The Legend of Dragoon Review | its basically a playable 90s anime

hey that's me christmas morning don't i look happy wrong look again i'm angry angry because i'm playing a nintendo 64. now i'm only kidding of course i've got a lot of great memories playing my n64 but as i got older it became clear that the n64 was a console for people with friends which meant i wasn't the target audience as i grew up i began to crave experiences that i couldn't find on an n64 i wanted massive adventures with real stakes cool characters with spiky hair and giant swords i wanted stats attributes numbers and i wanted drama characters with relationships to each other plot twists villains with incomprehensible power levels in short i wanted a jrpg i wanted a jrpg so badly that i bought quest 64 and that was the first on a long line of grave mistakes that i would be making up to and including this very day it wasn't until i was almost in my teens that i bought a playstation we were a nintendo family which meant the onus was on me to scrape together the loonies and toonies required to pick up a used ps1 but i did and it came with a game that scratched the itch i'd had for years no not that itch i'm talking about the jrpg itch it was a beautiful box greatest hits copy of final fantasy vii i could scarcely contain my excitement as i read the back of that box quite possibly the greatest game ever made i popped it in and for better or for worse my life was changed forever now i don't know what the opposite of flying colors are but i passed my classes in school with those except for creative writing which to everyone's surprise was a subject i excelled in it wasn't because i was smarter read more books than anyone else it was because my favorite pastime was immersing myself in fantastical worlds where i was forced to learn words like enmity and arse at this point you may be asking yourself why is this pertinent to the review well i tell you this because i want to contextualize my relationship with legend of dragoon before getting into it i crossed paths with the game many times i saw huge magazine ads friends and family owned it but for one reason or another i just never got my hands on it i must have played through the intro about a dozen times but i never had a chance to make it beyond the promise of darts adventures never left my subconscious though and i knew that one day i'd have to play the game from beginning to end it's been 22 years since this game dropped in north america and i'm struck by the passion that fans have for this game it's the definition of a cult hit it never had the instant acclaim of final fantasy the controversy of chronocross or the sleeper success of something like vagrant's story but it left behind a powerful legacy among a small but fiercely dedicated group of fans who consider it a crime against humanity that it hasn't been more widely recognized it was sony's first and last attempt to enter the jrpg market and maintains a unique identity among its competitors from that time now it's time to boot this game up and finish what i started those many years ago this is my review of legend of dragoon if you enjoy the video please consider liking and subscribing it doesn't cost a dime and puts a big smile on my stupid face the story begins with a 3d fmv cutscene as was the style at the time showing the town of celez being invaded and burned down all to find this young woman the general in charge of the invasion comments on the peculiar nature of this assignment and is told by a mysterious hooded man that the orders are none of his concern that is not your concern despite the low resolution this cutscene actually looks great pre-rendered cutscenes can be hit or miss but i find the animation and quality of the models holds up the audio also has a great attention to detail everything is crystal clear and the voice acting well it could be a lot worse great commander this way it will be a lot worse the girl is taken away and we're given the perspective of another yet to be named woman who moves through the forest hunting down a dragon she refers to as fair brand it's here that our perspective switch and we're at last shown the main character of the game dart feld dark fell dart is a name that does not paint a picture of a badass warrior but then i guess neither does cloud squall or guts once you hear a name like that often enough i think you just stop asking questions about it but every once in a while it's like huh dart yeah that's a weird name dart is accosted by some mounted soldiers who question his alignment this introduces us to the central overarching conflict in legend of dragoon which is a long and bloody civil war fought between the kingdoms of basil and sandora which both exist in the country of serdio game of thrones this is not thank god but a little political intrigue spices things up dark belongs to the kingdom of basil but before the sandoran soldiers get an answer fairbrand crashes through the woods forcing everyone to flee dart is saved by the woman from earlier who tells him his hometown of celez has been invaded shocked dart runs back to town but it's far too late celes is destroyed with very few survivors and it's here we're given a quick introduction to combat which i'll talk about in more detail later suffice to say for now it's basically what you'd expect with some notable additions that's not funny now this is a pretty abrasive introduction most rpgs have these sections where you just chill in your village and collect 10 squint feathers for the local maiden but dragoon introduces things at a breakneck pace you've got civil war dragons friends and family destroyed and on top of it all the girl who was taken is darth's childhood friend shauna it's a brutal and depressing scene everything from the hopeless music to the color palette in the village full of browns grays and muted yellows just assaults the senses with this scene of total desolation everybody's dying the sandoran soldiers are all taking pleasure in the killing it's a nasty scene and really sells how gruesome civil war actually is so sean has been taken to helena prison the name of which seems to carry a lot of weight but starts a stalwart man of action with a twinkle in his eye and his heart on his sleeve so with no hesitation we begin our trek to helena the forest here is all bright and cheerful it's a bit of a tonal shift but a welcome one we deserve a break after all that scary stuff at the village it's not like there's a wacky snowboarding mini game to kill the somber mood or anything the gameplay is more or less what you'd expect you navigate through screens of pre-rendered backgrounds get into random battles and head into the menu to [Music] the menu has its own music and it's the funkiest [ __ ] you've ever heard going into the menu and legend of dragoon isn't a simple task it's an event i gather my friends and family to watch me