"That's right... I'm 'YOKOHAMA'S FASTEST LEGEND'... or so I'm told..."

Racing Lagoon is a Japanese-exclusive SquareSoft RPG for the PlayStation, originally released in 1999. Unlike any of Square's other RPGs, Racing Lagoon focuses on street races rather than battles with weapons and spells. The player freely explores parts of Japan (mostly Yokohama) at night in their car with numerous parking spots to stop at to progress the story, interact with characters, take part in optional challenges, or purchase new parts for their car. In place of random encounters, players are challenged to short races by other cars on the street that flash their headlights. Rather than traditional equipment and level ups, cars can be customized with parts and add-ons. The winner of each race can select a part in the owner's inventory to take for keeps—whether it is the player or the CPU opponent. Reward Points (RP) are also given to the player upon victory with the amount varying based on the opponent(s). There are three main part types that can be interchanged and level up through winning races while add-ons are static, much like equipment. Levelling a part will increase the number of slots for add-ons.
As one would expect, racing in Racing Lagoon is the forefront of the gameplay. Every battle takes into account your current setup and its respective stats, but the core racing still calls for skill... and even some luck. The racing can be rather stiff, and at times, feels downright jank. Unfortunately, this is no Ridge Racer, and simple bumps in the road like a sidewalk is more than enough to stop you dead in your tracks as if you collided headfirst with a brick wall. If you can manage to get used to its oddities while maintaining a powerful car, the game is more than doable, but it is easily one of the most difficult RPGs I've played solely on the basis of its core design.

"South Yokohama... Our home, our 'STREET'... This town comes alive at night... and our driving brings the 'HEAT'."

The story of Racing Lagoon is a wild ride that starts simple enough. Sho Akasaki is new on the racing scene and has joined the Bay Lagoon Racing team in South Yokohama. Showing great potential, BLR's leader Ikki Fujisawa takes him under his wing and helps him grow as a racer. BLR's dream is the Yokohama Grand Prix—a shot at professional racing. Shortly after Sho's first real jump into the big leagues, catastrophe strikes as a series of mysterious incidents begin to pile up without explanation. Rumors of Yokohama's Fastest Legend returning after ten years of absence brings great strife for street racers all over Japan. Sho takes it upon himself to find out the source of the chaos and put an end to it once and for all.

"Last night I had a dream... I was driving through the flames of a fiery hellscape, yet couldn't feel the heat. Stuck on a road with no exits, and no escape... On a night when dawn would never come... I wish I could have stayed dreaming."

The course of the plot takes place over eleven nights with each night effectively acting as a chapter with some additional, shorter chapters in between. The story is presented both through dialog during visual novel-esque scenes and in replays of the player's races with character interactions playing out during the action. What begins as a simple tale of seeking glory suddenly turns to surprisingly somber and evocative moments of self-reflection wrapped in an absurd sci-fi/fantasy tale of corporations, experiments, and lingering spirits. Nothing about this game is as it appears initially, and while it reaches critical levels of cheesiness, the CRAAAZY story is entertaining from start to finish.

"...I have a recurring dream... I find myself at the murky depths of the ocean floor... Within that darkness, I find a glimmering fragment of a star... And then I'm at peace, wrapped in the gentle embrace of the waves... The lights flicker across my eyes, coaxing me back into the waking world..."

The characters range from simplistic and stereotypical to straight up crazy. Sho Akasaki is an aspiring poet as he monologues and self-reflects in nearly every scene in the game. His colorful descriptions of his experiences and his feelings create an air of desolation and longing, though it often borders on being too melodramatic for its own good. Like many other great SquareSoft protagonists in the PSX era, there is more to Sho than meets the eye, and his story is worth exploring and finishing. While ridiculous, Sho's internal monologues breathe life into his otherwise blank persona, and there are plenty of twists and turns within his life that keep him compelling and entertaining in his own right.
The supporting cast are not as complex as Sho, but are all entertaining enough in their given tropes and moments. Their dialog (which in my experience is from a recent English fan-translation) is all equally humorous and quotable like Sho's. Many characters do little in regard to the main plot, but I would not necessarily consider this a negative as I believe it effectively builds the world of Racing Lagoon to be a believable, lively environment that does not simply revolve around the player's character.

