In about the year 2000 I used to try and hunt down rare JRPGS that barely got released here in the UK. At the time I used ebay, paper adverts, second hand stores, charity shops etc. It was a different time back then and I steadily got hold of games like Suikoden 1 and 2, Vandal Hearts, Wild Arms, Star Ocean the Second Story, Koudelka, special edition of Symphony of the Night among others. Legend of Dragoon I had never heard of. Walking into a video rental store that used to also do video games I saw it on the shelf, I'd never seen this anywhere else so I asked if rather than rent it if I could buy it. The clerk called the owner who said it had been recalled after two weeks so was pretty rare but said I could buy it for £17.99. An absolute steal now looking back and the game was in fantastic condition having barely been borrowed as almost no one here was aware it even got released. My friend now has that copy as I no longer physically collect media, quite the opposite but still it's a core memory of a different time. As for the actual game? I played it up to disc 3 somewhere and remember it being okay but never got around to finishing it. As it got released on PlayStation premium and my memories of it were hazy I figured now was a good time to jump in and actually finish it. Having spent 80 hours over the last few weeks on and off playing it my opinion of it hasn't really changed much, it's good.

The real issues I have with the game stem from the writing, I have heard in part it's down to a poor localization, and fans have patched the game with an improved version I understand but playing the original certainly leaves a lot to be desired. The issues stem from more than that though and into the heart of the games story. Take Shana for example, she is the childhood best friend of the protagonist Dart. Her entire personality is that she is in love with him and a woman. The game hits you over the head with this so often it's sort of ridiculous. At one point the game makes sure to really emphasize that she is weak as she is a woman (despite her proving she can fight) and instead of patrolling she should cook food for the men, of course her cooking is then also mocked. It's just painful to sit through. That said not every moment in the game is that level of, well, garbage. Though not as deep as I may have liked some moments are quite well realized with some characters, almost poignant at times it's just so inconsistent or the dialogue just glosses over what feel like quite emotionally impactful events.

That aside the game is good. Visually the game is fantastic. The character models are well detailed for the time with the baked in backgrounds. The art design is generally cohesive and well realized with some great music and it's certainly got a lot of content to it though for an RPG it's incredibly linear. I liked that you never have to level grind, it's almost impossible as you get so little experience and money that fighting most regular battles is barely even worth it. The party essentially levels up at boss fights and that's it, but it's all you need to see you through to the end.

The combat is fully turn based, 3 characters can fight at a time and party members not in battle receive maybe half the experience points so unless you swap characters all the time will become completely unusable as they did to me. There was an 8-10 level difference between my characters by the end of the game and I beat it at level 39 so I just used the same 3 characters. The combat itself rather than just select attack has some interactive prompts called additions. You have to time pressing x to squares coming into the screen almost like a rhythm game. This is pretty cool initially but quickly becomes a chore where there isn't enough variety in these once you get the strongest. Occasionally you have to press a different button to stop the enemy countering which even if successful is needlessly irritating as it blocks your view so you might fail the next input anyway on the more complicated end game additions.

The combat balance is all over the place generally actually. Largely the game is insanely easy where you can defend to regain 10% of your health and enemies aren't a threat. This is such a case that a lot of bosses have insta kill attacks you cannot stop. They are the only time I died. You can go into a Dragoon form which you can use extremely limited magic and attacks that are barely stronger than normal physical attacks in most cases so feel pointless. Add that you can only carry 32 useable items and I ended up leaving most treasure chests as my inventory was full and I had no idea if the item in there was better or not (It almost always wasn't when tested).

So overall this is a hard game for me to score to be honest because despite how negative I may seem, I don't dislike it. I like the general story idea of races born sequentially. I like Rose's storyline and the general atmosphere the whole game permeates. I can see why people like it, I can see why fans call for a remake or a sequel as this could have been something special, but it's just kind of average. Worth playing now it's more widely available for sure though.

+ Presentation values are great.
+ Decent amount of content.
+ No level grinding.

- The writing is mostly bad.
- Party in reserve get small XP amounts quickly making them useless.
- Item limit is annoying and pointless.

Here is a bonus making of video from the time. Look at those PCs!

After the incredible drop that was this and Wild Arms 2 on Playstation Plus Premium with trophy support it was a tough call which one to go with first, but ultimately I went with The Legend of Dragoon and I was not disappointed. This was my first time playing it and I really enjoyed it.