open the menu and we all just start boogieing it's just the greatest there are a couple other things worth mentioning at this point first of all you know those navigational arrows that ps1 rpgs use to show you where your character is in relation to the environment yeah this one turns red when a random battle is about to happen it takes away some of the unpleasantness inherent to random battles and lets you prepare a bit if needs must i also have to mention off the bat how great some of these pre-rendered backgrounds are they're on par with some of the best at the time but what really sets them apart are all the little effects that are going on you've got wind blowing leaves through the air birds fire water and in particular these light beams add such a beautiful quality to some of these backgrounds and make them look really appealing compared to other games after making it through the forest we managed to sneak into helena prison the atmosphere here is great you can find prisoners trying to escape who are just terrified of the warden named frugal through ego bagel wiggle frugal sounds best i guess so that's what i'm going with i apologize in advance if my pronunciations are off here in my chrono cross video i mispronounced masamune and was nearly extradited to japan and executed by the yakuza the prisoners are terrified of frugal and his bdsm army and i don't blame them you can explore from cell to cell here and i like the multi-level maze-like structure of this dungeon it's fun to find things in all the various rooms and some points of interest are just out of reach which makes you wonder how you can get there eventually we cross paths with our first recruited character lavitz slambert which is just the chattest name i've ever heard lavitz is a night in the service of basil's king albert and generally speaking he exudes bro energy throughout the game now i mean bro energy in a good way by the way as in if your car breaks down at 2 am he'll come pick you up and he brought mcdoubles not tap out shirt bro energy lavitz is in helena to break his fellow soldiers out so you join forces and free shana who joins the party as well shauna has an obvious crush on dart and hmm okay i'll allow it unfortunately for shanna dart is the dumbest and most oblivious [ __ ] this side of celez so he's too busy fist-bumping lovitz to reciprocate her feelings a man after my own heart while leaving helena the party is confronted by frugal which marks our first boss fight and probably a good time to talk about the battle system in a little more detail to begin with it's purely turn based this game clearly took a lot of inspiration from final fantasy vii but there's no active time battle system rather turn order is determined by a character's agility making it the chiefly important stat there's no magic well that's not strictly true but for the sake of simplicity we'll say there's none for now your main option is just to attack but remember when i said earlier there's a little bit of a twist well here's what i meant every time you attack you're given a prompt to time an x button press which if pulled off increases your damage output considerably these timed button presses are called additions and i can't understate what a profound effect they have on the game's battle system well the first additions you have are simple one button presses leveling up your character will unlock new more complex editions some of them are pretty damn difficult to pull off and you have the option of using them every single time you attack succeeding with harder additions will result in greater damage output and accumulation of a resource called sp which i'll talk about later the biggest implication of the addition system is it alleviates the mind-numbing boredom and frustration that can often come part and parcel with a random turn-based battle system there's a weight and significance to every single attack because on top of engaging the player with a skill based minigame you can also level up additions by using them repeatedly so whether it's level experience addition experience or just increased damage there's always some kind of micro reward to be had for successfully pulling off an addition battles are never a waste of time on top of this additions are just fun to use i can't believe i'm saying this but there wasn't a single instance over the entire 50-plus hours i spent with this game where i felt bothered by battles i always found them engaging i never felt the urge to flee the fight and it's all due to this one simple addition i already told that joke but you may not have heard it the first time a little double entendre for you i enjoyed some of the more complex editions so much that i would often use basic attacks even when they were a less effective option just because i find them so much more fun than the alternatives every character with the exception of shana that old battle axe has their own unique set of additions capping off with a master edition if you max out all the previous moves they all perfectly suit the personality of the character using them the lance wielding lavitz requires complex and oddly timed button sequences dart's broadsword uses fast rhythmic patterns that require precision heavier characters use slow momentum-building wind-ups that can catch you off guard if you stop paying attention the annoying character has annoying additions that are stupid and never shut up this all goes a long way in making each character feel unique and distinctive and gives you a reason to switch out party members often i absolutely love this system i love how you can feel yourself improving after using some of the tougher ones and i think that even if you're lousy at additions in the beginning you'll likely improve over the course of the game if you hate them you can always stick with some of the simpler ones and get by without too much trouble but you'll miss out on lavitz saying gust of wind dance over and over again legend of dragoon is a game that borrows heavily from many rpgs that come before it and yet the one thing i wish other jrpgs borrowed from it additions remain a system pretty unique to dragoon there are games like paper mario or lost odyssey that use somewhat similar systems but i think it's done in a unique and consistently engaging way here there are occasional enemies that have the ability to counter in addition at which point your x button press changes to a circle press it keeps you on your toes you never know when the enemy you're fighting will pull this trick on you and it's pretty damn difficult to swap buttons while using a high level addition especially once the timing becomes ingrained in your brain i like this a lot but it does make me wish even basic additions involved more of the face buttons i understand they can't be too complex given that this is a turn-based rpg and needs to be approachable enough for the average joe