Returning to playing PS1 RPGs, I decided to pick up one that a fair few of my friends have talked to me about for years, Legend of Dragoon. This was a game I’d loosely heard of in the past, but not one I’d ever really seen anything about in particular, so I went in more or less completely blind. It was also during the course of this game that I learned of the PS1’s very own VMU equivalent: The PocketStation! It took me around 7 or so hours (which is my best guess) to play through Moguuru Dabas, and it took me around 65 hours to play through Legend of Dragoon itself. I played the Japanese versions of both on real hardware. I wanna cap off the intro here with a special thanks to my good friend Anna for gifting me the PocketStation! For reasons I’ll get into later, I likely couldn’t have beaten the game without her generosity! ^^;

Legend of Dragoon is the story of a young man named Dart. Upon returning to his hometown in the middle of a much longer journey, he’s first accosted by a dragon and then finds his hometown reduced to a charred ruin by the invading armies of the neighboring empire. Saved by a mysterious woman named Roze, Dart sets off on a journey to save his childhood friend Sheena from the evil empire. Along the way, they’ll become intertwined in a much larger world-saving plot involving the truth behind their world’s legends, its dragons, and the titular dragoons.

While the writing and story have a STRONG first impression of being just an off-brand Final Fantasy (at times it really feels like outright copying ^^;), the game thankfully manages to outgrow and outshine that impression very strongly over the course of your adventure. Handling themes like the evils of colonialism (both material and psychological); the relationships between legend, truth, and propaganda; and the trials often necessary to grow beyond past traumas; this is a game about how the past (be it distant history or just a few years ago) will always shape and mold the present, but we need not let it define the future. That said, the writing is still far from perfect. The character writing, particularly of your main party, is very strong and well done. However, that makes it only all the more noticeable how your last party member, defined largely by racial stereotypes, has comparatively poor character development when compared to the other six. Be that as it may, I still think that the good manages to outshine the bad more than well enough to let the game be one of the better written RPGs I’ve played on the system.

Unfortunately, despite its narrative successes, Legend of Dragoon leaves a LOT to be desired on a mechanical level. The main head behind this game was the same guy who did the battle design for Super Mario RPG on the SNES, and a lot of the turn-based battle system feels very much like a far more ambitious version of that game’s systems. However, the main battle systems being a series of timing QTEs for your main attacks always felt far more finicky than it should’ve been. The UI design of those QTEs is far less precise than something like we’d see in Shadow Hearts a couple years later, and the lack of a precise area to aim for really makes it a frustrating system to engage with. There are more advanced combos (called “Additions”) you can equip for your normal physical attacks well, but longer combos are not only harder to execute properly with their button timings, but they also open you up to counter attacks from enemies. As we’ll get to in a bit, this is already a game where healing is very difficult, so opening yourself up to even more damage never felt like a very good trade off, and I stuck to shorter, more reliable Additions the entire game.

One of the main reasons that healing is quite so difficult is down to the game’s dragoon system. Instead of having magic normally like most other RPGs do, your characters normally have no spells or magic. Instead, they have dragoon forms that they unlock over the course of the story. As you deal normal attacks, you’ll gain SP, and getting enough SP allows you to transform into your dragoon form. Better Additions give better damage and/or SP as well as you improve them, so that’s one reason beyond just damage to try out the harder Additions (if you’re so inclined). Every 100 points of SP allows for one turn in your dragoon form, and you increase your dragoon level to gain more spells and better stat modifiers while in that form once you hit certain (invisible) thresholds of your total ever gained SP.

All that said, you ONLY have spells within your dragoon form, and getting into your dragoon form not only takes the time of racking up that SP, but you can also only do it within battle, meaning you absolutely cannot cast spells outside of battle. Additionally, while some fraction of total EXP gained in battle is distributed to your non-active party members, you only gain SP while actively in battle. This means that non-active members gain no dragoon levels at all, and in a game that’s already this hard and has this slow of a leveling curve (grinding one level can easily take over an hour if not several), you REALLY don’t want to be experimenting with your party make up very much because you’re only going to be punished for it. Your party of seven feels almost uselessly large a lot of the time, because not only are your new party members basically always without a dragoon form for some period (meaning they’re not gaining any dragoon levels if you use them), but that also means that’s less experience that your main/strongest party members aren’t getting too. I stuck with Dart (whom you’re stuck with no matter what), Albert, and Roze the whole game, and I don’t regret it one bit, no matter how cool the other characters may be.