This had its hooks in me pretty much from the beginning, though I must admit the dialog took a little bit to get used to. The English translation here is not highly regarded and I understand why. Nearly every line ends with two exclamation points (!!) and some of the lines are a bit ridiculous. But part of this game's charm is it is unrelentingly a JRPG. I know that term has been a hot topic as of late, but I mean it in the most endearing way possible. This checks all the boxes of JRPG greats and does it with love.

As far as the narrative goes, for the most part I was into it, but towards the end I did kind of start to trail off. Overall I did still enjoy it though. It was cliche in the right ways. I enjoyed the characters, and the journey they went on. My only knock is that Shana is a pretty terrible character. Her emotional arc is paper thin, and she's hardly a person outside of her connection with Dart. However it's a complaint I can set aside when it comes to my enjoyment of the game.

The combat system is a lot of fun. I will say that I'm glad I had a rewind feature for this because I missed a lot of the button prompts that come with attacking, so it was great to go back and do it until I got it right. I like the dragoon mechanic but I do wish there was a way to switch back and forth from it so long as you had enough SP, because once you turn into a dragoon you're locked into it until you run out of SP, and you can't use items while you're in it. Aside from that frustration I still had a great time with the combat system. I'm glad that in today's day and age, turn based RPGs still do well. I know some people aren't a fan of it but when a game like this does it well, it's just so much fun.

Another frustration of mine was I felt that the amount of items you could carry was too low. Maybe I'm alone in that, but I was constantly having to manage my inventory and sell off or discard items just so I could have a comfortable amount of healing and reviving items. I made it work, though.

Overall if you like JRPGs this one is absolutely worth playing. It has a banging soundtrack, cool and interesting environments, fun characters, a good story and combat system. You can't go wrong!

Platinum Trophy #126
Platinum #2 of 2023

It sounded like a prophecy. My cousin, the biggest "culprit" for making me love video games so much, in the early 2000s told me about Dragoon and concluded with: "I think this will be your favorite game."
How right he could be.

Shortly after, I played Legend of Dragoon, one of the most revered cult classics in the JRPG genre. It's funny that even though I've played hundreds of games since then, it consistently remains my favorite. My top has changed a lot over the years, but the #1 spot has always been consistent.
I love everything about Dragoon: its pace reminiscent of a good shounen anime, its almost alien visuals, its gameplay system that is a pleasure to master, its color-coded and elemental-coded party, its soundtrack completely different from other games in the genre, the idea of drawing inspiration from cultures beyond medieval Europe.

And what a beautiful game cinematically, with so many beautiful cities, incredible places to explore, memorable scenes like Lavitz against Lloyd, Rose in the shipwreck and her past, or Dart and Shana in the castle in disc 2. The stakes get higher and higher. The lore is rich, with a story that spans millennia. Everything about it seems tailored to appeal to my tastes as a kid who grew up in the '90s, heavily influenced by manga, shounen anime, color-coded armored people, stories of existential crisis, the power of friendship, protagonists with spiky hair, elementals, and crystals. And Dragoon has all of this in abundance.

My strong emotional connection with it makes me understand that even though it may not have a story that reaches the levels of Xenogears or FFVII, a battle system as competent as the press-turn in Megami Tensei, a soundtrack or dungeon design like Wild Arms, the best party in the genre as in Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, Dragoon is still such a strong, cohesive, and competent package in everything it sets out to do. It transports me to such a happy time in my life, and with so many elements and tropes that I grew up loving, it will probably be my favorite game of all time until the end of my life. It represents much of what I love most about video games.

Japan Studio's solo venture into JRPGs began with The Legend of Dragoon, which added transformations and an upgrade system to SMRPG's timing-driven combat. These simple chain combos improve via use-based mastery and carry a light degree of risk (by potentially triggering counterattacks which require different inputs), with items and transform-only skills playing the role of magic. But if the goal was to inject more user interaction into flashy, cinematic turn-based battling, its realization nevertheless fails to change its narrow and samey nature, featuring: At best, a set of tricky rhythm challenges that laid the foundations for Shadow Hearts - and at worst, a looping series of easy one-button microgames. The real highlight - ultimately, turns out to be its environments, whose variety of pre-rendered backgrounds and camera angles establish them as capable Squaresoft disciples. Other aspects testify to that production talent (i.e. cutscenes & animations), while the rest range from inept (dialogue, plot) to standard fare (dungeons & characters), yielding a traditional slow-burn adventure that's visually impressive but a little plain.