"The roof of the hospital provided a breathtaking view of Yokohama. It was a vast blanket of darkness, studded with tiny specks of the city's lights... Within the dark abyss inside me there was also a faint, quivering light... The light... of hope."

The presentation of Racing Lagoon is, to me (and probably most others who have seen or played it) the strongest asset of the title. I am an avid enjoyer of early 3D FMVs and pre-rendered models. From FINAL FANTASY VII to GADGET, I cannot get enough of that style, and it is in full force in Racing Lagoon. Unlike the two aforementioned games, there is far less animation at play in Racing Lagoon. Many scenes are static or stiff with the animation limited to three frames on average. I, personally, do not mind this, but I can see many finding fault with it, thinking it lazy, cheap, or just otherwise unappealing. Despite these limitations, the game oozes with '90s urban Japanese style. Think Initial D meets FINAL FANTASY VIII with some unique flair in between. Do be prepared to see some very uncanny looking people contorting their bodies in all sorts of bizarre ways, though.

"The way the water reflects the lights of the city... It's stunningly beautiful. I have to ask myself which is real? The one in the sky or the one in the sea... When we dream and when we wake, it's as if we step out from one and step into the other..."

Similar in its visual presentation, the music of Racing Lagoon is a memorable, stylish roller coaster of fun. Mixing many electronic elements with various styles of jazz, Racing Lagoon's OST builds an atmosphere like no other. The raw sense of late night urban sprawl is another aesthetic I love, and it is unmatched in South Yokohama. If you cannot find yourself able to deal with the rough gameplay of Racing Lagoon, I suggest looking up its soundtrack on YouTube to enjoy some aspect of this game.

"South Yokohama... Our home, our 'STREET'... The starting line for this sordid story... Our own twisted legend of speed. On these streets we called home... With its thousands of people living thousands of lives... I found myself feeling alone."

Racing Lagoon is far from the storytelling marvels of FINAL FANTASY VII and Xenogears, but about halfway through my 20-odd hour playthrough, I decided it deserved a review on a similar scale. The sheer uniqueness of the title, coupled with its perfectly insane cocktail mix of style and melancholic drama make it an unforgettable experience—one I wish I could have gone through legitimately. If you are lenient on retro game jank and have an admiration for late '90s Japanese style, I recommend giving this game a shot. I think it's well worth your time baring witness to...

THE REVIVAL OF YOKOHAMA'S FASTEST LEGEND

Playing the fan translation on Duckstation in 4k resolution is the ideal experience. It's truly a fun, innovative game that is a must play if you care at all about racing or Playstation 1 era games.

What if the Final Fantasy 7 team made a car based RPG inspired by Initial D? This is your answer. Neon skylines, 90's anime cool guys racing to be the best of the best. Absolutely phenomenal soundtrack pumping while you fight for your life in the streets -- grinding for better parts and cars like a maniac. It's simply bliss.

This is one of the most unique experiences in gaming. From developers who were creatively on fire, in a time where gaming was highly exploratory and experimental in approach and execution of ideas. Racing Lagoon is the ideal "caRPG" that hasn't been surpassed.

"Distinctive" videogames are something I really appreciate, and it's weird to me that there aren't many games like this considering how much of a hit Initial D was, this one is clearly inspired by it.

A racing rpg can sound kind of grindy and it could be, with some races being absolutely grueling, it's best that you check a guide to keep your car up to pace, if you play on emu save stating is a blessing in this game.

The "random encounters" (which aren't really random since you can avoid them) are quite short, often being a very short lap which would make it shorter than any rpg battle. There's a shit ton of customization, you can steal your opponents parts after you beat them including their bodies, but cmon, if you set me with Toyota AE86ish car from the beginning, there's no way i'm changing it.

I wish it didn't go full bananas towards the end, square style, but i'm really glad I played it and I never really got tired of it, i guess that's saying something.

