The Legend of Dragoon

When nostalgia kicks in for the good old times when I used to play JRPGs, I figured it was time to take a break from all the indie titles piling up my Steam library. I went back to the classics I never managed to play and was taken aback by the presentation of The Legend of Dragoon.

The Legend of Dragoon is a role-playing game that is developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment and was released in 2000. It was out at the same time Final Fantasy IX dominated every RPG fanatic's Playstation Console and most likely everyone was too preoccupied with it to the point where The Legend of Dragoon slipped under most people's radars. A little more than a decade later, I find it on the PSN store as a classic and sure enough, I buy it in hopes of reliving some of the nostalgia of what once was known as the golden age of the Japanese Role-Playing games. But does The Legend of Dragoon live up to its name or genre? Let's find out...

Story: The Legend of Dragoon is set up with our main character named Dart who is out to save Shana, his childhood friend after surviving his village attack by a so called "Black Monster". Dart is accompanied by a lot of members throughout his journey to find their purpose and to save the world from the Black Monster.

The set up might sound simple and unimaginative, but I can assure you that is what it is. The writing is of low quality and the plot is mediocre at best even with its twists that mildly surprised me. I would have been far more interested if the characters were written with better personalities including their own strengths and weaknesses and are not simply a shell of a hollow vessel able to be controlled by the player during fights. The translation is tricky in all aspects that I got a headache from rephrasing some of the sentences the characters were saying. Initially, I thought the poor grammar and/or spelling mistakes were due to the quirky characters' personalities, but later on I found it ridiculous how stereotypical some of the characters are and how the translation is irrelevant.

 

Gameplay:  The gameplay might be the redeeming part of The Legend of Dragoon. It was very engaging and involving. Like any traditional RPG universe, the player is challenged with puzzles in dungeons that are not that challenging altogether but are still engaging enough, minus the few tiresome fetch quests.

In combat, Players have three playable characters in a party from a roster of 8 characters, each with their own special combos and magic. Each character is assigned a single element and they all have their own forms to transform into dragoons. Aesthetically speaking, those features were enough to differentiate the characters for me compared to the cheap writing in the dialogue. To initiate a normal attack, the player must follow a rhythmic pattern of a square closing in at the right time and pressing the action button, which requires a great deal of concentration especially when the player unlocks more complex combos for the characters. Magic is only used when the character transforms into a dragoon after accumulating enough SP points through successful combos. It is why I see magic in this game as more of a powerful reserved power as a limit break just like the Final Fantasy series whereas the player finds it easier to execute a spell in other Role-playing games. The flow of combat in The Legend of Dragoon encourages defending more than other RPGs not just for added defensive capabilities, but because defending would heal a percentage of the character's HP. All in all, the gameplay reminded me of the traditional RPG combat system that proves itself challenging enough for players to think of different strategies for the most part.

Graphics: The graphics and art style used in The Legend of Dragoon is spectacular and it might be the most deceptive feature of the game. It certainly confused me and gave me the nostalgic feeling of playing Final Fantasy VII with the rendered cinematic backgrounds in dungeons and field maps that were intricately drawn well. The reason I say it is deceptive is that as engaging and interesting the dungeons were when I traversed them, the story was not all that rewarding at all. Character models were drawn well and many cinematic cutscenes are found throughout the game that prove the effort put into them. In fact, the developers took the advantage of the character models in battle that some story sequences were advanced in battle to spice up the narrative more and more.

Beautiful scenery might deceive a lot of players into thinking it is another Final Fantasy

Sound: Aesthetics are very important and they compliment the narrative very well. Therefore, if one fails, the other will fall with it inevitably. The music in The Legend of Dragoon was less than average and was easily bad. Battle themes were varied as well as boss themes, but none of them were redeeming enough, personally speaking. Now, music preference might be subjective, but it is a fact that the voice acting was bad. Characters were incoherent in cutscenes and sounded just as bad in battle sequences when they announce their combos. Overall, the soundtrack would not prove to be memorable in any aspect.

Replayability: The Legend of Dragoon is a very lengthy game with a main story that spans about 40 hours or so with mild side quests that are not too demanding and not as challenging that would not add as many hours to the total playtime. In my own experience, the fun I was having gradually decreased to the point where I just wanted to be rid of the game by beating it and that would be consequential for some players that would make the game more difficult than what it already is. I ended up with the final boss being torturous more so because of the constant skipping of battles than facing them. All in all, it was a rather unfavorable experience that proved to be quite repetitive and mediocre at best.

Replayable? No

Score: 5/10