This game has a special place in my heart. I had this as a kid and it was crazy to me that it had so many discs. I loved it as a kid and eventually the discs got scratched and stopped working. Years later I bought another copy of it and played it again. To my surprise it was just as exciting as it was when I was a kid. The combat is fun because each attack has a rhythm you have to hit in order to do full damage and it makes you focus the whole time. The characters and story are nice and it's got a lot of heart put into it. This game deserves more than it got.

My girlfriend and I have been playing this game together as our next main RPG for awhile, but we took a bit of a break before the of disc 1. We're on the couch, she's doing her own thing and I stared through Skies of Arcadia. Despite kinda just looking out of the corner of her eye, she was more compelled by what was happening in this gamecube game she never heard of prior to this night, than the game that both of us had wanted to get around to for years, but just didn't have the time.

It's not like I don't have a strong taste for boring ass JRPGs. We just got done with Grandia 3. Every time I give this game a sincere shot, it comes off as less essential than almost any alternative on the console outside of like, the well known dreck. There are elements of the game that totally work, I like the soundtrack and the graphics are technically impressive.

The vibe's just not there. I don't give a fuck about this Sol Badguy knockoff, I have played +R against too many ratchet sidewinder monkeys for that archetype to carry me through four CDs. Why are the fights so fucking slow. The transformation gimmick isn't interesting from a mechanics standpoint and they take a billion years, to the extent that the developers put in a "get the fuck on with it" button in the options. The relationship with the main love interest is unfathomable boring, has man ever been in love? Why did you make the main character's best friend a lamer Rudolph Stiener?

There are attempts at worldbuilding and like, character development you would see in a really good RPG. Not the biggest fan of the Tales of series, but I think skits are really cool. The Legend of Dragoon has these developmental scenes and the writing is so fucking boring I do not care. Outside of "this is a genre on a console that's library has a bunch of fantastic JRPGs", and "I'm Blue" being the background music in a castle, I can't think of any reason I'd suggest this game to someone or a reason for it to cross my mind of a regular basis. There was effort and talent, and it isn't horribly inept, but The Legend of Dragoon just doesn't work.

Ever since PlayStation released the PS1 classics on the PS5 with upscaled resolution, rewind features and save states a lot of people were playing ‘The Legend of Dragoon’ which caught my attention as I love RPG games. I eventually got around to playing it recently and I felt it to be quite a punishing game.

Off the bat, ‘The Legend of Dragoon’ is a Final Fantasy wannabe game. It came out in 1999 shortly after Final Fantasy VIII and looks like a hybrid of FFVII & FFVIII. The battle system is the one element of this game that really drags it down. Battles are so slow. FFIX got a bad reputation for slow loading battles, well this game beats that. To attack successfully you need to time button presses perfectly along with your character attacking. If you miss these then it is almost as if there was no point at all in attacking. There is an item that will time the attacks for you but it is VERY expensive. Unlike Squall’s gunblade attack in FFVIII which gave you a slight damage bonus, Legend of Dragoon relies on you hitting the strike button with perfect timing to cause normal damage. I can feel my blood boil just talking about this. Along with your low impact attacks, enemies will cause you significant damage too, you will find yourself using healing items a lot.The pace of the battles as well is so sluggish, special moves taking so long to play out. You can skip the Dragoon transformations but that is about it. Like in my ‘Sea of Stars’ review where I said sometimes in RPG games I like to just sit back and repeatedly tap the action button to get through battles, I don’t want to have 120% concentration for every single battle. Due to the slow speed, concentration needed and low experience received from battles, grinding is just not a feasible option in this game at all, if you fancy keeping your sanity.

Alongside the need for multiple healing items the game limits you to 32 items max at a time. No, not 32 different types if item, 32 of any item, they do not stack. This means that on your way to a boss fight you will deplete most of your items leaving you up a certain creek without a paddle.