On the whole, Legend of Dragoon’s mechanics feel extremely poorly thought out. Having your only real form of attacking being normal attacks when you don’t have a limit break form to break out just makes battles feel like a contest in getting lucky enough that the boss doesn’t decide to just mulch you with a few repeated nasty multi-target attacks. You have attacking items, sure, but they take up very valuable inventory space, but that is extremely nonviable in a game where not only do you have virtually no healing outside of healing items (you can heal 10% of your HP if you block, but that’s almost always a useless amount), but you also need to face bosses who, from almost the very start, can often cast up to three very nasty status effects. How do you heal these status effects? Well, there are THREE different items that cover different ranges of status effects, and that’s not counting the items you’ll need to have to heal MP or revive downed party members. All of this is supposed to fit into a puny inventory of only 32 items. While the narrative may be among the best on the console, the mechanics of Legend of Dragoon make it something far less, and they’re so rough that they make the game tragically difficult to recommend as a result.

This is a good a time as any to mention that the Japanese version, while it lacks the poor translation of the English version, is overall significantly more difficult of the two versions of this game. Enemies and especially bosses have anywhere from 20 to 80% more health than their English counterparts, and you also earn roughly 3 times less money from encounters. While your main source of healing is items, so rationing your healing items accordingly is an extremely important part of your gameplay strategy, they don’t cost that much. Being that poor in the Japanese version basically just means that you’ll be forever unable to afford the super armor and helmet sold in certain shops which cost 10k each.

I’ve seen tell online that the reason that the English version has so much more money is because you don’t have the PocketStation game to earn money in, but I would disagree with that to a point, as in my experience playing Moguuru Dabas is roughly just as fast a way of earning money as just doing random battles (generally speaking). However, what Moguuru Dabas DOES get you is special items for completing stages, so that makes for a nice segue into talking about the PocketStation companion game!

Moguuru Dabas is a game starring Dabas, an eccentric merchant who you bump into around halfway through disc 1. After you meet him, you’ll gain the option to download Moguuru Dabas to your PocketStation and get yourself items, money, and special equipment by playing through it. Just like a Dreamcast’s VMU, the PocketStation has its games downloaded onto it like memory card data, and all 72kb of Moguuru Dabas live on there for you to pop out of the PS1 and play to your heart’s content. Dabas has 5 stages to dig through, with not just money, but also mushrooms, bones, and gems to find as he goes. There are caves he can find (and your radar makes finding the much easier), and you won’t know what’s inside them until you enter them. Sometimes, it will be a treasure room with items or money. But those aren’t for Dabas, of course. They’re to transfer back to Dart & friends! Other times, you’ll find a cave with a Minint dwelling in it, and they’ll convert your mushrooms into more max HP, your bones into more attack power, and your gems into cash as well as fully healing you!

In most caves, however, you’ll find a monster to fight! Monster fights are very simple, as a game with only 4 directional buttons and an action button would make them. Dabas and his opponent move back and forth automatically, with your 4 directional buttons all being a block button, and your action button swinging your pick axe to attack them. Enemies guard treasure chests full of money, items, or health for Dabas, and the bosses at the end of each stage guard a special chest as well. That special chest has a particular piece of equipment in it to send back to Dart! Some highlights are an accessory that halves all incoming magic damage, one that halves all incoming physical damage, and one that halves ALL incoming damage.

