Legend of Dragoon is a JRPG developed by Japan Studio and released on the Playstation 1 in 2000 (United States). It follows the story of a young man named Dart who is on a journey to find his family’s killer. Along the way, he meets up with a group of characters and together they end up tasked with saving the world from an ancient evil.

I bought Legend of Dragoon at launch though I didn’t actually play it until this year (2024). Why? I don’t know. This was during the height of Final Fantasy’s popularity – with Final Fantasy IX coming out the same year. It would not surprise me that I set Legend of Dragoon aside in favor of Final Fantasy IX. IX is hands down my favorite of the 3D Final Fantasy games so it makes sense that I gave it all my attention.

After that, I just never got around to Legend of Dragoon. However this year I decided to stream a butt-load of JRPGs on my twitch channel. We started with Skies of Arcadia, then Secret of Mana, and we just recently finished Legend of Dragoon.

So. How did Legend of Dragoon fair? Was it a fine glass of wine that gets better with age or did it turn into so much vinegar in our mouths?

STORY

The story of Legend of Dragoon follows a young man named Dart and his childhood friend Shana. By the time we meet Dart, he is on his way back home after a years-long journey hunting a mysterious creature called The Black Monster (Creative name no?). The Black Monster is responsible for the destruction of not only his village, but his parents as well. Having sworn revenge, Dart ventured out in hopes of finding The Black Monster.

During his return trip home, Dart discovers that the local empire has destroyed his village (He can’t get a break can he?) and kidnapped his close friend Shana. He learns all of this from mysterious armored woman named Rose. She assists him in pushing back the remaining imperial forces. It is during this battle that she reveals that she is a Dragoon – a mystical knight imbued with the powers of the legendary dragon. To Dart’s surprise, she informs him that he is a Dragoon as well!

Together Dart and Rose team up to rescue Shana from the Imperial prison. Along the way they discover a plot to overthrow the world. A plot led by Emperor Doel and his right hand Lloyd (Yes, that is his actual name).

As is tradition, we learn that there is more to this story than meets the eye. While journeying to learn the truth, we come across a wide variety of interesting characters including the 16-year old dancer Meru, the barbarian Kongol, the knight Lavitz and his king Albert, the solider sister Miranda, and the martial artist Haschel. These heroes make up the rest of the legendary Dragoon Knights. Together they must find a way to stop Lloyd before he can bring about the end of the world.

Gameplay

Legend of Dragoon uses turn-based combat with a twist. That twist being an early form of Quick Time Events – that is, pushing a specific button when prompted. These are called “Additions.”

The way this works is as follows: Whenever you attack an enemy, a blue square appears in the center of the screen. A secondary square then flies across the screen to align with the static one. You are supposed to press the X button when the two squares align. This builds your combo. Think of this like a primitive version of Guitar Hero or a Rhythm game.

Each Addition has it’s own combo length and timing. One may have three inputs whereas another has five. Some have a slower input window whereas others are a lot faster. It’s an interesting premise that felt fun at first but wore thing as the game went on. But we’ll get into that later.

Every time you perform a successful Addition, you gain Spirit Points (SP). Spirit points not only level up your Additions but they also level up your Dragoon Abilities. The more SP you accumulate, the more attacks you can do while in Dragoon form.

Dragoon Form can be activated whenever you accumulate 100 SP. Upon activation, your character will undergo a Sailor Moon style transformation in which your character dons on their Dragoon Armor. Their offense and defense increases while also gaining the ability to use Magic.

Every action while in the Dragoon State uses up 1 level of Dragoon Spirit – with a maximum of 5. So if your Dragoon level is 2, for example, you can use 2 actions before your Dragoon State runs out.

But the Dragoon State is not the only time you can use magic. You can use it in your normal state as well but, like with the Additions, there is a twist. Instead of being an ability, Magic is treated like an Item. Magic spells are purchased from shops much like you would weapons and items. To use Magic, you select it from your items list and watch as your character “throws” it at the enemy. Depending on the spell, it either activates immediately or you have to mash the X button to increase damage. Either way, magic is a limited commodity. However, even this has a downside. Again, we’ll talk about it below.