Each area uses the same design style as Final Fantasy, a 2D rendered image that you can move around. Each area’s doors are marked with colourful arrows which are helpful, not so helpful that each screen has 8-10 of them, each building having multiple entry and exit points, some leading to dead ends meaning that each area is confusing and frustrating to navigate. One town there is an elderly lady who can only be accessed from a building the other side of the town, across rooftops then in through the loft down a ladder. Like, how does she get out? Are there sufficient fire exits for her?

The writing is not great at all, yeah I do like the characters, they are all different and have their own personalities. The text boxes are similar to FFVII but when a box appears that lets you select a response it is not very clear and I always accidentally selected the first option from the list. Yeah there is a little bit of voice acting but only in cutscenes and when each character achieves perfect attacks they will call out the attack name. Dart has a move called ‘Volcano’ which has absolutely nothing to do with volcanoes.

I threw in the towel at the Phantom Ship area as each battle was kicking my arse as I was unable to hit the timed attacks at all. I don’t know if it is due to me or the latency between the controller and the PS5. I used up all my items and Dragoon power just getting to a boss which the guide stated that I’d need a full inventory and healthy party to be in with a chance to beat. That is another massive issue with the game. You are sent through an area with tough battles or multiple bosses with nowhere to restock items or heal your party. It is completely an endurance test.

I tried so hard to stick in with this game despite not enjoying it from the get go but I felt that it was very restrictive and didn’t want the player to have fun. If it is a Final Fantasy knockoff then they decided that Final Fantasy was too fun and easy for their standards. I understand that this game has a big following but I can only imagine that is purely nostalgia based as they played it when it first released, also gamers were a lot more resilient then.

Since The Legend of Dragoon is apparently coming to PS+, it seems incredibly fortuitous that it happens to be the next game I'm reviewing as part of my bucket list. You might find the timing to be coincidental, but what you don't know is I've spent months hacking into the Playstation Network trying to get the game added.

A little background first: I had a roommate who was bi and he played this game all the time on my PS2. It was during this period of time I was also coming to grips with the fact that I am bi as well, so because I apparently have brain damage this game has entered into my mind as "The Bisexual's RPG." This is our game, if you're straight you're not allowed to enjoy it. I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not.

Despite the fact that this game left a rather unique impression on me, it's kinda just average. A perfectly good time but far from a must play. Dragoon follows Dart, whose hometown is destroyed in a raid and his childhood friend Shana taken captive. After teaming up with a soldier named Lavitz - whose name sounds like a brand of shampoo - Dart rescues Shana and is subsequently recruited by King Albert (I don't remember if there's a "Prince Albert in a can" joke in this game, but I'm sure there is, I can feel it in my bones) to defend the fort city of Hoax. It is there that Dart discovers he is a Dragoon, a member of an ancient order tasked with preventing the reunification of The God of Destruction's body and soul, and as it happens, its soul currently resides in Shana.

The plot is really nothing special, and the story mostly lives and dies on the interpersonal relationships of your party members. In particular, I really like Rose and found her connection to Dart's father, her regrets and sense of duty to be some of the strongest stuff in Dragoon's narrative. Unfortunately, I can't say any other characters besides Dart and Lavitz really stuck with me, and outside of a very general overview of the game, there's few set pieces or emotional beats that come to mind even two years after finishing the game. Looks damn good for a PS1 game, though, and if you read up on its development even a little bit, it becomes quite clear that Japan Studio put a lot of thought into the look of Dragoon.

The Legend of Dragoon also tries to strike its own identity with its battle system. Attacks can be chained into a combo - dubbed "additions" - by timing button presses, which helps keep you more involved in what's happening on screen. Playing in emulation may pose some potential issues due to latency as these button presses are rather precise to begin with, but as you continue to learn each character, the specific rhythm of their combos begins to click and it all starts to feel like second nature. Once you accrue enough spirit points from successful additions, you're able transform into a Dragoon, this game's equivalent of a limit break or an Esper. While in this state, you have access to additional spells and attacks as well as heightened stats and resistances. I always appreciate when a game lets you hit that Kaio-Ken and start fuckin guys up. Feels good. However, this feature is unfortunately lacking in some mechanical depth, and I feel like it could've been expanded on a lot more. It is vital to rely upon your Dragoon state in the end game, but it always feels more valued from a purely statistical standpoint and not because it adds a layer of strategy. Like, I need the number to go bigger, and that's really all that matters.