With loot this good on the table, playing through Moguuru Dabas is a pretty obvious choice for an enterprising Legend of Dragoon player. You can do it whenever you want, and despite there only being five stages (at which point you see the credits), you can just restart and play through again for the same prizes again, if you’re having enough trouble in Legend of Dragoon itself. I only played through it the one time (only actually finishing it one room before the final boss of LoD XD), but I had a lot of fun with it! The graphics are simple but very charming, and it’s a very pleasant little gameplay loop. The only music it has is over the credits screen, but that’s to be expected for a machine with such little data and power at its disposal. The only bummer is that you do need to return to home base (the PlayStation) after very stage completed to activate the next stage being playable, so it’s a somewhat inconvenient companion app at times, but given that all you lose for dying is being sent back up the hole you’ve dug a bit, you could always just die on purpose to continue your Dabas adventures on the go however much you want~.

The one place where Legend of Dragoon doesn’t slack a single bit is its aesthetics. Over 100 people at Sony Japan Studios spent three years an 16 million dollars developing this game, and hot damn does it look like it. The music is quite good, yes, but the graphics look incredible, and a lot of that is down to a deliberate focus away from the prerendered CGI cutscenes so popular in RPGs at the time. This means there are a ton of really gorgeous in-engine animations both within battles and outside of them that just never stopped looking awesome the whole way through this game’s four discs. It does have some CGI cutscenes, which look nice enough, but the in-engine cutscenes, from more dramatic chase and battle scenes to more subtle mid-conversation reactions from characters really make this story come to live in an incredible way.

This beauty sadly does come at the cost of battles taking quite some time. This game is no stranger to quite noticeable loading times even mid-battle, and those luxuriously animated fight scenes do make battles take quite a bit longer. Just how long animations (especially for spells) take is one of the main reasons the average completion time is like ten hours longer on the Japanese version of the game, and it’s also another major reason that grinding takes SO long to do. The final boss alone took me just over an hour to kill between his spell animations, my spell animations, and the 60,000 HP he has in this version of the game (vs. his 42,000 in the English version). I think overall that battles do move at least a bit faster than earlier PS1 games like Final Fantasy 7 or Persona 1, but it’s still quite noticeable, and it’s very difficult to ignore just how lengthy battles and animations take no matter how pretty they are ^^;

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. No matter how fun Moguuru Dabas is, the roughness of the mechanics of the main game can really not be ignored. They’re less of an issue in the significantly easier English version, granted that does come at the cost of a worse translation. Be that as it may, however, the story and presentation are good enough that this is still a game some will find very much worth playing. It’s hard but far from impossibly difficult, especially in English, and if you’ve played most of the other biggest RPG hits on the PS1, this is still something I think is worth checking out. I overall enjoyed my time with it, and I’m glad that I played it, even if its battle systems drove me crazy for a good portion of it XD

A classic RPG from the tail-end of the PlayStation's heyday. Combat is your standard JRPG romp with some extra flair added. Attacks, Spells, and Summons range from simple to flashy with some nice looking Dragoon Transformations to boot. The score is very well done with a nostalgic, late 90's/early 2000's sounding style featuring some catchy battle tunes, a memorable menu theme, and beautiful overworld music. The game's main issues in my opinion are that the devs locked the max items you can hold to 32 for some reason, which makes the inventory management more annoying than anything. The translation is also pretty rough making it kind of difficult to be able to understand what's going on in the story. If you look online you can find patches that fix both these problems with one doubling the item limit and a script rewrite that makes the story far more coherent.

Despite its shortcomings, it is overall a good game that could have been great with some extra time in the oven. If ever a game could benefit from the remake craze of the modern age, The Legend Of Dragoon is it.

Played this because everyone on the game forum I used to post in praised it to hell and back for being a hidden gem. I found it to be mostly alright.
It looks nice, the timed attacks mechanic is cool and the plot is solid, but it doesn't really do anything outstanding.
Maybe for hardcore jrpg fans this might be pretty good comfort food (not every game has to reinvent the wheel), but for someone like me who isn't all that much into rpgs in general this is pretty much the poster child for "generic PS1 rpg" to me.

I think this game has a lot of positive aspects. The combat is fun and the cast is enjoyable. Environments were varied and some of the gimmicks in the dungeons were cool!

