Do you still believe?

Well it's one of my favorite games. Fun battle system and the story has a decent twist to it. The thing that lets it down the most is the sub-par translation. And that awful intro song. I had to look up the meaning of the title of this topic as I forgot that song.

I am a huge sucker for transformation gimmicks though. Those Dragoon sequences have my number. Seems like there was some successful RPG that uses similar timing based combat, but all I can think is the Shadow Hearts series, the meh Megaman Command Mission, and it's spiritual predecessor Legend of Legaia. Maybe I'm thinking of the Mario RPGs and in that case the inspiration would've come from Square.

There's plenty wrong with Legend of Dragoon. Firstly the story. Forget about the god awful translation, it's nothing to do with that. Plenty of stories have survived bad translations and still arrived out at the other side with the charm and heart intact. The story is basically power rangers. This might explain why a lot of people like it because you'll notice a lot of people that do like it played it at an age before power rangers becomes unwatchable. Also you find it's usually their first RPG or a very early experience of an RPG, meaning they didn't really know much better. It's a really ham fisted and cliche ridden plot and the worst and most insulting thing about it is that it's obviously designed by committee, trying to fit everything people liked about the great RPGs at the time, most notably FFVII, but without any of the charm just a lot of cynicism in its place.

Even when they decide to kill off a character it is laughable because he had zero personality up to that point, being an annoying 'butter wouldn't melt in his mouth' do gooder. They then replace him almost immediately with a carbon cut out with all his abilities in tact, competely missing the point of why this tactic was so successful in FFVII and a few other RPGs before FFVII.

The characters are terrible as well. It might be poor localisation but I very much doubt that and the recent HG101 Agness Kaku interview shows why it's usually very wrong to blame localisation good or bad for the games inherent flaws. Rose is the only one with a spark of personality and even then it's just Sony ripping off Squall. Don't get me started on Meru.

Then there's the battle system. You could say it's innovative. However it's also rubbish. The additions seem like a good idea to add interactivity to battles as well and the item interaction effects. Also the healing system where you guard to get health back should have added to the strategy of the game. However all it does is completely kill the pace of the game. Battles are already slow thanks to the terrible framerate but are ridiculously drawn out since you have to perform additions every time you attack. Healing draws battles out even more. Sure you can use items but you've limited inventory. Nothing kills an RPG more than battles that take too long. And then there's the times you walk into a battle with characters that are completely the wrong element through no fault of your own because it's not telegraphed. The game isn't harsh enough to kill you but the boss battle could drag on for 20-30 minutes.

There's also no strategy or tactics to any of the battles because there's practically no magic. Your only options are to attack, defend or use items. You can't even say there's strategy due to elemental affinity because once you pick a party you're stuck with them and there's no way to change elements. Of course there's the totally useless dragoon transformations. The animations for these make the FF series summons look subtle, further dragging out fights. Attacking as a dragoon is useless because the majority of the time you do less damage because the timing on additions is so tough. Magic is a bit more useful but MP is scarce so you save it for bosses. Again none of the attacks are remotely interesting since the only thing differentiating them is the damage they do, meru, shana and Rose aside.

I don't even think you could call the addition system innovative since it's just ripping off Squalls gunblade and taking it to the most idiotic conclusion. It's a complete disaster. Games like Shadow Hearts, Paper Mario and Mother 3 later on came along and showed how to do it properly while not destroying the pace of the game.

Now the game isn't beyond playable, more on the frustrating and barely playable side of things I'd say, but my main beef with it outside of how horrible it is to play is how cynical it is. It was designed to try and appeal to JRPG fans by taking everything we loved about those games and to create a frankenstein monster out of them with the sole purpose of tricking us out of our money. It succeeded there unfortunately with me, but what it didn't succeed at was actually realising why it was that we all loved JRPGs.

tl;dr version: shit sandwich.

Oh and I'm far from a Squaresoft fanboy, my favourite 32-bit RPGs were Suikoden 2 and Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Can't believe I didn't mention Lloyd, the most blatant and worst rip off of Sephiroth ever.

Butzdart



I've never played Legend of Dragoon, but I remember seeing ads for it when I was a kid, so... I acknowledge its existence?



EDIT:

I like Mystic Quest! It's by no means an incredible game, but for what it is it's well-made, and its soundtrack has some truly astounding tracks on it.

FFVIII has it's rake of problems but breaking its battle system apart is so much fun that it forgives everything else. For all its problems I had a hell of a lot of fun with FFVIII, once you realise that the game is so broken that summons are useless so battles are quick affairs. I can't say I had fun with LoD.

FFIX had some bad loading times before fights but the encounter rate was low and battles were swift enough. I really loved it, you can tell the developers really enjoyed making a throw back to the old FF games.

There's something wrong with a game that allows you to stop random encounters and pretty much walk straight through the game to the end without any difficulty. VIII story is alright, but I cannot stand games that have enemies level up with you. 4 Heroes of Light is the same way. Why should I be punished for leveling up?

IX is my favorite Final Fantasy but I don't think I have the patience to play thorough it again what with the battle loading times. Some of the best characters in the series though.



I knew I'd find one! I don't hate the game myself it's just the people that defend the game are somewhat infamous.