Weapons, Armor, and Accessories are treated with a more traditional flair. You equip the best ones you find to increase your chances of survival. Simple.

Review

It took us approximately 53 hours to complete Legend of Dragoon. As far as I can tell, we completely a majority of the game. We found all the stardust (a collectable required to gain access to a hidden area). I was able to defeat the optional bosses. We max leveled some (not all) of our Additions and Dragoon levels, and we were able to finish the story.

So how did it turn out?

Honestly? It was rather average. Nothing too horrible but nothing too memorable either.

First off, lets talk the cast. Although we have several interesting characters, a majority of the game revolves around Dart, Rose, and later, Meru. This isn’t a problem early on but by the end of Disc 2 and start of Disc 3, the game’s focus shifts more towards these three. We don’t really get that much development out of the others until the final disc but by then, I found myself no longer interested. They were just side stories that felt more like padding than actual character development.

It didn’t help that the story felt quite generic. I will admit that this is likely my fault. Back in 2000, before I experienced other JRPGS and anime, this story may have felt fun and fresh. By playing it today, after 2 decades of anime and RPG experience under my belt, it felt predictable and tropey. We were able to guess practically every twist and turn that Legend of Dragoon threw at us. As such, I won’t blame the game for it’s story but more myself for my experience with the game’s tropes and story beats.

But what I will find fault with is the game’s combat and item system. While I appreciate Legend of Dragoon doing something different – keeping players actively engaged with its combat system – I did find myself growing tired of constantly mashing the X button for every attack. This goes double whenever I find myself backtracking. The game forces you to travel through previous dungeons which increases the chances of you running into more enemies. This meant, for the sake of progressing through the game in a timely manner, I had to either run away, or use some repeatable spells to end the battle as quickly as possible.

Now don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with the combat. Leveling up additions is easy (and not to grindy) and seeing the different attacks play out is fun. I like seeing how each character fights. It is vastly different than other JRPGs at the time which kept characters swinging their weapons in the same manner no matter what their level. So I give them points for that. It’s just frustrating to complete a string of ever growing combos when you’re trying to get from point A to B as quickly as possible.

What did bother me, however, was the unusual inclusion of an Inventory Limit. Weapons and armor are capped off around (I think) 99 items. Fair enough. Even by the end of the game, I don’t think I got close to that limit. Items on the other hand had a hard cap of 32. So there were several moments throughout the game where I couldn’t open treasure chests because I had met my item limit. This also meant that I was constantly juggling Healing, Resurrection, Magical, and Ailment Items. Eventually, I just gave up on carrying Ailment Items and limited my Magical items to the tiniest handful. Most of my inventory was reserved for healing/resurrection potions and reusable magical items.

Yet again, I must give credit where credit is due. The aforementioned Reusable Magical Items was a fantastic addition to the game. With the limited inventory space, the inclusion of specific items that could be used over and over again (with a limit of 1x per battle) really helped balance the game. These items would either boost our characters’ speed, defense, and power, or act as a magical spell to damage enemies. So points for that!

My final frustration comes from the experience points and gold gained after every battle. Admittedly this comes from someone who loves grinding and making myself as over-leveled as possible but it did irritate me that the game provided you with the tiniest amount of Experience Points and Gold after every battle. Now I know why they did this. They wanted the game’s bosses to provide the majority of the gold and experience. That’s fine. But when you are low on funds and having to grind a bit to earn enough for a new weapon or piece of armor, that tiny amount of gold earned ends up being rather annoying.

