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.)

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.

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.

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.

good game, but definitely needs some quality of life improvements. attack animations take 1000 years and battles can feel sluggish at times.

having to backtrack through dungeons is unnecessary and just makes the game feel longer than it actually is.

However story was pretty good imo and music slaps. Characters also have good dynamic with their own reasons for going on this journey.

unfortunately this game suffers from some major bugs during certain fights preventing you from progressing if you use a certain ability!

I fell in love with this game ever since I played the demo from one of those PS magazine discs.
I was 10 and it was the first game I bought for myself and I remember at the blockbuster store the clerk warning me (and my mom) that the game had a lot of written English and I looked too young to know the language. That was true but turns out this became the biggest reason why I got really good at English at a young age, which ultimately had an enormous impact on my future.
It was also my first RPG and I got absolutely sucked into its world even though I initially struggled to understand it.
After multiple playthroughs and hundreds of hours of playtime over the 4 discs, as a child and later on the PC with an emulator, this is one of my favorite games of all time, even though I recognize its fair share of flaws.

I miss Dart, Shana, and Lavitz, and would totally play a remake.

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.