While I think Dragoon is an overall enjoyable game, it is worth noting that Japan Studio was working on Ico and Ape Escape at the same time Dragoon was in development, and those are much better games by comparison. They're also wildly different, so perhaps that's not really fair, but if you laid all three of these out on a table like they were starter Pokemon and told me to pick one, I gotta go with Ape Escape. I will always go with Ape Escape. Sorry, Legend of Dragoon! I may have found you during a very important time in my life, but you ain't got no dumbass lookin' monkies to catch and for that I have to destroy you with a very large hammer. I don't make the rules around here, but I damn sure follow them.

..................................................This is Sony's answer to the critically acclaimed game Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation 1? Fucking pathetic. How dare they even ATTEMPT to mimic one of the best games of all time. Dart wants to be Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII so fucking bad it's unbelievable. The addition mechanic is a fucking joke as well. The last thing I ever want to hear in my entire life is some, and excuse my profanity, ASSHOLE, screaming VOLCANO like a fucking inbred idiot. Don't believe me? Take a gander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6NZr7A72Zk

Enough said.

“When the clash of swords echo, the journey chasing the past ends and the journey to know today begins.”

There is this really special feeling that I get when beginning a new PSX JRPG that I know personally, but putting it into words can prove to be troubling. Maybe it’s those gorgeous and blood pumping FMV sequences that tend to occur before the title screen, reflecting epic scenes that throughout the gaming journey you’ll encounter with full context, or the mysterious dialogue that reveals itself to the player, hinting at the overarching theme of the story you’re about to witness. Whatever that feeling is, The Legend of Dragoon captured me almost immediately during that initial bootup. As far as first impressions go, I was exhilarated and ready to dive into this journey that I was sure to enjoy.

LoD was Sony Interactive Entertainment’s answer to a Final Fantasy-esque title, one that attempts to capture that same sense of wonder and magic that Squaresoft’s hit series was praised so much for. I personally felt it succeeded in this, however much of my intrigue in LoD comes from how polarizing the game is among players who often feel like the combat system is too slow or challenging, or that the game either lacks substance or is even a Final Fantasy VII knock off. While certain scenarios throughout the game ring some major FFVII bells, the plot as a whole felt unique in its own right, and the characters especially I found to be much better rounded than most of the casts throughout the Final Fantasy series.

I want to begin first and foremost with the aspect of The Legend of Dragoon that clicked with me within minutes of playing the game, and that is the soundtrack. Composed between two groups of musicians primarily based in New York and Tokyo, the style and tone for the music featured in LoD is quite unlike any game I’ve ever played. It brilliantly captures the otherworldly vibe that I hunger for when playing high fantasy games such as these. Titles like Chrono Cross with its tropical, almost dreamlike aesthetic and Vagrant Story’s dark, atmospheric nature are captured phenomenally through their iconic scores, and dare I say The Legend of Dragoon competes on that same tier. Despite having a noticeably smaller tracklist than the PlayStation’s bigname JRPGs, LoD presents a wide range of foreign/ethnic inspired pieces that hit right in every aspect, from the exciting and groovy battle themes, melodic and soothing town themes, and ominously devoid atmospheric tracks.

Let’s talk about the characters. I seriously liked them all, even Kongol who is that one obligatory party member who has his brief moment in the spotlight and for the remainder of the game is cast aside until some endgame dialogue. Dart is the blonde, spiky haired, sword wielding protagonist who is thrown into an epic journey of revenge and self discovery after his home town is burned down… sounds kind of familiar. Along the way we meet the mysterious and brood Rose, the total bro and epic knight Lavitz, and Dart’s sisterly but also excessively implied love interest, Shana (it’s very forced and overall kind of weird but it gets better after the first disc). There are a few more main party members that join in along the journey who all struggle with past and personal demons that are resolved throughout the course of the game and it’s all done very well I’d say. The balance of character development is better here in LoD than most games of that time period.

