Legend of Dragoon for PlayStation 1

Legend of Dragoon is Sony?s 3-year, 4-disc, and 30 man team of geniuses whose supposed to construct a RPG worthy of any Square title. Do they succeed? Well I?d say so gameplay wise. While the story really doesn?t have that ?Square Epicism? , it?s still a great game with a good story. No RPG fan should have an excuse to pass this great up.

I feel that the most important aspect in an RPG is battling. Most likely if the battling is dull and boring you'll stop playing the game within the first hours. Not so the case in Dragoon. If you hate random battles as much as I do well then Legend of Dragoon may be a good relief from those in Final Fantasy games. Random battles really aren't that much of a problem like they were in Final Fantasy 8. You don't have to worry about getting into a fight every other step you make and when you are close to a fight a color indicator above your head lets you know. Blue means you're safe from any battles. Yellow means they're close. And red means prepare for a fight. While there is no real way to escape from battles since the meter doesn't progress down, all this does is basically tell you how "hot or cold" you are. Also Dart, the hero, does run pretty fast and the meter doesn't change colors quickly so fights really aren't to the point of "not another fight!". But when you do get into a fight, how's the battling? Glad you asked.
In battle you get four choices. Attack, guard, item, and run. Every time you attack you must complete Addtionals. By pressing "X" when your character gets close to an enemy you can do an additional attack (hence the name). Sometimes an enemy will counter-attack you and cause some damage to you. However you can avoid this by pressing the "O" button. This is fun even 30+ hours into the game. By completing additional you will learn new harder, faster, and more damaging additionals. When you complete an additional your character will yell out the name of the additional and you gain SP. SP is used to build up your SP meter and you change into a Dragoon!
Once you're a Dragoon you'll have a Dragoon physical and magic attack. Both are stronger and do more damage. When Dragoon attacking a circle appears on the screen with a little light in the center of the circle. You must hit "X" everytime the light passes through the center of the circle, and the more times you do this the stronger the physical attack. Dragoon magic is the only action where you don't have to press the "X" button to make it stronger. Just sit back and watch the awesome graphics fill your screen. However unlike most RPG's your characters don't have magic outside being a Dragoon. Instead you have "Magic items" which are basically magic attacks in the form of an item. By opening your item menu you can select which magic item you want and then cast it on an enemy. By pressing the "X" button multiple times you can increase the damage done by the magic. However you only hold 32 items, which makes it challenging, which means you have to plan carefully.
Also another praise to Legend of Dragoon's battle system is guarding. Yes guarding. Finally a logical use for the guard action. Guarding gives you back 10% of your max HP and halves damage every time you guard. While 10% might not seem like allot this is better than having to use your magic items to cure. Simply encounter a weak enemy and spend time guarding to heal up. This is especially useful when you are in boss fights with little HP left. I can't remember the last time I ever guarded in any other RPG! And the last action you have in battle is the run button. While it is obvious what this does it really works well in that you don't get stabbed in the back while trying to run away. Usually you can get out of a battle on the first or second try.
Also Dragoon plays heavily on elements. You know, water, wind, fire, earth, thunder, and so on. By using the opposite element that you're enemy is facing you do even more damage. This is a useful attack again in boss battles when you looking to close a battle.
Yet another cool aspect of battle is the indicator that appear over the enemies head. Blue means that they have allot of HP left, Yellow means that you've damaged them half way, and red means that they're close to death with little than 25% of HP left. This again is useful in knowing so that you don't waste your more powerful attacks on an enemy that is nearly dead. Only thing that harms your battling experience is when some background colors are blue or green. It makes it hard to see the target when you?re doing additionals because the colors blend and it makes it hard to tell when you can hit. Overall as you can see through all of this battling is very fun and plays a heavy roll in Dragoon.

Everytime someone mentions the words ?Legend of Dragoon? you have to think about the graphics. Excellent. The backgrounds are pre-rendered (like Final Fantasy VII & VIII) with polygonal characters. While the characters look MUCH better from those in Final Fantasy VII, but not as mature-looking as VIII. Either way they look life like none-the-less. Magic spells look amazing, and when the characters morph into Dragoons it?s spectacular. The FMVs are absolutely stunning. Just by looking at the FMVs alone this looks like a Dramcast game! However if you do look closely you can see some ?jagged? textures in the background. However it?s all forgivable and the graphics look awesome.

Here?s something you wouldn?t really expect from a Sony game. Great music. The music in any town or dungeon really sets the stage and goes along nicely with the environment. I especially loved the world map music. As usual there is a special music for those shocking, sad, happy, and funny times in the game. Also the characters do have voice acting, which sound good. You hear them when they yell out their additionals or magical dragoon attack and sometimes in FMV scenes. When they say sentences they can sound rather dry and unemotional but it?s really nothing bad. Overall a great music experience to go along with an already great game.

Overall Legend of Dragoon is a great game. The game is very linear, which is no problem to me, because it means you don't have to spend hours wandering the world map in search of your next objective. You move in a set path on the world map and that keeps things easy. Now most people judge RPG's on their story.. Sure it borrows allot from other RPGs and brings nothing really new to the world of RPG story telling (you know the drill: Hero's village or family is destroyed by bad guy. Hero wants revenge. Hero also has a love interest that he has mixed feelings about, meets up with other guys and so on...). It?s not much but after the second disc the story starts to heat up. While I won't spoil Dragoon's story I'll say that overall it's a pretty well told story with some good twists. However nothing is perfect. My one and biggest complaint would have to be that you can?t really level up from random battles. The only place where you can really gain levels is on boss battles. Aside from that you need to spend atleast a hour leveling up. My second minor would be that the game can be really difficult at times. Especially in the very beginning of the game, and later in the game the bosses can be very difficult if you?re too low in levels. Which will probably happen often if you don?t spend hours leveling up. And my last con is that there are some really off-set words here. Example: You are in a prision and you are spotted by a guard. He then yells the single word "B*ST*D!" at you as he charges toward you for a fight. That's a word nobody would ever say in that given situation. Despite these complaints the good in Dragoon outshine them and just about any other game. The characters are all very likeable and you can see all their emotions acted out as real people. Legend of Dragoon busts the limits of the PlayStation graphically, and the additional system makes battling fun and refreshing. This is the complete RPG experience on the PlayStation, even outshining the majesty of Final Fantasy. Put Legend of Dragoon on the map of RPG Greats, because they?re a country not to be reckoned with.