Legend of Dragoon

PSX

Sony - 2000

Long Review:

Legend of Dragoon is a non-square RPG of questionable translation that reminds me a bit too much of Final Fantasy 7, but nonetheless has some interesting crap to offer. You play as a guy named Dart who has been nominated to save the world. He and his conveniently buff and color oriented companions are to take on legions of baddies, dragons and assorted wizard types with the aid of their latent “Dragoon” powers which allow them to sprout wings, get all bad-ass and change clothes faster than the average human.

The plot is ok, I guess. It’s not exactly what you would call gripping and it really suffers from mediocre translation. For instance, there’s the ancient race that ruled the earth named the “winglies.” Then there’s the unintentional homosexual overtones. Or were they intentional? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not to say that I’m gay. Or not gay. Because there’s nothing wrong with a guy saying that he’s not gay. Y’know, staying away from the closet. Maybe putting in some coats.

Seriosly, though. The translation is poor. They don’t go so far as to leave imporant words out like “the”, but they really should hire more than one Japanese literate hobo to work it on out. Work it, yeah, work it.

One of the best and worst parts of the game is undoubtedly the graphics. On one hand, you have the beautifully rendered backgrounds full of vivid colors and excrutiating detail. They really are stunning. In many ways they rival and even surpass those of Final Fantasy 9, arguably the pinnacle of Playstation graphics. On the other hand you have the blocky and quirky blob people. God they piss me off. Sometimes during story sequences (which in no way are you allowed to skip despite voice acting that belongs in a car commercial) You can just sort of sit back and watch them twitch. I also really wish they had faces. That would be nice.

On a quick tangent, it seems to me that Square makes just about every RPG that finds its way to the states. Well, they’re not ALL made by square. There’s, uh . . . that other one . . . and ummmmm . . .

Square doesn't make ALL the good RPGs, but it seems like that sometimes. So I suppose it’s understandable that Legend of Dragoon should resemble a Square game. Especially Final Fantasy, their most lucrative franchise. After all, they’ve all but flooded the market with high quality, entertaining, well translated epics for us to shell out for. What’s a greedy, less imaginative and less experienced studio to do?

It's really a whole lot like FF7. Not only are the sprites strikingly similar, the battle camerawork is comparable (excluding of course the sickening “overhead” view), You can only have 3 characters . . . the Main character even has long, blong, spiky hair and a sword. He also falls in love with a timid brunette that he meets early in the story. At least she doesn’t sell flowers.

The sound also deserves special attention for both voice acting and music. As mentioned above, the voice acting clips, though few and far between, are done to the point of mellowdrama by actors who probably took a break from their busy weeks of adds for cheap miscellaneous crap to do the game. I really wish they’d just been subtitled.

The music bears comparison with the graphics. It is simultaneously admirable and infuriating. While it’s good of them to try something a bit different by incorporating interesting changes into the background music such as using some techno beats and even a little bit of steel drumming, it kind of destroys the mood a bit. For instance, envision walking into a large city with a castle, a full batallion or ten of knights, a king and a hidden calypso band. It’s a nice change, but the result kind of makes you go “eh?!?!”

There’s one more thing I shold probably mention: additions. An addition is a combo that you can perform to augment the damage of your regular attack. It relies on whether or not you press the right button at the exact right moment, much like Super Mario RPG. The downside is that you have to do it for every. single. attack. There are a couple of characters who don’t use additions, but their attacks are puny and gernally wimpful. If you want to do any damage at all, you have to play the tiny parappa slash slash game every damn turn. Not only this, but the camera zooms in every time. I don’t usually get motion sick, but I really started to feel kinda quesy after about the the twenty billionth time.

Ok. Additions add another element to the game and distance it at least one step further from Final Fantasy. Sure. Why not? But I think this element of the game is really better left out the way it is. It’s just plain obnoxious.

Short Review:

Just go buy Final Fantasy 7 and save yourself a few bucks.

What liked: At least a minimal effort to be different, prettiness.

What disliked: Ok, it’s not THAT different. Rips off The Final Fantasy series quite a bit.

What to expect: Flat translation, pretty graphics, ugly graphics, a bit of boredom

What not to expect: Lovely sprites, escape from the crushing boredom that is the addition

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: The addition system, the “Dragoon” powers

Ratings on:

Control: 7 (Now walk between the pillars. Walk – just between – no! rrrrr.)

Graphics: 6 (Backgrounds good! Sprites made of satan!)

Sound: 7 (I've spoken to the king, talked to the villagers, and now it's time for CALYPSO!)

Style: 4 (We're proud to announce the release of Final Fan - er, Legend of Dragoon!)

Difficulty: 8 (The game is not hard. Managing to get through it without drugs or cheating is hard.)

1st hour: 6 (It’s not made by square. This dubbing is worse than Dragonball.)

2nd hour: 5 (It might as well be made by square.)

1st week: 6 (I guess the Dragoon thing was worth it. It is kind of cool to have all three people in the party in ultra bad ass kill people mode.)

2nd week: 5 (There must’ve been some reason I bought this game . . . Oh yeah! I needed a coaster. [thunk])

#1 reason why I hate this game: Swift death to whoever invented the addition system. No, wait - death by something excrutiatingly boring. Like C-span. C-spanicide.

by Freeohio, who shakes it like a polaroid picture.