There are some problems, however, that aggravated me. The biggest flaws are the immense amount of backtracking, only really made easier when you're mostly done with the backtracking anyway, and some dungeon design choices seemingly made to infuriate more than be enjoyable, or at the least fulfilling, to go through. Still, I DID enjoy it enough to beat it. (Although through emulator, I got to use speed up and save states. I most likely wouldn't have persevered otherwise.)

My personal favourite game of all time, the very first JRPG I remember playing at the young age of 5 years old. I don't think I really got it then but I didn't care. This cool Blonde dude in red armor transformed into a literal Dragon Knight with wings and punched a meteor. I was in awe of what I was seeing at the time. I didn't even pick up on at the time what I would realize 10 years later was one of THE COOLEST COMBAT SYSTEMS in a game for the time. ADDITIONS ARE SO RAD MAN!

Looking back yeah The Legend of Dragoon is not a perfect game, The story kind of starts to fall apart a bit in disc 3 and 4 but I really love it still.

-DA sublime, avec les arrières-plan fixes très variés et inspirés. Par contre les musiques sont pas ouf et se repetent souvent (peut être l'un des plus gros défauts, ça nique l'ambiance du jeu)
-Plein de villes, variées, avec des ambiances différentes, et des pnj qui ont leur propre histoire qui évoluent tout au long du jeu (les dialogues de chaque pnj change à chaque avancé scenaristique, comme xenogears ou panzer dragoon saga). Cela donne un sentiment de vie et d'univers consistant et cohérent.
-Chara design top
-Bon scenario, plutôt bien rythmé (notamment au début, on rentre très bien dans le jeu). Plein de rebondissements, notamment fin de cd3. Un petit creux lors du cd2 tout de même. La fin est cool (et le boss de fin est archi stylé)
-Univers intriguant et intéressant
-Persos globalement intéressants, même si certains sont peu exploités et que la trad est à chier (et les rares doublages sont catastrophiquement drôles #mgs). Il y a un peu d'émotions dans certaines scènes mais c'est pas au niveau de certains ff ou de xenogears.
-Mise en scène ouffissime ! Gros point fort du jeu ! En combat avec une variation de plan et un cadrage recherché, particulièrement lors des attaques de boss ou en dragoon (animation au top) + cinématiques avec le moteur du jeu + cinematiques en image de synthèse toujours très reussies. Techniquement le jeu fait le max pour l'époque et ça se sent !
-Système de combat cool au début, avec les combos qui apportent du rythme et du stress, la transfo en dragoon sympa. Mais très répétitif sur le long terme. Quelques boss sont vraiment bien (notamment cd3 et boss de fin)
-Indicateur qui annonce les combats aleatoires et la vie des ennemis qui est bien pratique (bleu pas de combat ou ennemis a encore plein de vie, orange bientôt combat ou ennemis mid-life, rouge combat imminent et ennemis bientôt crevé). C'est bien le seul truc pratique dans ce con de jeu !