While the game is absolutely filled to the brim with soul from its atmospheric cutscenes and artstyle to its cheesy-yet-cool dialogue, I just don't find myself enjoying actually playing it. The bizarre genre mix of racing and JRPG is really interesting but in my experience the JRPG aspect doesn't really do much but drag down the game for me. It's crazy that there's an overworld map with random encounters in a racing game..but I much prefer full-length races and it's annoying to find what you're looking for on the map. It's cool how much you can customize your car with parts won from races and level it up with exp...but it's annoying not knowing if my car is underleveled or if I'm just not racing well enough and you can't directly compare enemy parts to your own before buying them. On top of it all, it's hard not to compare the actual handling to other racing games like ridge racer type 4 and find it pretty stiff. Cool game, wish I liked it more than I do.

Has all the indulgent poeticism of a Squaresoft game from this era - characters will take literally any opportunity they can get to stare into the neon mid-distance and pontificate about systems and societies and self, often with only the most tangential relation to cars and car-racing. The writing (vis-a-vis this wonderful fan translation) is meaningfully mature, but becomes almost comical when placed within the material confines and context of a street-racing JRPG where you drive a tiny Hot Wheels Toyota around a chibi overworld in order to race ambulances and milk trucks, much in the same way certain serious scenes from the original Final Fantasy VII strike an odd tone when delivered by chunky Lego figurines. To get yourself in the right headspace for this, imagine a racing-jacketed Sephiroth monologuing about the nature of the industrial universe with a steering wheel in his hands instead of a katana.

The novelty of this scenario sustains the game for at least six hours, but not only is the game written and painted by Squaresoft, it's also programmed by them too - and as you can probably imagine, the programmers behind the precise, methodical War of the Lions and Bahamut Lagoon (why all the lagoons?) aren't exactly a natural transplant to the tactile, meditative world of high-octane street racing. The cars handle too stiffly for too long, and this awkward gamefeel was compounded by me playing Forza Horizon 5 and OutRun 2 SP at the same time; when the main character talks about the rush of the road, it's hard not to mentally transplant yourself beyond this pixel-grained lagoon of digital-binary inputs and instead see yourself hitting a big smooth drift on a distant sun-soaked coast, your girlfriend in the passenger seat instead of being creepily longed for from a Yokohama high-rise window.

This problem is exacerbated by some truly chronic load times - random encounters will hit you with a quadruple whammy of different loading screens, including a few that are required just to facilitate a mandatory parts-swapping menu at the end of every race. Imagine if Final Fantasy VII had a few seconds of darkness and ten seconds of NOW LOADING... before and after every battle, and then you had to unpick and reconfigure your materia setup every time you slam-dunked a tonberry - that's the essential gameplay loop here, and it kinda sucks! Gearheads might enjoy the precise methodology behind taking your engine apart after every race, but I really just wanted to go fast and read more poetry about this speedy Squall's perception of wings, windscreen wipers and women. Nothing stings harder than spending a few minutes deciding on the right muzzle for your engine, only to have your material goods and personal time stolen away in the very next race by a boy racer with a ride that outclasses you on pure numbers alone. Why doesn't Sho Akasaki write a haiku about that pain?

Racing Lagoon's dichotomy between its espoused mood and practical nature is ultimately what lead to me shelving it - I can't in good conscience play a racing game that moves with the pace and finesse of a busted Ford Pinto with a wheel clamp, even if it does have some of the richest, most stylish textures of any game from its era. Sadly, Square's spectacular street style simply can't sustain such sluggish substance. There's no doubt a way to mod around all the standing around here, but I don't know what it is - this is perhaps another 90s JRPG that would benefit from the 1/2/3x speed slider that Square love putting in their rereleases, and a lazy mood-chaser like me would love all the automotive engineering stuff to be handled by some mindless "auto" option. Until video game developers and modders start catering to my very specific impatiences, you can count me out of this particular race.

An absolutely fantastic experience. A racing game from a company known mostly for their RPGs is a strange proposition but it lead to a unique game that is delightfully different from its contemporaries. As a "High Speed Racing RPG", it takes the best of both worlds, having fun racing action with a stellar, cerebral story tying everything together. The physics can be a bit fiddly with collisions but overall I had a lot of fun gathering different parts, trying out different combinations, and figuring out what worked best for me. Additionally, the prerendered model aesthetic for the CGs and cutscenes is so unique in its style and I can't help but adore it.

As for the story, I don't want to spoil it but it goes into some VERY unexpected territory given the subject matter but I think that very much works in its favor, giving a surreal feeling to the events that I very much enjoyed. Highly recommended for racing game fans and RPG fans alike as it succeeds in being the High Speed Racing RPG it set out to be.