but it would be cool to see some optional complexity maybe performing a tougher one could apply a temporary buff like boosting defense or restoring mp i also wish you were occasionally given the option of countering an enemy's moves as well that way you'd not only be alert while attacking but also while defending against enemy attacks with a few tweaks this battle system could be a really awesome tug of war but now i'm making suggestions for a 20 year old game oh well it's fun to imagine potential and i think the addition system is awesome regardless if sony ever decides to make a remake or a sequel and i guarantee they won't they can take my advice it's good as gold the other option in battle is using consumable magic attacks like the additions they benefit from player's skill at least to a degree throwing an attack item will cause elemental damage to enemies which mostly depends on the magic stat but also how many times you can hit the x button within a few seconds my personal best was a damage boost of 216 percent and it almost gave me carpal tunnel syndrome if anyone's beaten that well congratulations you've got the fastest thumbs in the west so strudel and his goons make a pretty good first fight introducing you to the minutia of the battle system and i like the proceeding escape scene dart reveals his motivation for having left celeste years ago which was to pursue something referred to as the black monster all we really know about it is that dart's hometown of neat wait the town is called neat damn this game is relatable neat was burned to the ground and his parents were killed by the black monster his only keepsake is a gemstone left to him by his father who i refer to colloquially as dart senior the party decides to travel to bale capital of basil so lavitz can report to king albert and i mean hey it's not like dart and shauna have a home to go back to anyway am i right with the roads blocked by helena's stupid sexy soldiers we've gotta go through the limestone cave it's a basic dungeon which ends in a boss battle against a giant snake called the eurovulus it's like he was supposed to be an oroboris but [ __ ] up when he realized he couldn't eat his own tail poor guy the boss explodes after shana's face starts glowing you may remember the opening cut scene where a gemstone reacted with shana's head as well leading us to believe there's something special going on with her this suspicion is furthered when the mysterious hooded man orders fruit bowl to bring her back to the prison alive this is good i like it when the childhood friend is the chosen one i'm the chosen one often enough i need a break so we leave the cave which is a good opportunity to talk about the field in legend of dragoon the overworld map restricts your movement along a dotted line i consider this a not insignificant weakness of the game since i personally love over world maps and jrpgs there's no feeling like finally reaching that point where you can go exploring finding unique enemies and hidden caves with treasure accidentally starting boss fights way above your pay grade it's good stuff but here you're effectively railroaded occasionally there's a junction but only when the game says so it seriously cuts down on the feeling of adventure and exploring for me and i almost wish there was no overworld at all they could have just connected the different zones together and called it one cohesive world but i think this whole sequentially moving through towns and dungeons in a linear order makes me think i'm going through different levels rather than embarking on my own journey at any rate we reach bail and it really does have the vibe of a capital city in fact let me balance out my previous negative section with something very positive the major settlements in this game really depict the hustle and bustle of major trade towns or port cities in a way that rpgs of all stripes often fail to do it's not like there are a lot of places to go explore but all the clutter and detail and sounds of the crowd go a long way in creating this illusion that there's a lot going on even when there visibly isn't i don't know how people feel about rpg towns but for me i've always considered them abstractions of the real thing like if you were actually in pallet town there'd probably be more than three houses but you're just seeing a representation of the area distilled down to what's important when a game puts in all the extra work to sell that illusion i really appreciate what it does for the atmosphere of a game and bale has very comfy atmosphere you can go explore the trade section of town there are canals underneath the city totally optional to explore just enhance the vibe and you can also visit lavitz's mom's house you gotta admire lavitz loyal reliable resilient lives in his mom's house he's literally me we head to the castle where lavitz and albert start chatting like their old friends and you can see dart's bro jealousy written all over his face we need albert out of the picture there's a cool 3d cutscene where the advisor noish explains some history some 11 000 years ago humans were enslaved by a flying race called the wingleys things reached a boiling point in humans inspired by a leader named diaz revolted with seven dragons on their side the wingleys lost this war and that's where the age of humans begins okay i can follow this so far but i'm counting down the seconds until we get another chronopolis moment and a bunch of computers and some other person in a rocking chair start telling me about some dimensional black hole killing the god of time and suspending the world in a dinosaur simulation or some [ __ ] like that dart asks noish what he knows about the black monster but it seems like there isn't much information all we know about the monster is that it disobeyed the great existence whatever that means and it's known for devouring god devouring god dart you do like five damage right now bud there's still time to turn around aside from that it's important to note that records of the black monster only begin about 11 000 years ago when the age of humans began i enjoy the story set up here there's an immediate urgency in the form of the civil war and the dragons but it's counterbalanced well with the existential threat of the black monster i find the best jrpgs hook you with that relatable struggle like eco-terrorism before hitting you with that time god simulation nonsense now there's something i've got to talk about and i've got to be very careful here because legend of dragoon fans are passionate i hope they understand that love isn't just unbridled praise sometimes love does or says seemingly unpleasant things for the sake of a subject's well-being so with peace and love i tell you this translation is [ __ ] terrible i'm not saying the story itself is bad or that the characters are bad i'm saying the translation acts as a through line in this