Legend of Dragoon

A Review

by Mighty Doom

            On the back of the PSOne box (I picked one up for $100 a FUCKING WEEK before it dropped to $50) you’ll see a number of screenshots from the few games Sony bothers producing for that antiquated system anymore.  Most are either Disney/WB film tie-ins or sports games.  The only one that shows any promise, in fact, is a little gem called Legend of Dragoon.  I picked this one up on a whim, and lo and behold, Doom had signed himself up for a crash course in PAIN.

            Dragoon takes place in Serdio (outer province of Archetypal Fantasy Continent, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seen It Before RPG Design, Inc.), a land torn by war.  Dart is a young warrior in search of his past.  He is joined by a mysterious woman and his childhood sweetheart Shana, whom he still regards as his little sister – promises of a little Luke Skywalker action in the near future? Dart returns to his village after a five-year absence and finds that Shana has been kidnapped by the Sandoran Army, acting under orders from the corrupt Emperor Doel.  He rescues Shana from the local tower of death with remarkable ease, and picks up another ally along the way – Lavitz, a spearman who is apparently made of cardboard, for all his personality and depth of character.

            After that they run around for a while, doing boring RPG shit (slaying dragons, rescuing a town from a big guy named Kongol, etc.) and eventually end up rescuing King Albert, Lavitz’ liege, and killing off the emperor, after which the quest relocates to another continent.  Here, our intrepid party hunts down Lloyd, a Sephiroth clone tossed in to fill the “bland, silver-haired villain we’ll be seeing a lot of in yaoi fanfiction” niche.  At this point I realized the game was in fact from NEW YORK CITY!!! Which is to say it did not look as if it was going to pick up the pace in the near future.  I then stopped playing it altogether in favor of Front Mission 3 and Vagrant Story.

            Legend of Dragoon is so full of stereotypes, misspellings and overall screwups it’s almost amusing, considering it spent something like four years in development with an insanely large design team (obviously just off the short bus).  I feel a need to mention the jokes.  They’re so awful I actually only remember one of them.  When Dart runs into his village and begins to take out trained infantry left and right – because the Law of RPG Physics states that anyone can take out an experienced soldier with a toothpick and a dirty sock – he asks where they’ve taken Shana.  One soldier informs him she’s been shipped off to Hellena Prison.  “Don’t worry,” the soldier informs Dart, “you’ll be following her soon.  But not to Hellena.  To ‘Hell!’” Oh, my sides! The wit! His words have left me feeling belittled and intimidated! Oh God, enough already.

            Also worthy of notice is the voice acting.  The only character who shows any talent in this area is the Great Commander in the opening FMV – and he turns out to be a bit player.  The special moves each character can execute are especially amusing, especially Dart’s “Burning Rush! AAAAAGGHH!!” and Lavitz/Albert’s “Gust of Wind Dance!” The winner, however, is Haschel, an old martial artist who joins the party and is subsequently forgotten altogether.  He has a move called “Fury of Styx.” However, in battle, he says “Flurry of Styx!” and ONSCREEN it says “Ferry of Styx.” How the hell do you mess up a translation in three different ways? It must be a martial arts technique of some sort.

            There are a lot of twists and turns in Dragoon, none of which make any sense in terms of gameplay.  For instance, Lavitz is killed by Lloyd (He is SOOOOOO KAWAAIIIIIIII!!!! ;->) and King Albert subsequently joins your party.  He is essentially the same as Lavitz – same stats and moves – he is simply more flamboyantly homosexual.  What the hell is the point? Who the hell knows, but thank God we have 313 Legend of Dragoon fanfics on www.fanfiction.net to help Albert deal with his loss, such as the aptly titled “My Beautiful Blond Haired Knight.” The author has the following to say: “Booyaka! This is my first yaoi fanfic.  I’m sooo happy.  Well… This takes place a little after Lavitz’s death and Albert misses him very much so, he has a dream about him.” Thank God for fanfiction! We now know what web page Sigmund Freud was looking at when he stated that women are insane.

            While Legend of Dragoon is an undeniably crappy and unoriginal game, it does look very nice.  The character models leave something to be desired, but the backgrounds are beautiful – enough, along with a few minor perks, to make the rest of the game vaguely playable for a time.  In the end, however, it’s just not worth it.  It seems the boys at Sony got around a table and said, “By God, Squaresoft has started making RPG’s that look nice and play like shit, so we’re going to make one of our own! We’ve got so many company fanboys it’ll make it into Greatest Hits in no time!” Legend of Dragoon is like Chinese candy.  It’s got a nice, pretty wrapper, but inside it’s still a piece of salted shit.  Fear not, Sony fans! Legend of Dragoon will live on forever, in stories written by people with names like “JadedGurl” and “Dragon of the Myst.”

THE GOOD: It’s like Final Fantasy X, but on PSOne! Super!

THE BAD: The translation, the characters, the story, the voice acting, the battle system, etc.

THE UGLY: Nothing ugly about it.  It may be a turd, but it’s polished to a shine.

DOOM’S FINAL JUDGMENT: C-