An epic four-disc RPG, Legend of Dragoon is a time of swords, magic and dragons. Ten thousand years ago, the Dragon War pitted Dragoons - humans with the power to control dragons - against slave traders, magicians who sought to enslave human beings. Now Dart, a young warrior, is a mission to find the devil who killed their parents. The Legend of Dragoon features prerendered, funds and 3-D detail, polygonal figures. Nonplaying many characters and scenes of full-motion video takes you through the complex history. The game engine allows you to battle in turn, increase the strength of an attack button multiple taps and shows the percentage of increase has created. A characteristic of the time in combat mode allows you to add devastating combinations of attacks. Points earned with the Spirit of your search can be used to unlock a special power, known as dragon's attack.
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Editorial Review
Talk about going out with a bang! Sony Computer Entertainment released its four-disc The Legend of Dragoon for the PlayStation only months before the release of that console's successor, the PlayStation2. This very absorbing role-playing game, with hours upon hours of story and inventive gameplay, might just be the last great title for the glorious PSX.
The copious story begins with Dart, a vengeful young man with spiky hair and red armor who embarks on a desperate rescue mission to break his childhood sweetheart out of a castle prison. The two join forces with a knight who is trying to end a war that's destroying the region. Dart soon learns that he is a Dragoon--a human who's privy to the spiritual power of dragons. Like all RPG heroes, Dart is up against impossible odds, but his newfound Dragoon magic and battle skills go a long way toward making the bet even money.
And that's just the beginning. Grab a spare memory card and a comfy chair and be prepared to spend at least 20 hours getting through the first disk (there are three others just like it in the double-wide case). It's hard to sustain a player through this kind of time span, but The Legend of Dragoon takes chances and wins. For example, its battle system is turn based, so you can actually use some strategy, but it also features special "additions," or fighting combos that unfold if you match the X button to that addition's timing. When handling three players' additions, each with unique sequences, it can be quite challenging. You can increase the potency of the elemental magic up to 160 percent by quickly tapping X during your cast. Also, the perspectives often change between battles--players will direct the action from behind the heroes, behind the villains, looking down from above, and off to the side.
There are a couple downsides to the game. First, the stylized transitions into and out of battle mode, while initially cool, quickly become exhausting--especially when running the gauntlet through lesser foes in the wilderness or lower ramparts of a castle. The game's story is built such that you're watching the sometimes goofy dialog as a spectator rather than participating in it. There are a few occasions when the game will prompt you to choose from two different responses, but often either response will bring about the same conclusion. That tightly controlled narrative, however, often works in the player's favor by keeping the game flowing instead of the wandering common in other RPGs, where players waste time looking to each townsperson for direction.
Overall, the game's wonderfully illustrated sets, light exploration and problem solving, and a handful of jaw-dropping full-motion video scenes make The Legend of Dragoon fun to play and hard to put down. --Porter Hall
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GameSpot Review
After Final Fantasy VII hit the streets, RPGs finally got their due. As the laws of economics dictate, this spurred everyone to develop RPGs. Envying Square and touting similarly large-budget potential, Sony itself entered the fray with The Legend of Dragoon. While it's a good first try, Sony's inexperience with the genre shows through, resulting in a highly generic RPG with some out-of-this-world FMV. The Legend of Dragoon starts out the same way as many other RPGs. The spiky-haired Dart already has one vendetta against the mysterious Black Devil, who killed his father, but it's time he had another. For unknown reasons, the Sandora Empire burns down his village and imprisons his childhood friend, Shena. Infuriated, Dart impulsively storms out to rescue Shena. Shena's kidnapping is merely the tip of the iceberg of a much grander, more sinister motive. During his globe-spanning quest, Dart is transformed into a Dragoon, a warrior cloaked with the power of the Dragon of Fire. To defeat the Sandora Empire, Dart will have to find the other six Dragon Spirits and people to use them so the Legend of Dragoon may be fulfilled. Along the way, the magical septet will learn about one another, accrue additional vendettas, and save the world. The Japanese have a word for stories and setups as predictable as this - sentai. The name was given to the expansive, formulaic Japanese Power Rangers genre, and the only thing that doesn't scream sentai here is that there are seven "rangers" instead of the more traditional five. Dart, for example, fits into the typical leader position, as he is clad in red. Before too long, you'll be able to easily predict who will join the party simply by the color of their outfit rather than whether they have a character portrait or not. With a story so trite and borrowed, one would hope the gameplay was at least a little different. Arguably it is, but not at all in any of the right ways. You guide Dart, with the rest of the party cleverly concealed on his person, around prerendered backgrounds and get in random encounters with monsters, much like the recent offerings of the Final Fantasy series. Eschewing magic almost altogether, The Legend of Dragoon relies on its more mundane "Additional System" for spice. When attacking, you must tap the button as the character connects multiple times, allowing said character to perform a stronger attack. Only one such Additional may be used at a time, gradually gaining strength the more times it's successfully used. Every few levels the characters will get new Additionals that can be turned on from the submenu, but only one can be used at a time, forcing you to watch and tap out the same attack over and over again. Once your characters have the ability to transform into Dragoons, Additionals also charge the character's spirit meter. Once the meter is full, the character can transform into a Dragoon and remain that way for one turn for every time you fill the meter. As a Dragoon, you have two options - Dragoon Additional or Dragoon Magic. The former prompts you to tap a button four times consecutively to charge a meter, which results in a powerful aerial assault on the enemy. The latter fits the standard definition of magic, but on a grander, more time-consuming scale. Without general access to magic, how do you heal your party? Legend of Dragoon relies heavily on defending, a first for RPGs. Not only does defending halve all damage taken from enemies, but it also restores 10 percent of the character's max hit points. This fact, combined with a limited inventory and a short supply of money, means you're going to be spending a lot of time defending. In fact, defending for five