This rings especially true if you want some of the game’s most powerful armor and accessories. At 10k a pop, these items are practically unobtainable unless you grind what the game calls Unique Monsters. These monsters have very low health but very high defense and agility. This means you’ll miss a majority of the time. But this is balanced by the aforementioned low health. You just need to score between 3 to 5 hits to take down one of these Unique Monsters. The reward for defeating them? Either a ton of gold (lowest being 300, highest being 1000) or experience. So, while frustrating that I cannot grind the normal way, there is a system in place to help players like me gain that armor.

This is the developers saying “Hey, if you WANT to get this hardcore armor, you can. You just have to work for it.” A bit irritating, sure, but doable. Once again – a frustration is balanced.

And that’s pretty much how I’d describe the entire Dragoon experience – Frustrating but Balanced. For everything that irritated me about the game, there was something that I found quite enjoyable about it. It was never too hard nor was it too difficult. Game Overs did occur throughout my playthrough which came as a welcome surprise. I don’t usually experience classic old-school Game Overs as much as I used too as a kid so whenever I fail in such a manner, it comes as a shock. I go “Oh, that just happened. Let’s change up our strategy and try from a different angle!” It was fun.

All that said – I will be remiss if I didn’t talk about the two things that had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The first being a part of the game’s design, the second being a glitch that drove me insnae.

On the design front there is something that Legend of Dragoon does that I’ve not seen in any JRPG. That is the game’s requirement of changing discs when backtracking.

Back in the day, games, especially Jrpgs, came on multiple discs. When you completed a specific area in Disc 1, it would save your progress and ask you to insert the 2nd disc to continue the game’s story. If, at any time, you decide to return to a town or location from Disc 1, you may do so without interruption. Sometimes there is a story element that prevents you from going back but usually by the final disc, you can go anywhere in the world without problem.

Legend of Dragoon doesn’t do this. Some towns are locked behind specific discs. There was one moment where I went back to one town while on Disc 4 and had to swap out to Disc 2. When I finished up in the town, I started a side quest that required me to switch to Disc 3. Now while this is a minor inconvenience, it is still an inconvenience that shouldn’t exist. As far my experience goes, this is the only JRPG that I’ve played with this problem. It’s odd and quite frustrating.

Lastly comes the “Fade to Black” glitch that I encountered three times during my playthrough. So from what I understand, the Fade to Black glitch occurs when gamers are playing Legend of Dragoon on anything other than the original hardware. This means if you are playing on a Playstation 2 or 3, or in my case, emulating the ripped discs on a computer, there is a chance the game will freeze after a boss battle.

The way the glitch works is as follows: During specific boss battles, if you transform into your Dragoon state while playing on anything other than the original Playstation 1, there is a chance that, after the battle, the game will fade to black and free. We didn’t encounter this glitch until the end of Disc 2 when we fought the Kraken boss. After discovering the glitch, a quick Google search resulted in evidence that this is a well-documented problem. That was rather disappointing to find out because now I had to do some extra research to find out which bosses I could and couldn’t use my Dragoon State on.

But you know what the kicker was? It was during the final boss of the game. After spending an absurd amount of time defeating him, I was treated to Legend of Dragoon’s final cinematic. Once the cinematic ended, however, I was not given the end-game credits but instead…

ANOTHER BLACK SCREEN CRASH!

Luckily, I had already seen the game’s final cut scene (unless there is one after the credits – I have not looked yet) so I just turned off the game and left it at that.

Conclusion

Legend of Dragoon isn’t a bad game nor is it a phenomenal game. I would describe this game as “one that exists.”

Of course I’m joking.

It’s fine for what it is. It has an interesting premise, an experimental combat system, some seriously catchy music, and – despite being a bit forgettable – a decent cast of characters. While it is true I was frustrated with a lot of the game’s backtracking and high levels of enemy encounters; none of these were enough to sour my experience altogether.

There are no regrets when it comes to Legend of Dragoon. For what it was, I enjoyed it. I am happy that I was finally able to remove it from my backlog and I am glad I was able to share my experience with those on my live stream.

Overall, I would give it a solid 7/10. A good, but flawed game, that was daring enough to try new things even if those new things weren’t always successful.