I think about this constantly. Something about its earnest, yet goofy and uncanny vibe just resonates with me so hard. Some real hard hitting drama as well and the music is legit some of the best jazz fusion of all time. I just want to hang out with these flamboyant racing himbos (and all the really great female characters too) and wear giant jackets and live in a world where everyone is constantly talking about racing and randomly challenging everyone they meet to street race as well. Chicken race is a freaking awesome racing mini game and all racing games need to have it imo.

I played this is Japanese with a friend like months before the fan translation was announced and translated for him as we played and man it was an experience. From what I've sesen of the translation it looks like they did a pretty good job transferring over the vibe from the original which is really respectable NGL considering how much of the original Japanese is sprinkled with unnatural sounding English phrases.

It'd be a 5/5 for sure if it wasn't for all of the clunkiness, loading screens, and wildly complex stats, but playing through an emulator helped to mitigate a lot of these issues.

A game that gets progressively better with each chapter imo. At first I wasn't quite sold out on it, modifying the car was intimidating, the random encounters on the map seemed annoying and loading time even more. But then you start to get it and look forward for more chances of getting better parts. Even the loading times sometimes work in favor of the game as it pulls some of the most stylish loading screens of the ps1.

And then there's the writing... It's hard to explain, it takes its racing aesthetic very seriously and is even poetic at times, but can be also very funny, its the kind of thing you could only see in a game of this era I guess. By the end I really feel in love with its characters and unique style. And the surreality of its main plot also works in its favor in my opinion.

This game rules.

Everything about the way this game looks and sounds is just perfect, and that’s saying a lot this side of PS1 town. All the 90s post FF7 Square pre-rendered goodness you could ever want, plus surprisingly sophisticated, moody 3D visuals during gameplay. The soundtrack—that is equal parts fusion, electronic and pop—combines with the visuals to create the perfect atmosphere.

The story is bonkers; I don’t wanna spoil anything, just play it.

The gameplay is what surprised me the most. It’s RPG mechanics are remarkably fleshed out for something that, on paper, reads like no more than a novel idea. Car handling feels really good, too—deceptively so for a game that, once again, sounds very gimmicky. The game also offers a diverse array of events, from street races, to rally races, to drag races, to chicken races, which might be my favourite.

It could use some refinement; for example, I got the impression from my playthrough that, despite the potential for many different builds, many didn’t seem too viable, so progression felt pretty linear. I’m also not a huge fan of having to relinquish a random part of your car upon losing a random race (and maybe the event races as well? I don’t remember). It’s such a harsh punishment, I would almost prefer a fail state. Additionally, the collision isn’t great; I never got used to the way you bounce off cars when you collide with them. It’s very jarring.

All of that is pretty minor when you consider what Racing Lagoon does achieve, however. The presentation is firing on all cylinders, and gameplay-wise, it’s far better than something with a premise this gimmicky should be.

And seriously, I cannot stress enough how stylish this game is. It’s unbelievable; worth playing just for that.

Might actually be the greatest racing game of all time. A joyful fusion of JRPG and racing game. The customization aspect is incredible and it makes it so much fun to try and go through the game with all sorts of car types.

Soundtrack is just actually an absolute banger and listening to the music while driving around the towns never gets old.

The story is absolutely batshit insane and I love every second of it. It's absolutely ridiculous and played completely straight which makes it all very enjoyable.

i never knew how much i needed a High Speed Driving RPG until now. fully customizable vehicles both in stats and visuals by using parts that you buy from shops or loot from beaten racers. a world map you traverse by cruising the night streets. encounters with other racers happen as you're driving around the world map, but they're initiated by speeding drivers flashing their headlights at you. you can also flash your headlights at absolutely anyone, racer or not, and start a race. such a【COOL】and thematically appropriate alternative to the usual rpg encounters.

racing lagoon is a masterclass in presentation. the music, the backdrops, the cutscenes full to the brim with style, and the protagonist's cheesy & poetic monologues all come together to create an atmosphere that pulls you into this world of street racing. and man, this story. nothing groundbreaking, but i would never have expected something like it from a game about a bunch of street racers.

seriously fantastic game all around.