game actively trying to sabotage the characters trample all over the dialogue and make the themes incomprehensible there are many times where i had to be very charitable in my interpretation of events or otherwise give the writing the benefit of the doubt in order to give weight to scenes which the translation would otherwise have robbed them of now it's not total garbage sentences are readable and you always have a good idea of what's going on but it's totally devoid of charm there are no conjunctions like it's or there is it's always it is or there is which gives all the characters this robotic matter-of-fact way of speaking there are conversations that should be deep and personal but instead i feel like i'm on a text-based customer support line for a vape company at 2am i'll compare it to final fantasy 7 because it also has a weaker translation but the characters in that game know how to use casual english they have accents there are slang terms or swear words that ground them in some kind of reality and yeah there's this guy are sick moments but it's much easier to discern motivations and personality traits in ff7 than it is in dragoon i just wanted to mention it now get it out of the way because if i brought it up every time i saw it happening this review would be twelve and a half hours long and the only game i plan to talk about for that length of time is sneak king before we leave for bail there's a fun scene where the party goes to lavitz's house shanna and lavitz's mom make sandwiches for the team while dart and lavitz go upstairs to play hot wheels i do find it endearing how lavitz shows you his house like a little kid hey wait a minute a long relationship no lavitz leave the party while you still can bro all this foreshadowing can't be good news for you uh despite my protest the party all go together to the fortress town of hoax in preparation for a sandoran assault shauna is designated as sandwich maker again what with being a woman and all and the men talk about man subjects such as military tactics riverboat gambling cruises and the latest model of dewalt pressure washer so being a fortress town on the front line of the war there's a somber mood in hoax and i enjoy all of the little optional interactions that help flush out the world there are families crammed inside this chapel praying for peace and you can actually meet the midwife who delivered king albert if only we could go back in time and prevent her from delivering the baby i could be lavish's best friend and king of basil no king of the world lavitz and dart are assigned to town watch overnight dart tells lavitz to listen for owls if they stop making noise sandorans are likely nearby now look i don't want to give anybody writing lessons but conventional wisdom says you should probably wait more than three seconds after saying that before silencing the owls and beginning the assault but here we are after repelling the first wave the sandorans send in their secret weapon kongol who is the last remaining giganto as far as i understand gigantos are a lot like humans but gigant try as we might kongol overpowers dart and lavitz but just as things look grim a beam of light streaks across the sky it's the woman who saved dart from fairbrand and now she's got wings and after creating some resonance that activates dart's keepsake he's got wings too oh yeah baby it's dragoon time which means it's time to talk about combat once again so throughout the game you'll have access to certain characters dragoon abilities a character builds sp or spirit points by successfully pulling off additions once a minimum threshold is reached that character can transform into a dragoon in a short sequence that justifies the name of this video it's cheesy it's over the top and the 16 year old inside of me thinks it's the tightest [ __ ] ever dragoons gain more powerful abilities and access to magic spells all different depending on the character a dragoon attack uses a timed button press as well but in a slightly different way a marker spins around a circle and the more times you match the marker with that tick at the top the more powerful your attack is now i made it through the game assuming that level 4 was the highest it could go but i found out that you can make it to level 5. but the only way you know that is if you suck because you have to hit it before the tick and i'm just too good at the game to have ever figured that out sorry if you did as for the magic well hopefully you can understand why i didn't mention it before there's a lot of hoops and qualifiers you have to make it through before you can even use it but it can come in handy some characters can use attack spells that decimate the battlefield others have more supporting roles you're only limited by your mp which can be regenerated with items and your sp which is regenerated by additions as mentioned also it's worth mentioning that in the spirit of 90s anime your characters yell the names of the addition or magic spells they're using [Music] dart in particular sounds like a massive dork we'll talk a little bit more about dragoon transformations later for now just know that they're an option for darth as well as rose who joins us at this point finally a strong female character to help shauna make sandwiches in reality rose is pretty badass she's the strongest character in the party and she's got that icy disposition that you know will make for an awkward devil day some nearly dead nights stumble into town warning of an attack on what's known as the seventh fort so the party heads to the marshlands to save the day the scene here does a great job of showing how pointless and violent the civil war is you fight through a bunch of soldiers to save this fort expecting to be carried out on someone's shoulders like teen wolf instead you arrive to find all your comrades dying or already dead the best part is this scene is entirely optional you could just walk in the other direction but there's a lot of effort placed into some world building with such primitive graphics it's hard to convey serious themes like the effects of war but legend of dragoon does a respectable job in spite of these limitations sandora has found a way to tame or otherwise weaponize dragons like the one we saw earlier so the party decides to head for volcano villiude where a dragon has apparently made its nest it's worth pointing out here a problem i have with this whole area many of the game's dungeons in general they're all too basic visually they do a good job of uniquely identifying themselves but mechanically most dungeon areas are a waste of potential if there are any puzzles or navigational challenges they're incredibly simple more of an inconvenience than a worthwhile challenge this isn't universally true but generally it is the case i think of games like chrono cross or final fantasy vii where there's a lot of attention and focus