2017 was definitely the year of clearing off my neck of many gaming albatrosses, but none weighed quite so heavily upon my neck as did The Legend of Dragoon. At the start of this blog (September 2016) I posted a quick, poorly written, and not so thorough reTROview of this game after a few hours of play. The truth of the matter, however, is that my history with this game goes way back before the start of this blog. I started playing this game in high school, got stuck on a pretty tricky boss (Divine Dragon), and abandoned it to play Final Fantasy IX, on which I also got stuck and subsequently abandoned (I was too stupid to realize that virus was a curable condition and not a permanent condition of being unable to gain experience). I've since beaten FF VII, FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, FFX-2, and FFXII, otherwise known as my high school gaming playlist, but never finished up The Legend of Dragoon, until last night!
Crushingly, I got up to one of the very last bosses in the game over the weekend, and my game kept freezing on me. As the game is pretty buggy, especially when played on a PS2, I thought it might just be a fixable bug, but alas, there were no reports on the internet to corroborate this suspicion. So I tried a hail mary and went to Family Video to get them to buff the disc, after which it worked, and I put in an hour and a half last night crushing the final boss. By the way, if you live near a Family Video and have scratched discs, they'll fix them for $2.99, and it worked at least in this situation, even on a black PS1 disc. But I digress, on to the reTROview!
The Legend of Dragoon is a PS1 JRPG made by Sony as a competitor to the Final Fantasy series, which had sold more copies than the Bible in 1997 (this is not, to my knowledge, a true fact, but I wouldn't actually be too surprised if it was true). Attempting to get in on this pile of money, The Legend of Dragoon attempts to keep the core elements of the Final Fantasy series in play, but make a few quality of life upgrades to create a separate and superior product.
First and foremost among these additions is the addition system, which replaces the basic active time battle based battle system used in Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy IV. In this system, each character can select one action per turn, and the character does it on autopilot. So selecting attack will result in a physical attack, while selecting a magic spell will result in your character using magic. In The Legend of Dragoon, however, selecting attack results in a timing based minigame wherein you need to press the "x" button at appropriate intervals to add extra strikes onto your attacks and increase the damage you deal.
In order to use magic in the game, you must undergo a transformation into a Dragoon (basically you just get wings and magic). In order to transform into the Dragoon, you must first gather SP by hitting your additions correctly until you have enough meter to transform. The more meter you have, the longer you can stay in Dragoon form, which increases your attack, defense, and obviously gives the ability to use magic.
There's also a bit of voice acting in the game, which is pretty remarkable for a JRPG of the era. I found it generally cheesy, but it's nice to see the attempt.
So how does it stand up to the legendary game series it is supposed to be imitating? Questionably. Every Final Fantasy game from IV to X is a 9.0 or better on my scale, and each take the formula and play with it just enough to keep it feeling familiar, while also feeling like a new and separate game. While my favorite is Final Fantasy VII, each of those game has beloved memories for me, and playing them again rekindles them despite some of their flaws as they have aged. The flaws in The Legend of Dragoon were far more powerful than my admittedly nostalgic memories of the game, resulting in a far less enjoyable experience for me.
On the positive side, the additions system is absolutely delightful, and was clearly the best part of the game for me. Learning the different combinations and getting better and better at them introduced your own skill into the game, whereas the Final Fantasy games are primarily about strategy. While strategy is wonderful, and I love the Final Fantasy battle system, this game does plenty in the additions system to create a separate experience that runs on a parallel to Final Fantasy. The system is well designed, being challenging enough to require plenty of practice to perfect your additions, while also not being so challenging that you can never master them.
I enjoyed the story despite its classic JRPG tropes that I won't spoil here. But if you've ever played one, you'll find little to fawn over, and plenty to tease in the way you might tease a member of your family for some of their shortcomings. Ultimately this was a positive for me, but it didn't have quite the pull that classics like Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, or Final Fantasy X did for me in terms of story.
The visuals are dated, but not much more so than its Final Fantasy peers on the PS1. It's definitely better looking in battle and without than Final Fantasy VII, but I think that Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX are both superior visually speaking, and I think the all three games in the Final Fantasy trilogy on PS1 have much better and more frequent FMV-style cutscenes that help to give a certain shine and polish on the game that The Legend of Dragoon lacks.
The music is challenging to assess fairly. We need to recognize that we have all been spoiled to a silly extent by the prodigious shadow which Uematsu has cast on the genre, and that precious few composers in this genre will be able to match his uncanny ability to write complex music using simple technology that simultaneously gets stuck in your head for a lifetime. With that being said, the music in this game is very good, but not quite up to the standard that I've been spoiled to expect in a PS1 JRPG. There are a number of standout tracks though, so it's hard to ding it too much on music, just like it's unfair to have asked Hakeem Olajuwon to win more titles with Jordan playing at the same time.
The dragoon mode feels clunky to me, as it walls off a huge part of the game's strategy behind incredibly long and frankly dull animations, as well as removes a number of capabilities from your characters. In normal mode, you can attack, defend, use items, or transform into a dragoon. In dragoon mode, you can only attack or use magic, which means you're more or less committed to all-out assault upon transformation. I wish they'd given you the ability to go back and forth quicker in this mode, as it would have opened up a wider world of strategies involving quickly hitting your opponent and returning to the basic form once you need to use items or defend.
My biggest gripe with the game was the leveling and character development system, which proceeds according to most JRPGs by getting enough experience points to level up, giving you increased stats to win in subsequent battles. The problem with this system is that you get a pittance of experience for winning regular battles, and outrageous amounts for winning boss battles. The result of this is that it's hugely difficult to level up between bosses, which means that it's really hard to get super strong and feel like a boss. Fortunately they curved the difficulty pretty well, so you never feel overshadowed by the bosses, but also rarely feel too strong, maintaining a nice level of difficulty throughout. But I always like the ability to take control of your characters and mold them into who you want them to be, and The Legend of Dragoon has basically 0 of that. There are no classes, and nothing you can do to shape your character other than simply picking which additions to equip. I will at least say that the additions system at least gives you a great sense of control over your character, so this papers over one of the games biggest weaknesses.
All in all, it's hard to say that The Legend of Dragoon is a great game, but it is a good one with a lot of good ideas, and some poorly executed ones. If you love JRPGs on the PS1, this is one of the better ones. But if you find the genre boring, stay far away, as you'll mostly get exactly what you expect out of this one. I'll give it an 8.0/10.
I'm still working on the game I teased last time, but during times in which my kids are using my HDTV to play Minecraft (ugh) I'll be working on this hidden gem on the ol' CRT.
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