Reviews from

in the past


I just..... love this game. The story gets way out of hand and is hard to follow about a third of the way through, but the additions you get keeps fights pretty engaging throughout the game which is nice for long RPGs to have. Love the music and character interactions as well.

VOLCANO!

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.

its unique turn-based combat can be a lil bit of a drag, but this game can rival final fantasy

Uma experiência inesquecível. Além da escrita madura e meticulosa, é uma história repleta de mensagens incríveis e muito bem passadas. O universo também é muito interessante e talvez pudesse ser mais explorado. E o combate é criativo!

easily my personal game of the year. this is pure perfection. disc 1 felt a bit slow but everything after that is just amazing


This game still holds up. Additions make combat so good and better than just timing one hit style combat.

Though The Legend of Dragoon is one of my favorite JRPGs of all time, it hasn't aged well. In fact, it's not that it hasn't aged well... I don't think it was ever particularly great.

Combat is great, story is terrible, writing is bad in general. Characters are mostly good.

I absolutely adore this gem. The additions system was ahead of its time, the dragon designs are god-tier, and the story had some pretty dramatic and moving moments. English voice acting was pretty freaking bad tho lol. I gotta replay this one in Japanese someday.

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.

One of the best PSX RPGs, I sure wish mny attention span was long enough to replay the whole thing lmao

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.

I am not a huge fan of JRPGs in general, but this one just HITS. It is one of my favorite games to go back to -- despite its relentless nature.

All time Classics. This game should be remake. Great story, great soundtrack , great characters and fun combat

Great idea for a combat system for a PS1 JRPG. Too bad the translation is really weak (if unintentionally hilarious from time to time).

I started it for nostalgia reasons and to finally beat it after all these years of having been nearly to the end, but on replaying it I found I think it's not just nostalgic but also a really great game

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.

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!

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.

The best A-RPG from Sony, the Final Fantasy Killer that sadly ended to quick. For me is one of those games I'll never forget. HARPOOOON!!!

..................................................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.

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.

This is the most generic and forgettable JRPG I've ever played. I can't remember a single thing about the story or characters. It's all quite bad. The gameplay and soundtrack aren't particularly good, either. IIRC, the final boss doesn't even get its own theme.

one of the best RPGs of all time. very interesting story, great designs for the characters and dragons especially, awesome gameplay system, FANTASTIC music. a childhood favorite I still play at least once a year. the voice lines are iconic. the translation is flawed and the animations can be excessive

Sony's attempt at making a Final Fantasy game. Fun tokusatsu transformations as a combat mechanic. Some really goofy voice acting. I've never beaten this because my crappy third party memory card deleted my save that was on the final disc. One day I'll finish it, maybe.


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.

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.

Playing this as a kid I thought the visuals and atmosphere were amazing. Having fully finished all these years later I still think this game does so stuff well. The combat system is unique and surprisingly never got old to me and made me engage more with the systems in place. The story is good and has some really great parts. While I feel like there are RPGs on the console I like a lot more, I still think this is a game that should be experienced at least once.

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.