The plot for LoD is super good, and it’s backed up with a massive amount of ingame lore. The story starts with Dart’s hometown being destroyed by the evil Serdian emperor Doel’s army, and his childhood friend Shana is taken prisoner. Dart, being the nobel lad he is, rushes head first into the prison fortress of Hellena to rescue her, and during the rescue joins forces with Lavitz, head of the knighthood of Bale. Upon her rescue, Dart finds himself wrapped up into the Serdio War that ravages across the country, and it’s through these events that he awakens the dormant power of the Dragoon. What starts off very focused on a single main objective soon branches off to reveal many mysteries about the world of Endiness and the intentions of the game’s antagonists. Without giving away too much, the story for LoD is up there with the likes of FFVII (afterall it served as the biggest piece of inspiration) and is filled with jaw dropping reveals, bittersweet discoveries, and a rollercoaster of twists and turns.

The combat system in The Legend of Dragoon is awesome, I personally find it to be one of the most fun and addictive battle systems of any turn based game I’ve played. The highlight here is the use of the game’s addition system, which are increasingly complex combos utilizing quick-time events that occur during a character’s attack animation. Nailing the proper button presses during an addition can lead to devastating damage, and each addition can be leveled up to increase damage output. The most similar thing to it is the deathblow mechanic from Xenogears and how more combos can be unlocked through repetition and leveling up, but it has that extra layer of interactivity with the timed button presses. Longer additions can be interrupted by an enemy counterattack, so you have to press a different button in order to continue the addition.

Then we have the Dragoon transformation, an ability that can also be leveled up to increase the amount of magic spells and turns that can be used while in this form. Fully maxed out late game additions have higher damage output and are generally a safer option as opposed to transforming into a Dragoon due to the fact that you cannot use items while in Dragoon form, but damn the battle animations are truly incredible. For the people who don’t like the lengthy summon and attack animations from the Final Fantasy games on PS1, LoD answers this with a menu option to shorten the duration of these sorts of occurrences. I personally loved them so I kept this option off, and that’s another thing I wanted to mention again, the battle animations and additions in this game are fluid as fuck, satisfying, and generally impressive.

As much as I could go further in depth into my review for LoD, I think I’ll save further thoughts for a replay review when the time comes. It hasn’t even been two weeks since I finished the game and my mind is constantly wandering off to the spectacular time I had playing through it. My expectations were met, if not exceeded by pretty much every single aspect LoD had to offer. While I don’t think this title would click with most people the way it did with me, I am truly glad that I had such a sensational time with it. More than ever, The Legend of Dragoon deserves as much recognition as it can get, and I implore any reader of this who has a sliver of interest to do themselves a favor and play this underrated gem.

“Farewell…. People who confront the fate of Soa….”

Legend of Dragoon is a game very near to my heart. While the game has many pitfalls, like the bad translation for us westerners or the bad invetory system, the game excels at having an excellent plot, extreme amounts of worldbuildinf and lore, a battle system that constantly makes you feel like you're improving and a badass, an OST where almost every song slaps, and lastly one of my favorite aesthetics of all time. LoD has a similar style to many PS1 era JRPGs, with the way backgrounds are handled and how janky models look, but it feels like it absolutely masters it in a way alike to how Chrono Cross did. The intro to this game, and especially when Dart enters his village, is perhaps my favorite opening to any game. Absolutely give this game a shot if you enjoy classic JRPGs, you likely won't regret it.

Nach all den Jahren endlich Legend of Dragoon spielen.
.. was bin ich froh keine 100 Euro + dafür ausgegeben zu haben :D

Es ist leider wirklich sehr zweckmäßig.
Man bekommt 2 kleine Dialoge um dann von A nach B zu rennen und dabei ständige Zufallskämpfe in Zeitlupe abzuarbeiten.

Unterschied zum Genreprimus Final Fantasy:
Es gibt dazwischen keine nennenswerte Dialoge.
Wirklich gar keine.

In 8 Stunden waren die Dialoge zwischen den Protagonisten keine 300 Worte.
Das ist einfach schwach, denn Gameplay ist nicht der Grund ein JRPG in die Hand zu nehmen.

Das Spiel beginnt mit einer synchronisierten!!! Cutscene.
Seit dem? 0! Keine Cutscenes mehr.

Die Kämpfe haben den Kniff, dass man je stärker die gewählte Attacke, verschieden viele Quick Time Eingaben treffen muss. Das ist.. 2 Stunden lustig.
Nach 8 hat es mich schon genervt und weitere 40 will ich es nicht mehr machen. Schon gar nicht mit der Kampfmusik, die einfach nicht gut ist.