paid on making the dungeons feel like a worthwhile time investment i just don't get much of that from jagoon but i guess not everybody's in it for the dungeons it's less of a you burn the fries and more of it you forgot to salt them so in villiude we face off against a few different bosses but the most noteworthy is certainly the virage it's this massive half-dead colossus that blends right in with the environment story-wise they were used by wingleys as weapons against the humans during the uprising knowing this thing has just been waiting here for 11 000 years makes it all the spookier and it seems like shauna's presence somehow woke it up i really like its design and actually the design of the dragoon armor in general there's something really bizarre yet cool about it like it's an organic living entity sentient enough to form fit the user's body and even their personality you've gotta wonder what these things are what has darth stumbled into dealing with the virage is pretty straightforward in fact most bosses in the game are pretty easy to deal with not mind-numbingly easy but it's rare that i felt truly challenged by the game after making it through view you'll find a forest contaminated with poison which is a tell that fairbrand must be nearby moving through this area leads us to the nest of the dragon where we're confronted by a dragoon named graham lavitz instantly recognizes him as both his father's best friend and murderer it turns out that graham killed lavish's father in a fit of jealous rage and defected to the sandoran military lavitz is eager to avenge his father so we've gotta deal with both graham and fairbrand who appears to be under his control the dialogue following the battle does a decent job of humanizing graham in his final moments and it's far from the only time in this game that a villain will attempt to find redemption on their deathbed i like it there's not an ounce of hatred in lavitz there's anger confusion and a desire to understand graham but he's not petty or driven to vengeance graham leaves behind his dragoon spirit at which point lavitz assumes his role as the team's third dragoon which canonically makes shana the team's spare tire overcome with feelings of uselessness she falls into a coma just kidding about the first part i mean it's the dragon poison but yeah she she does fall into a coma the team rushes her to the nearby commercial town of lohan where supposedly the best doctor in serdio resides unfortunately for us the doctor isn't able to help much at least not without the dragoni plant which only grows on the other side of this poison forest i know what you're thinking maybe this is a chrono cross situation where you can choose not to save her and recruit the best character in the game as a reward but no you gotta do it which means jumping through some hoops and doing a bit of backtracking in order to access the opposite side of the forest plus we already have lavitz so the best character in the game is already covered now if it weren't for the addition system i'd probably be a bit peeved at the backtracking but battles are fun enough that it never feels like a slog dragoon has a habit of reusing previous areas which i actually don't have a problem with considering how much the world map limits you it's nice that they found a way to give locations some meaning beyond you have to move past here to continue the story the following area is called the shrine of shirley and we'll surely find some dragoni here as an aside i always associate this area with the entire game for some reason like when i think of legend of dragoon i think of this particular area can't say why maybe it's because it reminds me of the ancient temple from final fantasy but it always sticks in my brain there's a navigational puzzle that's slightly more complicated than the standard maze structure of most dungeons and i like that every chest is empty save for a note that taunts and makes fun of you it injects a bit of life into an otherwise generic dungeon crawl once we reach the end of the shrine shirley's ghost entrusts us with not the dragoni plant but the white dragoon spirit once brought back to lohan the spirit saves shauna and gives her dragoon abilities you may notice a pattern at this point so i'll just tell you now everybody gets to be a dragoon sooner or later there's a fun scene in lohan where we go to the town fair dark kicks some ass in the arena before losing to yet another manifestation of 90s anime a silver-haired swordsman named lloyd look for all the lloyds out there please don't take this the wrong way but when i think lloyd i think accountant but between this game and tales of symphonia my lloyd's spectations are being subverted at this point we come across our next party member oh come on how am i supposed to pronounce this okay look it's either hashel or haskell and regardless of which one i pick five thousand self-proclaimed linguists will trace back the etymology of the name and tell me i'm wrong so i'm going with hashel anyway hashtal ends up being one of my favorite characters there's a lot more charm in his dialogue and personality than the average party member he's just a smart ass old man which i find balances out most teams nicely he's also a martial artist which raises his coolness factor a bit hashel and dart at one point hunted the black monster together while also searching for hashel's daughter claire little did he know he'd find his family just not the family he expected [Music] anyway king albert's been taken captive in helena prison so that's where we're headed you can explore some previously inaccessible areas now remember that treasure chest you could see but not reach now you can open it man i love stuff like that in games after reaching the top of the prison and dealing with bugle for a second time we watch perhaps the most memorable scene in this game [Music] [Applause] that's right lavitz is killed by the hooded man revealed to be lloyd in what's actually a really well done scene i'm gonna compare it to final fantasy 7 here so if you somehow haven't played that game and are really worried about spoilers i guess skip ahead a few minutes so you know how aeris dies that scene was sad but sad in a different way we've kindled a bromance with lavitz he was our first recruited character and he's back dart up at every available opportunity it feels less unexpected than eris because well she's an innocent person dragged into events much larger than her lavitz is a knight who's sworn an oath to his king death is a constant risk for him and this fate is almost an inevitability in both cases it's even sadder to imagine that mom is now all alone in the world while aerys scene is done using full motion video lavit's death occurs using the in-game graphics and they actually do a great job of making everyone look expressive you can see the difference three years make between