NostalGame: The Legend of Dragoon (1999)

The Legend of Dragoon is a title that had been recommended to us for a long time. The problem was always that we had built up an idea of what the game was prior to actually playing it. Like some contemporary reviews had claimed, it was a poor man's Final Fantasy 7 with a shallow world with a pretty veneer and an input gimmick that masked the fighting system's lack of depth. To be frank, we were also a little worried that we'd suck at a system that required timing to maximize an attack.

There is an interesting dichotomy when reading others' opinions of the game, which exists with most mammoth JRPGs. The vitriol and disgust for the title, alongside the absolute adoration, is sometimes jarring. After completing the game, we can comfortably say that while there are plenty of minor and major gripes, when one considers the main selling points of what the game offers and how impressively it presents it, it is deserving of its position as a cult favorite.

It is well known by now that The Legend of Dragoon was Sony's attempt to rival some of Square's Big Boi JRPGs. It had an enormous budget and a huge production staff and focused heavily on presentation with some 35 minutes of cutscenes. The game starts off with the main protagonist Dart having just returned from a failed revenge trip to locate the black monster, an entity that annihilated his university of meat and killed his family. On the way back, he is attacked by a green dragon and saved by an unknown woman named Rose. Before arriving at his hometown, he finds that it has been sacked by Sandora, a rebel faction in the Syrian civil war, and his childhood friend Shana has been kidnapped. It's a quick start that thrusts a player into a war-torn territory and doesn't really ever settle down for long. The group is in constant pursuit of someone at all times, whether it be confronting Dole for his transgressions or tirelessly pursuing Lloyd to determine what his behind the same action ations are all about.

We immediately admit that the well-documented translation issues are most noticeable early on, and the dialogue is often cliche or strangely off at times. So we are probably connected to some translation issues here and there, but the overall story we found to be quite intriguing if not obviously a little bit derivative at times. The game introduces plenty of little morsels and elements that are eventually keenly woven into the later game developments. There are very few set pieces or early bits of lore and world-building that don't come back and have some relevance, which is really good storytelling. While the characters do occasionally feel underdeveloped, there are some underappreciated moments and efforts in this game, such as the way that it unapologetically depicts male intimacy through Lavitz and Dart's giddy friendship. These two are almost instantly buds, and this was refreshing. There was no adversarial segment to explore or a begrudging acceptance of the other's help or some patriarchal duty of one to the other. They just truly liked each other. It was just nice to see two dudes that genuinely got along, and that was shown through some goofy and touching moments. Though some characters did need a stronger effort at expanding or humanizing them, this game takes near-constant punches even from fans of it for being a game with a great story but with poor and cliched riding and at times frustratingly obtuse characters.

We believe that Legend of Dragoon is a game with a great story, although it has poor and cliched riding, and sometimes frustratingly obtuse characters. While we do not demand that all RPGs include some excursion into tough psychological problems or have some arcane illusion to be excavated by only a few super-perceptive players, we do want to be challenged every now and then. We feel that the game deals with major life-defining moments of sacrifice, sometimes very complicated sacrifice, that just simply begs to be expounded upon. It tells a deliciously straightforward story with an immense payoff and smartly interconnects tons of primary characters and explores the past waiting on the present. However, we kind of wish that the characters and dialogue had been a little sharper and a little more developed.

The biggest distancing factor from other JRPGs in Legend of Dragoon is its implementation of additions, which are timing-based prompts after you initiate a basic attack. The game is a classic turn-based fighting system, and we immediately fell in love with additions. The game's director and designer, Yes, who Yuki, has a heavy set of additions that he wanted to give a feel to the player that they were actually fighting, needing to stay engaged and not just stare at a screen. This is certainly an engaging way to enhance the basic attack function that is immensely rewarding, especially as the game progresses and they become very long and admittedly quite frustrating to master and routinely pull off.

Our only major suggestion would have been to have multiple editions available for selection during combat because of how hopeless it feels to get caught in a boss battle after having just switched to a new or underdeveloped Edition. Some might disagree that this is the most important part of the game to buy into, but if this is a deal-breaker for a player, it's such an integral and constant part of this game that we'd imagine some bit of disgust or even hate for the game to build up when one then considers all of the other decisions made.

No magic exists outside of items or Dragoon form, and those items' power is augmented by slamming the X button repeatedly and just isn't worth it outside of boss encounters. There is limited storage space of items, a really high encounter rate coupled with meager XP and gold gains that were apparently even lower in the Japanese version, and that kind of just makes us shudder. Another timing sequence, when in Dragoon form, just has to elicit a strong repulsion, and we get it. But it worked for us. We loved the additions, trying to level as many of them up as we could, so the high encounter rate just didn't bother us.

The player can transform into a Dragoon after accumulating a minimum of 100 SP, which you gain through additions. Outside of Shana and Miranda, they just get SP through basic regular attacks, and a hundred SP grants you one turn in Dragoon form, up to five total turns. This grants you access to all kinds of spells, mostly damage dealing, and they utilize your MP. The most taxing aspect of the combat for us was simply the amount of time each encounter consumed, and good luck if you decided to use a late-game Dragoon spell or you were fighting against a late-game boss. We love the payoff in charity Gees of seeing these just grand and busy and spectacular spells, but man does it build up, and every encounter, even some runts, seem to have them in spades.

Again, if the addition system bores you or frustrates you, the rest of the system's peculiarities are going to exhaust you even further because the bulk of your time should be spent spamming additions. If you try to escape this fact, you will surely run into some wild late-game problems. In order to level up the additions and give more damage per addition, players will need to work on them diligently. Moreover, in order to obtain the master addition for any character, which is the strongest addition, all prior additions must be maxed out. While all prior additions are unlocked based on character level, the entire loop hooked us as players.

As the player progresses and becomes better at pulling off the tougher additions, characters become more useful and grow as well. This connection of player skill to character usefulness is really nice in a JRPG and is very rewarding. We see and perfectly understand the complaints about the game, and many of them baffle us too, but we just enjoyed it a lot.

Legend of Dragoon made many odd almost masochistic design choices. Even the talents, which are all beautiful and cluttered and alive and distinct, can be a nightmare to navigate. Each great thing about the game seems to be accompanied by two to three bewilder encounter examples. Even with its three years of development, the game felt inchoate and not quite ready for consumption in some areas. Equipment with no stats, for instance, made the player check against other items to determine the exact numbers on any given piece.

But there's just something about the simplicity and the moment-to-moment rewards of the additions and of the slowly unfurling mysteries the world holds that wouldn't let us go. The gut-wrenching sacrifice as many of the characters made and depictions of the war-torn world struggling to survive showing good people helping the oppressed. Dart is a good guy even if a little bit overprotective, which makes sense given Shana in his past. Labatt's and Albert and even Congo have great moments. We know they don't go that layer or two deeper we usually expect from JRPGs, but we still appreciate the story and the world. The towns are great to look at, and the highly addictive additions are superb. The music is also superb, outside of a few drawing transitions. And unlike some, we also never got tired of the menu screen tuner, the battle music, or the voice acting, which was fine outside of a few instances where it absolutely was not fine.

Finally, Legend of Dragoon is a game deserving of the love it receives, even if it might be hard at times to see past its many cracks. We suggest everybody that has any affinity for JRPGs give it a shot; it just might surprise you.