-Trop de combats aléatoires !!! (Heureusement, les donjons sont souvent en lignes droites et peu labyrinthiques). Pas de possibilité de desactivés les combats avec un objet (comme dans les ff) et pire : les chance de fuir sont souvent très minces !!!
-Pas d'overworld. En soi c'est une forme de régression par rapport aux ff mais c'est pas le problème principal... quand 2 villes sont séparées par une forêt de merde ou un canyon à la con il faut traverser cette zone sans possibilité de la contourner (et y'a plein d'aller retour entre villes ou donjons !). Et il y a à chaque fois des combats aleatoires ! Insuportable (le tp n'arrive qu'au milieu du cd 4). Et en plus, sur la carte (balisée et non ouverte comme ff) il y a aussi des combats (au secours !)
-A chaque fin de donjon, il faut se le retaper dans l'autre sens (mais what !?)
-Inventaire limité à 32 objets... cela a du sens pour éviter de casser le jeu avec trop de soins et cela nous force à utiliser le système de défense en combat (qui nous fait gagner de la vie). Mais cela reste horrible. A chaque nouveau coffre, il faut virer un objet et comme on ne sait pas quel est le nouvel item on va peut-etre jeter un truc plus intéressant que ce que l'on récupère...
-L'ergonomie du menu est pas top, notamment au niveau de l'équipement (on ne voit pas nos stats actuelles quand on veut changer d'equipement, on sait juste si ça augmente ou baisse les stats, mais on ne sait pas de combien !)
-Les micros temps de chargement a l'ouverture du menu sont relous à la longue, ou ceux quand on entre ou sort d'une zone, ou encore pire : à chaque lancement de combat !
-Les transformations en dragoon sont certes stylées mais trop longues. Ca devient chiant sur le long terme.
-Certains persos, récupérés sur le tard (meru, miranda) sont inexploités car on ne nous fait pas trop jouer avec et on ne veut pas changer notre équipe de base. Il aurait fallu que tous les persos gagnent de l'xp, même ceux qui ne combattent pas afin de nous pousser à varier les équipes (l'xp est donné a tout le monde mais la répartition est trop inégale, ce qui creuse l'écart de niveau entre perso). C'est un problème de quasiment tout les jrpg de l'epoque
-Il aurait été bon que les persos regagnent leur vie à chaque fois qu'ils montent de niveau (et pourquoi pas à chaque fin de combat, comme les jrpg modernes ?)
-Points de sauvegarde trop peu nombreux et souvent mal placés
-L'auberge ne soigne pas les altérations d'état... Il faut aller dans un centre spécifique pour cela, c'est chiant !
>>> Tout ces éléments alourdissent le rythme et minent l'expérience de jeu. Le jeu devient trop long et frustrant pour rien (heureusement le jeu n'est pas trop dur non plus, cela evite les crises de nerf)

-Pas beaucoup de quetes annexes mais c'est pas grave, elles sont cool et nous font découvrir du lore. Et par contre il y a plein de scenettes annexes si on fouine bien partout.
-Par contre, pas assez de mini jeu. Le jeu se base trop sur son système de combat et son scenar pour avancer. Il aurait été bon qu'il casse davantage le rythme avec des petites variations de gameplay (chrono trigger avec la course, xenogears avec le versus fighting etc.). Cela renforce la répétitivité du jeu.
-Il n'y pas de scène culte. Ce qui s'en rapproche le plus ce sont la fin du cd3 et le boss de fin (il y a une tentative aussi à la fin du cd1... Rip Lavitz). Il manque des musiques de ouf qui aurait sublimé certaines scènes et apporté une ambiance impeccable à l'ensemble.
-Il est dommage que les thématiques ne soient pas davantage creusées. Il y a des éléments intéressants (avec le délire de l'arbre divin, la lune qui fait penser à evangelion etc) mais on reste tout de meme à la surface.


Conclusion : jeu tres sympa mais trop lourd dans ses systèmes pour que l'expérience soit pleinement agréable. Et de manière générale le jeu n'atteint jamais l'état de grâce emotionnelle d'un ff de l'époque (meme s'il le touche du doigt parfois) ou la profondeur d'un xenogears (même s'il y a des pistes intéressantes). A faire pour les fans de jrpg, mais pas un jeu culte !

One of the JRPG cult classics that is looked back on fondly by its very passionate fanbase.

This is a really enjoyable JRPG with a fun battle system that incorporates timing/action elements and the ability to transform into a Dragoon. Its Final Fantasy inspiration is noticeable, but it still has quite a few different ideas that make it worth playing for any old school JRPG fan.

This game deserved a sequel or at least some spin-off franchise. It is a shame that 20+ years later, we still don't have a proper sequel, nor even a remastered version. The only JRPG I've seen that took some of the battle system elements from LoD was Shadow Hearts, but that still wasn't the same.

I'd love to see another game expand upon the Addition system this game introduced... maybe the ever-evolving indie scene will answer the call, because I've given up on Sony ever producing another game.