these games the difference is that while sephiroth had been built up and experienced as a truly menacing villain with direct ties to cloud's past we literally met lloyd 13 minutes ago so it doesn't really evoke that same thirst for vengeance gameplay wise i'd say dragoon compares favorably to final fantasy once aerys dies that's it for her all of the experience levels and limit breaks you've spent time leveling up just vanish after lavitz dies however his dragoon spirit and additions are transferred to albert essentially he becomes a carbon copy of lavitz at least statistically and joins the party to exact revenge yeah there's another thing i like in video games when the royalty grabs a weapon and gets in on the action themselves this i like we head for the sandoran capital of kazus the visual design of this area is striking a really cool looking area unlike basil's capital of bale kaznas is a technological marvel there are electric lights and elevators and researchers toil beneath the castle reluctantly finding ways to expand sandora's military might there's a shanty town beneath the city where a resistance is formed they don't necessarily back either side of the war but just want the whole thing to end as soon as possible as you traverse the castle you meet the general we saw in that first cgi cutscene he explains that we have a bit of a worm tongue situation on our hands he insists that emperor dole of santora is actually a good man who was changed when lloyd appeared the general laments the part he's played in the suffering of basil's people and begs dart to make dole see the error of his ways it's also interesting to note this massive statue dole had built in honor of his late wife the whole situation reminds me of something joseph stalin said at his first wife's funeral this creature softened my heart of stone she died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity lloyd may have been the catalyst for dole's cruelty but the evil inside of him had been welling up long before that it's interesting to contrast that with albert see dole is actually albert's uncle dole killed albert's father king carlo due to what dole perceived as weakness yet instead of succeeding him albert is given the throne at which point the kingdoms are split up and this 20-year war begins despite albert undergoing just as much suffering as dole he never lets him twist him into a demon there's a spirit of optimism that runs through this game that i really appreciate it's like a palette cleanser after playing some other recent jrpgs the whole situation in kazus makes for some great insight into the sandoran military who up till now just seemed like cartoonishly evil villains there's a bit more moral complexity than i figured so we have to give the game credit for that congol has hunted us down and we battle him a second time this time it ends with his utter confusion that we show him mercy we confront and defeat dole and wait he's a dragoon too what the hell man this game is called legend of dragoon but there's nothing legendary about it being a dragoon is like as mundane as being a sagittarius anyway as the setup would suggest dole attempts to redeem himself with his dying breath telling us to pursue lloyd and where to find him west in the kingdom of tiburoa this is where chapter 2 begins with a bit of a time gap in us arriving in the city of fletch the kingdom of tiburoa's capital it would have been nice to have a bit of dialogue explaining the interim but the game sort of silently drops us off into a new area well there's a tropical motif which is always comfy but what's uncomfy is this entire section of the country is overrun with bandits but that's okay knowing us we're gonna do something about it so the music in flight says ah hey wait a minute i haven't talked about the music yet have i well it's a weird soundtrack to talk about because i find the quality varies so much at its best the soundtrack is very interesting what i mean by that is it sounds like it was composed by someone who didn't really understand the context that the tracks would be used in now don't get it twisted i don't mean that in a bad way it's like the menu theme i showed you earlier it's a cool song it's an odd song but what rpg do you know that even has a menu theme it's like a team in rural kazakhstan had two weeks to research what an rpg was and make a soundtrack for it and it makes for some pretty unique sounding tracks a lot of the better ones use odd synth patches or unconventional samples sometimes set to these lo-fi break beat tracks for instance this is the battle theme [Music] it's unlike any battle theme i've ever heard but it perfectly suits the game just for the hell of it here's a small selection of what i consider to be some of the better and more fascinating tracks in the game [Music] [Music] [Music] now i can't say only positive things about the ost because there are definitely some weak tracks in here the lesser tracks in my opinion try to copy other games without a strong musical identity or composition often times it almost sounds like one of those casio demo tracks while the player noodles around on the keys trying to find a sound sort of like a first draft here's a couple of tracks that exemplify what i mean [Music] that was terrific elvis would have been proud of you who knows elvis might even show up to sing along with us for our next segment overall going through the soundtrack after playing the game i was surprised by the volume of good tracks i think dragoon's ost has a style that kind of grows on you well you play it intertwines with the identity of the game and you come to appreciate it the more time you spend with it it's less consistent in quality compared to others like ff7 or chrono cross but it maintains a strong identity nobody has made a soundtrack quite like it it's another component that makes dragoon such a cult hit so we make it to the central square of fletch where we meet princess emil she's beautiful graceful and kind just kidding she's a [ __ ] and everybody in the city hates her but she wasn't always like that something changed while we're in flats we learned from an astronomer named fester about the moon that never sets which becomes a much bigger plot point later so there's this moon that never sets called the moon that never sets every 108 years the moon glows red and sends a moon child to earth in order to fill the world with bliss or so the legend goes but fester tells us what really happens is a black monster is spawned this is a great looking cutscene i also really like the way the moon that never sets looks and flats at night is so high on the comfy scale i almost can't measure it so we've got a lead on lloyd or as i like to call it a lead which will take us through the barons so we're off to hey wait albert aren't you a king or something don't you have kingly duties to attend to yeah i guess that we