Legend of Dragoon, a game that I miss playing. I enjoyed it so much when I first got it and little over a year ago had to retry it again and play it more. Something about this game. Its style and gameplay, that's what I really enjoy about it. Did you ever play Dragoon? On a system full of RPGs, this one is easily in the top right behind Final Fantasy's and Suikoden. Some argue higher than that.



My friend had a demo disc he bought somewhere that had several amazing games on it. Spider-man, the Tony Hawk Spider-man, on playstation was on there. Such a fun game to play. I mean before Spider-man 2 on the PS2/GC/XBOX consoles, that was about as good as a Spider-man could get. There was Tony Hawk 2 itself on there, about as good as the skateboarding could get. There was Syphon Filter a game which I enjoyed. And there was this RPG on there called Legend of Dragoon that gave you an amazing demo of the adventure. About a good two hours or so. Well, after sometime I finally managed to pick up the game.

Legend of Dragoon plays pretty much like any RPG. You pick attacks, you have magic spells, a large party, and three persons in it at a time. Storyline going on with the burned down village, hidden powers, you know all that. What really made this a cool game for me was the battles. You have to press a button with attacks to sync up squares or whatevers to do damage. Sometimes as many as twenty times later in the game. It really keeps things moving and has you actually be in the battles. Other than that, each character (spoiler?) has a special dragon power that lets you do magic and had four levels. The fourth one being this crazy dragon attack. Worth playing or seeing just for those.



There's just something cool about dragons. When you start off the game your hero is being chased by one that seemed way to large to fight off. Especially then. That wasn't even in my demo disc, but I was still blown away. A great opening to a fun RPG. My only major criticism I recall, is a battle somewhere on the second or third disc against Mr. White Haired villain. I didn't think I could beat him, I knew I could, and so I tried and tried. Finally I found out that I was supposed to lose that particular fight in a circus tent. I was so pissed. Lose on purpose? That's not my style. And that's less a criticism of Legend, but more so of the genre. Those types of fights are bullshit fights.



Another big deal at that time was the CGI. Computer generated imagery, you know those fancy cut scenes? The movies. Some were pretty fancy. They even had talking, something Final Fantasy VII's ending really could have used. Remember that final scene with the subtitles? Took me right out of the ending. But over here there's talking. Not a lot of it, but it actually had some talking and looked really well. Another thing was that like other RPGs at the time, this thing came on FOUR discs. Which seemed to indicate a lot of video game to me. So it was well worth picking up.

My great shame is that I've never actually beaten this. I made it to disc 3 on my own, then decided to use the gameshark to breeze the rest of the game. Getting stuck in the fourth discs puzzles and quitting for four years. When I picked it back up I had no clue where I was and my party was too powerful to do anything. So I started over. And then quit again once something shiny came over. I'm anxious to replay this sometime. I want to finish it and give it a proper send off. Even without that I really would like a sequel. The adventures of this hero and his world, I could use more of.



Something about the characters too. They're all really interesting, so its hard to choose just three to play with. There's a certain element of Super Sentai to all this with the dragoon transforming and color coded heroes. Maybe I'm just thinking of that stuff when I play though. You've your red hero, a purple dark bitch, this orange Juggernaut character, a green "nice" hero, a purple kung fu man, and a few others. It's really great mix. And there are two major things that happen with them that I can't mention. I'd hate to tell you what happens. Play for yourself and find out. It's worth playing to see what happens to who and how things play out on just the first disc. Find out all about the legendary "BLACK MONSTER" and what it really is. I figured it out pretty quick, did you guys that played it? I wonder how far from beating it I got now.



Will a sequel ever come out? I sure hope. I've liked this game ever since I first tried that demo. I always liked Resident Evil style gameplay. Fancy picture backgrounds and 3D characters. That's the way to do it. Especially on this console. I'm sure someone will tell me this looks old, but I enjoy the look. It hasn't aged as bad as some playstation games have and I highly recommend you pick it up. If you're into role playing games like me. Otherwise, maybe pass if you'd rather play shooting games or games where you jump around as a rabbit.

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P.S. In watching video of the game, I totally recalled the sound effects. Some really fun ones in the menus.