A look back at: The Legend of Dragoon

Hoo boy this is a biggun. You know it when it has four discs. And apparently it's not gonna be the last game I try out that has four discs either.

The Legend of Dragoon was Sony's attempt to cash in on the JRPG genre, and it worked...moderately well I guess. It certainly tries to create some unique things out of the genre and the story, given there being four discs and all. The whole battle system is nothing but a mixed bag entirely. The addition system ends up being more trouble than it's worth, but it's one of two best methods of defeating the enemies this game has. Having to time attacks properly, and time potentially nastier counterattacks that can just pop up at any time, makes this almost entirely a concentration mini-game on it's own. Ugh. The other best method of defeating enemies is throwing items, and then button-mashing like mad because that's how to increase just how much damage you can do.

But wait, what about those AWESOME dragoon powers! You might ask that. Well, they're honestly not all that useful, and especially so for the random encounters. The actual magic in this game only really works for the dragoon transformations, and somehow, they are better than the dragoon additions themselves. As superpowered as they are, they really don't last long, and against some fights like Emperor Doel, it's honestly much less fun than it really ought to be. Defending actually restores HP, which is good, but you can't do this in a dragoon form. As for everything aside from battles? Well the Final Fantasy 7 navigation is into effect, and the random encounters are actually indicated by the arrow on Dart's head which changes color. Pretty neat.

I'll go ahead and say it, Dragoon's plot is alright. Having to replace Lavitz with Albert, then later Shana with Miranda is pretty well done. Each of the playable characters all get quite a lot of development overall, as do the NPCs for each respective chapter. The end-of-disc areas are well done too. You see villains like Freugal and Emperor Doel in Disc 1 and Lenus in Disc 2 and after they end up dead you still are looking for the much worse enemies like Lloyd. The whole mystery of the Winglies is okay at best. The even bigger mysteries of what happened to Dart's father, Haschel's overall connection, and the Black Monster are astounding. Things did excite me as the story continued, and I'm glad that it didn't get too boring even if the combat really didn't woo me all that much.