just killed dole but i mean the civil war ending is probably gonna be a busier time than ever consolidating power squashing skirmishes delivering relief to war-torn villages no just gonna go on a little vacation with us okay that's cool just leave it to your ministers never mind the fact that one of them was just exposed as pure evil and killed your best knight in front of you sure your other guys are solid so where was i oh yes time to go through the barons take a good look at this miserable unimaginative area and burn it into your brain because you'll see it about 30 times before the game is over plenty of random battles though in case you want gold or items speaking of items dragoon limits your inventory to just 32 items at a time nothing is stackable either now i don't mind the item limit i think it's a good idea to prevent your characters from drip feeding themselves potions wherever possible but 32 is nothing every time you come across a chest you've got to go through your inventory and use or discard an item to make room the worst part is that you don't even know what's in the chest until you take the items so you'll often just discard an item to make room for a less useful one before we make it through the barriers to the town of donao we see an interaction with lloyd take place which shows him to not be an entirely bad person he rescues a woman named wink from bandits who have a mafioso grip on the town of donao and managed to steal dart's dragoon spirits somehow once in dona we find that a local named lin attempted to fight back against these bandits by infiltrating their base but never came back home so with darts dragoon spirit on the line lynn missing and lloyd having blown this proverbial popsicle stand we head for the bandit base located just past an area called the valley of corrupted gravity rolls right off the tongue it's a confusing and dangerous area so on top of needing special permission from the king we're also propositioned by a girl named meru as in she offers us a proposition not tries to have sex with us jesus you guys she's like 15. the proposition is that she acts as our guide through the valley of corrupted gravity which we agree to and she becomes our next party member she acts as the overly energetic kind of vapid but sort of opens up later on type character the only weakness of the addition system at this point is that you're forced to hear meru's voice while using it so we head back through the barons to ask the king's permission for entry to the valley which prompts a segment where a party is thrown in honor of us brave warriors hunting down the bandits they stay overnight and ah only three beds okay sure i guess oh no no no the valley of corrupted gravity is a really unique area i love this giant ramshackle gate and the concept of having to flip upside down to navigate is a great idea that is sorely underutilized i don't know if they were just scared to make dungeons last longer than three minutes or what but there's so much wasted potential here at one point shauna's virage senses start tangling and she begs us to stop moving forward but the joke's on her because i'm too stupid to care so we battle another virage and this one has legs it occurs to me at this point that the design of the varag is reminiscent of the weapons superbosses from final fantasy vii once again shauna starts emitting some kind of aura which destroys the virage we get to see rose's thoughts up to this point and it's clear she's aware of some machinations that the rest of the group isn't dart ignores some obvious puppy love from shana what a king and we finally make it to the bandit hideout which is actually the former city of the gigantos there's a bit of a substory taking place here that involves hashel recognizing garrick the leader of the bandits as his former disciple expelled for his extreme and unorthodox approach to martial arts the structure begins to crumble but kongol arrives just in time to save the party from being crushed with rubble in an act of deathbed redemption you notice a pattern yet garrick tells us that princess emile is actually a fake and the real emil is being held somewhere in the castle kongol redeems himself by joining the party and fighting for good redemption everywhere you love to see it with lin saved and darth's dragoon spirit returned it's all the way back through the valley and the barons this isn't one of those games that gives you the courtesy of a would you like to warp back prompt nope it's a long and cruel journey upon our return to fletch we find the royal family in the middle of the coming of age ceremony once complete the fake emil will be given the moon dagger which we don't really know much about aside from some ceremonial significance there's a jerry-rigged stealth section that kind of reminds me of hyrule castle and ocarina of time is that it's basically the bare minimum required to be considered stealth but hey i welcome the change of pace we find the princess trapped in a magical painting damn those are some next level bandits many of the different plot points of this game seem like they're pulled from fairy tales or creation myths which is something i'm a big fan of the princess in the painting that sounds like a thing we rescue a meal and try to stop the ceremony but we're too late the moon dagger is handed to the imposter who's revealed to be a wingley named lenas this boss fight is pretty damn hard at least by dragoon standards generally speaking it's a fair challenge and one of the better fights in the game i also like the mystique introduced by a living wingly it wasn't long ago we were seeing them only through ancient pictographs and now there's one right in front of us she might look like seven rectangles stacked on top of each other now but i guarantee at least some of the people watching this video thought lenas was a smoke show when they were kids yippee lenas who's collecting the moon dagger for lloyd manages to make her escape and we pursue her using the premier flagship of tiburoa the queen fury this is a fun little section to break up the tension on the ship you play as each individual character chatting with the others when you reach a certain point the character you were just playing as walks away and the perspective stays with the new characters pretty creative way to make you feel a little closer to each character begin to understand their own feelings and struggles a little bit as a matter of fact we've got a full house now this is the entire party well sort of more on that later i think it's a pretty well-rounded team of characters they've all got really unique designs and styles of play dart is the classic jrpg protagonist he's cool he's cocky he's been over his head but his relentless positivity ends up winning the day against all odds shauna is very kind shy and anxious with good reason i do think she's a bit of a weaker character