Starring Red Cloud as he came to be known back then. A game that can make dragons boring. Horrible translation alongside a nonsensical storyline holds back...Uhh. I mean it was a...game...? It had turn based with QTE when you hit people, about the only really interesting aspect about it. I would've rated this much higher when I had played it in the past, but replaying it as an adult led to noticing...A lot of issues. Like the storyline being bananas and said translation issues.

Games like this always have their loyal supporters, but there's a good reason Square hasn't gone back to this game.

Um dos melhores jogos de PS1 que eu já joguei, o nível técnico de jogo é do mesmo patamar que franquias gigantescas como Final Fantasy e Dragon Quest.

A história é excelente, ela te envolve do começo ao fim, com grandes reviravoltas e personagens carismáticos na qual você se importa mais com o desenrolar da história.
Um detalhe a comentar sobre a parte da história é que ela é relativamente longa. Eu mesmo precisei de 45-50 horas para terminar o jogo.

The Legend of Dragoon usa bastante a fórmula dos Final Fantasy antigos em todos os aspectos, mas no combate vem o seu diferencial.
O jogo utiliza uma mecânica onde o jogador precisa executar uma série de botões para obter sucesso nos ataques contra inimigos, quanto maior número de acertos, mais danos o inimigo sofrerá.
Os Addictions trazem cada série de botões em ritmos diferentes.
Sem contar a forma de Dragoon onde os personagens recebem um up em ataque e podem atacar com magias poderosas.
Tudo isso compondo o combate de The Legend of Dragoon que apesar de ser um RPG de turno, essas mecânicas fazem ele ser um jogo mesclado com ação.

A trilha sonora é boa e bem caprichada.
Cada cenário possui uma faixa diferente, indo de músicas relaxantes em lugares pacíficos para músicas épicas em batalhas.
A faixa dos créditos também é bela de escutar.

The Legend of Dragoon é um grande jogo, um baita achado na biblioteca de jogos do PS1 feitos pela Sony.
Particularmente acho que é um jogo que não precisa de uma continuação, porém um remake nos moldes de Shadow of The Colossus, Demon's Souls e Crash N. Sane Trilogy seria algo muito bem vindo.
Uma pena a Sony não ter planos para ele.

First thing that strikes me about this game is the production values. There are some really gorgeous pre-rendered environments, and the models and animations all look great. This is one of the best looking PSX RPGs. The soundtrack is also an extremely underrated one and feels very unique.

The gameplay itself is pretty simple with a few gimmicks. The addition system is interesting and possesses a good element of risk/reward to it. It helps it stand out a bit more from all the other typical turn based games, but isn't quite as annoying as the Combo system in Xenogears and Legend of Legaia. The difficulty is mostly breezy outside of a few boss fights, but there's some really great, challenging side content in the game.

The plot is simple and not too engaging, but I found it was told really well. The plot kicks into gear pretty quickly and I found that there was very little downtime in the storytelling. This game does something that I really like in how there are moments in the game where the story is progressed by going and talking to all of your party members. This gives the characters an opportunity to feel alive whereas in most RPGs of this era your party members tend to fade into the background after their individual arc is completed.

My biggest issue with the game is with its animations. The animations look really great, but there are too many of them and they all run pretty long. The dragoon magic sequences get especially tiring considering how much of your time you'll spend in Dragoon form. There are some boss fights that took me between 30-45 minutes with at least a quarter of that time spent watching the overly elaborate boss attack sequences over and over again. It really drags down the game when even trash encounters take longer than they should. If possible play this in a way that lets you fast forward to make these segments more palatable.

There's a couple of other annoying and puzzling elements. There's a 32 item limit which I felt like I was always at. I ended up not picking up a lot of loot in dungeons simply because I didn't have item slots for it. The game also feels extremely stingy with its EXP and money. It felt like characters took forever to level up and characters on the bench would be quickly left behind. This is odd because the game definitely feels like it wants you to swap out party members to take advantage of elemental weaknesses, but characters could be left behind so easily and maintaining equipment for multiple people requires a lot of grinding.

There's a lot more effort in this game than they had to put in and it's just weighed down by a few really egregious feeling bugs.

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.