Wenn man es dann geschafft hat und ein Level aufsteigt, steht genau das das.
Levelaufstieg. Auch hier, wieder reine Zweckmäßigkeit.
Keine Info, was besser geworden ist, keine Sonderpunkte, die man verteilen könnte. Einfach ein Level Up, wie es das schon 20 Jahre vor Legend of Dragoon gegeben hat.

Der Soundtrack ist stellenweise nett, aber nichts was einen vom Hocker haut und auch sicher nichts, was im Gedächtnis bleiben wird.

Das hat alles Potenzial, am Ende aber doch ein 0815 RPG, was aus heutiger Sicht komplett veraltet ist.
Schaut euch ggf. einen Zusammenschnitt der Dialoge Youtube oder so an. Spart euch 40 Stunden Lebenszeit und ihr habt nichts verpasst.

I won’t mince words, I am unapologetically nostalgic for this Power Rangers video game and I’m not going to go the extra mile to hide it. Legend of Dragoon is your quintessential PS1 generational RPG adventure, a four-act structured chronicling a group of misfits who band together to save the world from nefarious plots. Truth be told, when I call Legend of Dragoon’s plot a take on Power Rangers, I genuinely don’t mean that as an insult. There’s some depth of humanity, heroism, and self-sacrifice in the story, hidden behind an unfortunate series of translation errors. You have your friendship speeches, your ridiculous, slapstick nonsense, et cetera. It rules and who cares.

The real meat of the experience lies in a context-sensitive turn-based system. You see, player actions aren’t simply a menu-dependent series of decisions; you will have to press button prompts in timely fashion to execute your moves correctly. For the main attacks, additions, the idea is to increase their potency; a successfully-inputed addition means you deal more damage this time - and next time, it could do more as you level it up. And, once you unlock Dragoon forms, the more additions you complete, the more of a chance you can get to use Dragoon forms. For role-playing games whereupon menu attacks can feel like strategic-based decisions, Legend of Dragoon asks you to not get cloud-visioned and be incentivized to use your most basic tool. Eventually, you may find additions themselves surpass magic-based attacks Dragoons have in certain situations. And I think that’s one of the game’s subtle strengths: Legend of Dragoon gives you options to play with and all of them are viable in some way. Whilst being forced to use the lead, Dart, means a player can’t be as creative with their lineup to maximize creativity, there’s still plenty to appreciate between elemental attributes, recognizing each character’s particular value in set encounters, how enemy types affect combat, etc. Legend of Dragoon’s system ultimately does what any competent RPG should: It makes you think about your decisions and doesn’t necessarily limit your answers. You want a team build for beating down enemies with additions, you can. You want a team that exploits the speed stat and items, you can. You want a team that is balanced, you can. By the time you have five or six of the core team, the sky is the limit on your success. There are built in mechanics to prevent too much power, namely a set item limit of thirty-two, but an observant player will note that any struggles are probably going to come down to their own lack of engagements and failed preparation. Bosses can and will be the main obstacles, even having AI script changes and phases that may change the dynamics as they progress. Though, for my money, Legend of Dragoon succeeds in what it wants with its battle system.

There are a few barriers to entry for this game: For one thing, this title’s pacing is inevitably sluggish, even by its own generational standards. While it does feel like the party is on an adventure, progression in certain areas doesn’t yield a great amount of rewards narratively or mechanically. Battles, like I said, are engaging, but they can become monotonous with the load times between the many animations. I genuinely don’t think there is a single battle, from the start to the result screen, that is capable of lasting under 30 seconds, most of it being wait time. This may not seem like a big deal and it's excusable for the hardware, but, if you’re a bit on the inpatient side, this can be noticeable. While the game does kick up with its pace and battles as it goes on and side missions (namely optional battles, some of the best of the game) open up later, the main story may not grip most for the first two discs - possibly in its entirety. Whilst none of the party are uninteresting (one of the leads is quite the opposite), one later addition feels like an obligatory replacement with a forced arc to just be there. I don’t think Legend of Dragoon’s pacing is inherently negative of the sort personally, but I can see a number finding it tedious.

That said, this game was extremely precious to me and my younger days. As an adult, I appreciate it for what it was. As good as my memory said? I wouldn’t say that, but it’s charming, unique, and entirely itself the whole way through. I remember it for a reason.