load times and Dragoon animation times can be long, boss battles can be too difficult, the EXP gaining system is wack, and the combat can get boring and repetitive. There's also a "law making" city later in the game that really tested my patience. If you know, you know.
I'm not sure how I would have reacted to this game when I was a kid. I loved JRPGs. I probably would have dedicated countless hours to this. But I don't know if I would have had the patience to beat the game. I can't imagine playing through a 35 minute boss battle and then dying right at the end and having to do it all over again. I struggled even with save states. In fact, I abused the Schmidt out of them. And you know what? I have zero regrets at all about it. If there was ever a game made for save states, it was this. I feel like this actually helps the game's final score, as I got the absolute best, least frustrating experience out of the game as humanly possible. It's quite telling that I am still kind of "meh" when I look back on my time with the game.
This is an alright game. Like I said, I am not sure how I would have liked this if I'd discovered it back when I was 17. I had patience for some really tough RPGS, but this one might have been too much for me. I didn't even finish FF8 or 9 when I was a kid, and those are considered easier than this game. Coming into this review, I was going to give the game a B-. But now, after reading back what I have written about the game, I feel it has to be lower than that. There's a lot to like about this game, but to be brutally honest with you, I don't see myself ever coming back to play it again. I am going to keep it above a C because I feel this is certainly an above average game. But it's cutting it reaaaaaal close.
THE GRADE:
C+
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