Retro Games Beaten

I beat The Legend of Dragoon (PSX)

While Sony published several RPGs throughout the PSX's lifespan, they were always the work of other developers; Media.Vision for Wild ARMs, G-Craft for the Arc the Lad, Prokion for Legend of Legaia. The Legend of Dragoon was developed internally, though, with the aim of rivaling Final Fantasy, which exploded in popularity worldwide on the platform. Reportedly in development for over 3 years, it was a big-budget, 4-disc epic with a similar graphical style - polygonal characters over lavishly-drawn pre-rendered backdrops. At the helm was a former Squaresoft employee by the name of Yasuyuki Hasebe, credited as director, lead writer, and lead game designer. Prior to Legend of Dragoon, he had worked as a battle designer on Final Fantasy VI and Super Mario RPG. It's no surprise, then, that LOD reprises the timing-based elements of SMRPG's turn-based battle system, though it pushes the idea a lot further.

Here, each character equips an attack sequence, with each hit having requiring a button press with the proper timing. When performed correctly, they deal various amounts of damage, but also procure a set amount of SP, which is used to transform into Dragoons. Some combos offer better damage, while others fill up the SP gauge faster. 100 SP point fills up one level of the gauge, which allows you to remain a Dragoon for one turn. In that form, all stats are higher, attacks are different, and it is the only time you can cast magic using your own MP. This means that healing items and even single-use attack items are much more important than in your typical RPG, as you will only occasionally use your own magic to heal outside of bosses. Inventory is limited to 32 non-equipment items, so managing it is important throughout the game. Later on you also get various repeat items that never run out, but can only be used once per battle, which are very nice to have. There's also a "Special" state where all characters transform into Dragoons at the same time, which gives extra bonuses. So it's fair to say that the game brings a number of change to the traditional turn-based formula, especially for the time. While it's true that battles can move slowly, especially with the over-the-top magic animations which can feel like short films at times, it only really gets a bit tiring after fighting a couple bosses in a row. This is because the random encounter rate is pretty low, and you can even cancel a few battles using certain items should you tire of them. Furthermore, you can see battles coming as the cursor above your character change from Blue to Yellow to Red as you walk. Bosses don't tend to have a ton of HP, either, though a few of them are pretty tough. I found that the timing-based stuff and the various aspects to level-up - the character themselves, the attack sequences, the Dragoon level - did keep the gameplay engaging throughout, more so than in many RPGs of its era.

I'll go with bullet points for the rest of the review:
-The overall story is good. It asks a lot of questions early on that aren't answered until much later, and there's a bit of stuff that feels like filler (mostly around the second disc), but the big payoff that come late in the third disc is really strong.
-The translation is so-so. Not so bad that it ruins the story, but enough that some scenes feel flatter than they probably should.
-The NPCs in town are pretty dull. This is no Dragon Quest in that regard.
-On the other hand, some real effort was put into the town design, with lots of little particularities and hidden things to find. No two towns look the same, and they're all cool to explore.
-The characters may not have the strongest personalities, but they're mostly pretty cool.
-The music is unexceptional, but it works, and some of those pre-rendered backdrops are really, really nice.
-Beyond the slow-ish battles, the overall pacing is nice. Neither the conversations nor the dungeons go on for too long. This is a big thing for me.
-Contrary to the impression you might get at first, it has a fair amount of soul.

All in all, I'll give it ***1/2, meaning "Very Good". In some ways, it feels a bit more amateurish than FF, or maybe just inexperienced, but I could have seen it blossom into a worthy rival series. On its own, it's still one of the stronger RPGs of its era. It's relatively long, at 45 hours, yet I would take more. While it sold pretty well in the West, it wasn't a big hit in Japan, and no sequel was ever made, which is too bad. Some staff members went on to work at Monolith Soft, among others.

Nice beat toei. You've definitely boosted my interest in giving TLoD another look someday. Still have some mint discs around myself actually. The SMRPG lineage was new to me and makes more sense now. Perhaps I have more patience for the combat system nowadays actually. 45 hours is a pretty beefy game for you to tackle thesedays.

Maybe I'd even like the combat more than Shadow Hearts actually, speaking of those. I had a blast with the first two and they're higher recommendations for me on the PS2 now. But I don't know if I'd say I loved the ring combat system. I like Lost Odyssey's system more, which is more like TLoD, without needing to combo more in a row if I remember right. It's just the first big hit you can time correctly for more damage. Xenogears is forever the one to me that has God tier combat on foot (outside the mecha) with combo inputs like a fighting game. It's blisteringly fast and feels so good.

The aesthetic always looks amazing from afar. Later PSX era Square Soft caliber. It makes me think of FF8 the most, but with a darker actual fantasy tone perhaps.

Excellent. I'm glad there's someone else that has even more RPGs under their belt than me that thinks Legend of Dragoon is a good game. I'm always surprised at how much hate it gets from some quarters these days. It's the best "Final Fantasy-but-not-really" game on the PSX, and if I'm being honest, I'm pretty sure I'd take it over FFIX, which starts strong but ultimately fails to hold up the further in you go.

It could definitely use a better localization - you're right that it's not game-breaking, but the weird turns of phrase definitely betray it as more a transliteration than localization.