or ten turns in a row when fighting a boss is not only common but also necessary. With so many steps required to fight bosses, heal, or use magic, Legend of Dragoon sports some of the longest and most tedious monster encounters in any RPG to date. Expect to get bored quickly with spells and attacks that you've already seen a thousand times before. Legend of Dragoon lacks a visual style to make it interesting to look at - the character designs are missing personality and innovation, with characters often only describable by the color of their clothing. The world, too, follows the same line of thinking, resulting in a boring world rendered by some rather talented 3D artists. The large number of CG movies that fill the game's four discs are technically impressive, but they still lack that certain visual edge needed to really captivate you. The real-time 3D graphics, however, aren't as technically impressive as the prerendered stuff. Fraught with rendering errors that seemed to disappear long ago from most other PlayStation games and being low on textures, the game's real-time graphics fit somewhere in between the flat-shaded sameness of Final Fantasy VII's art and Final Fantasy VIII's textured wonders. The models themselves are blocky and heavily jointed. As Legend of Dragoon is generally devoid of magic, the minor spell effects aren't impressive in the least, and the Dragoon magic sequences are overdone and overlong. The game's sound is neither technically nor aurally impressive, relying on hackneyed instrument samples and uninteresting musical composition to push the game along. While token voices do appear in CG scenes or when characters call their moves, they don't particularly add to the experience. Sony's on the right track, but it's got a ways to go before it can hope to produce an RPG with the polish of a Square game - pieces of the puzzle are here, but the overall experience just isn't there. Legend of Dragoon borrows too heavily from other games and lacks that "hook" to make it worth dealing with excessive defending, a thin story you'd expect to see on Power Rangers, and aural competence. --Peter Bartholow
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.
Customer Reviews
Learn to master those additions
The Legend of Dragoon has a very innovative battle system that uses combination attacks called "additions". This is innovative partly because it does require constant concentration and precise timing to execute. Basically, additions allow your characters to increase the damage caused by their physical attacks. You have to push the controller buttons at the precise moment in order to execute these additions. And, do not expect to master all of the additions for any of the characters. The most powerful additions require too many timed button presses to execute reliably.
The story is fairly standard RPG material. You play as the main character, Dart. Dart is on a journey to avenge the destruction of his village and the death of his parents. Along the way, he meets up with some very eccentric adventurers who follow him on his quests for their own personal reasons. What starts out as a journey for revenge turns out to be something more significant. As the story unfolds, it turns out that what people have believed for 10,000 years may not be the actual truth. What God had in mind for humans may not be in our best interest. Dart and company travel across three nations to try and unravel the mystery.
This game is a very good alternative to the Final Fantasy series for those who love to hack, slash, bash, and cast spells. The battle system here is much better than Final Fantasy X's. This is perhaps the most sophisticated RPG for the original playstation. Playing the game in a PS2 supposedly gives the graphics a boost, but I have not had a chance to compare them side by side. I can say that on a PS2, the graphics are very good. The soundtrack sounds great and the variety is wide enough so that the game is pleasant to play for long hours at a time. I believe it took me over 100 hours to finish the game and the side quests.
The Best RPG Ever Made
The Legend of Dragoon is the best RPG ever made for any game system. The graphics surpass even those of Final Fantasy VIII. The game itself has an extremely immersive storyline. After you get into the game a little, you get the ability to transform into a "Dragoon" during battle, (Similar to the "Limit Breaks" of the Final Fantasy games) Which is a warrior that has the power of a dragon. each magic spell has a cinema that is completely different from the one before, unlike Final Fantasy where each character kind of had their own little motion that they went through to cast a spell, Also there are things called "additions" that when you hit the attack button at a certain time you will unleash a devastating barrage of attacks. I reccomend this game for anyone who loves RPG's it is the best game I have ever played. It will take some doing for any future titles to even come close to what this game achieves. Did I mention that all the cutscenes have voice acting, and when you cast a spell or correctly achieve the addition that the character yells the name of the spell or addition.
Great battles-beautiful story-a must buy!
If you are looking for an RPG that is extremely well designed, you have found it! Here in Legend of Dragoon, you take controll of Dart, a guy on a quest to avenge the death of his parents. I must say that the battle system is one of the best I've ever seen...period. You take the standard three characters into battle with you. They have the usual commands: Attack, Defend, Item, and Run. But The Attack command is much different. By using this, you gain access to that character's special attacks. When the boxes align right on top of the attacker, a tap of the X button causes the character to attack again. You continue until the character executes the special attack. But enemies can counter attack during this sequence. Then the lines turn red, it's a sign to hit the O button rather X to block and keep attacking. But this isn't the end. The more you fight, the more SP (Spirit Points) you obtain. When you have at least one, you gain access to yet another command, Dragoon. When you select this, that character will transform into a Dragoon. Depending on how many SPs you have, the number of turns you remain in that form is determined. In this new form, your character dons really cool armor and wings. They now only have access to two commands, but they are the best you have. The first is Attack, but it's different from before. You now have a circle on the right side of the screen with a mark on the top. When you press the X button, a light will move clockwise around the side like a clock on steroids. Pressing X when the light meets the mark will increase your power. When finished, your character will pummel the target with devistating attacks. The next command enables you to cast spells. Depending on the character and level, different types of magic are avalible. The only real problem with the game are it's graphics. The backgrounds are great, but the characters could look better, although they still look okay. Also, the spells take almost as long as the Guardian Force summons in Final Fantasy VIII. Other than that, I highly suggest this to anybody looking for an RPG with a Final Fantasy type atmosphere, yet a highly original and addictive battle system.
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