simply because neither her past nor her flaws are expanded in a meaningful way albert has a strength of character and the soul of a poet and i have a soft spot for him because he's got some of the funnest additions in the game if lavitz was dad albert is a step dad who never had his own kids he's trying his best but it's not the same rose is a tough nut to crack as you'll see her disposition softens as we go through the game but she's cold and doesn't have the same naivety driven merciful streak that much of the team does she's got wisdom beyond her apparent ears and always seems to be hiding something i also think her character design is one of the best of the team it suits her to a t hashel is my man and not just because old men are always the best party members even though that's true he's always jovial cracking jokes and trying to make dark feel uncomfortable in an entertaining way meru is like a necessary evil not literally evil but she's sort of the requisite obnoxious character that everybody begins to develop affection for character design fits her quirky upbeat personality and i like the color coding they give her and really all of the characters to help them stand out finally there's kongol i like the gentle giant archetype okay well maybe gentle isn't the right term but being shown the error of his ways he develops an undying loyalty towards dart that makes him easy to like so that's the team and my only problem as previously mentioned is the translation so often it steps all over what would have been meaningful or charming dialogue you see these little moments where a character's personality shines through but so often they move through dialogue in this sequential robotic way that it doesn't convey any kind of emotion i know i already mentioned it but it's just an ongoing weakness in this game after spending some time on the queen fury playing a sandwich making any game as shanna oh poor shana we crash into it oh no it's a ghost ship please don't make me do this i already suffered through the ghost ship in chrono cross i can't take another one well this one isn't so bad it's pretty straightforward it's a basic dungeon that opts to show enemies on screen rather than do random battles which is a switch the game makes occasionally for reasons i'm not too clear on the boss of this enemy is the biggest pain in the ass i can recall throughout the game's run time there are five enemies that all need to be killed at the same time if you kill them individually they revive a turn later on top of that they can put your entire party to sleep it feels never ending which once again reinforces my feelings on ghost ships they stink dart and rose are thrown overboard and wash up in a cave where rose starts to compare dart to her lover who died fighting the winglies 11 000 years ago oh yeah rose has this choker that prevents her from aging so all that world weary wisdom she bestowed upon us is actually because she's an 11 000 year old dragoon which is better than being an eleven thousand year old dragon which you might expect meru to be based on her design it's still wrong you sickos so rose starts loving dart and shauna loves dart and it could be a love triangle but dart is so [ __ ] oblivious it's more like a love why dart is a vole cell he only has time for hunting the black monster and coming up with secret handshakes for him and lavitz and he's all out of lavitz after reuniting the team hunts down linus in an underwater cavern where she's controlling a sea monster using the blue dragoon spirit much like how graham was controlling fairbrand after defeating her for a second and final time meru gets her dragoon spirit that's good but we couldn't find the moon dagger that's bad in spite of our failure there's good cheer back in flats since finally came through in the end the screen fades out and well you can just call him blow dart chapter three kicks off in the town of ferny in the mills sasau region it's certainly one of the most memorable locations in my opinion there are canals instead of streets so we've gotta take a boat to get anywhere and i have to say the graphical effects here look really impressive for their time not just the water but the light reflected from the water is a fantastic touch that adds so much to the scene now i'm playing the game upscaled for the sake of visual clarity but there are certainly some moments where i imagine things would look better if i were playing on a crt i guess the game starts chugging when there are too many polygons in one scene so occasionally they'll opt for sprites who represent the models and it looks hilarious this way it's like a town full of cardboard cutouts they're using to fool everyone i can't rightly say how good or bad these look at the ps1's native resolution but kudos to the devs for finding a creative solution to a hardware issue we're in fernie because we have another lalala lead on lloyd we can head straight there but there's this whole optional quest involving battling this kid's pet wolf and saving him from hunters it's a decent chunk of content for this type of game and i'm surprised that you're allowed to skip it meru and rose go off in their own direction saying they have things to do so the party continues to the snowy city of denengrad presumably founded by vladimir dennan i will now rate the comfiness level of this snowy city stone floors everywhere not comfy buildings made of cold metal very uncomfy music track kinda sucks uncomfy fireplace is roaring indoors comfy crystal palace twinkling in the background quite comfy chimney's billowing smoke nice touch rather comfy i give it a 5 out of 10 on the comfy scale we're at a wind helm we want to bump that up to a flat noir there's a lot of history in the city of denengrad there's a sacred order of sisters in charge of religious rights and running the country there's a lot of lore to uncover in denim grad if you're so inclined the bishop tells you stories of ages past and there's a vast library filled with information much of it optional this is actually one of dragoon's greatest strengths there's a fascinating and cohesive lore in this world it never feels shoehorned or absurd there's a level of internal consistency that suggests it was all planned out before the story was ever written that's a big bonus to me because a lot of these games seem to play fast and loose with their own rules in order to advance the plot usually ending up in an incomprehensible mess the stakes in dragoon do become more well interplanetary in nature by the end but i rarely think it comes across as unfair or stupid it usually obeys its own rules as for a little bit of history it seems the seven dragoons are incarnations of the seven dragons with the two races fighting alongside one another against melbour frama the wingley dictator melbou frama had in some way imprisoned the gods in order to abuse their power when the dragoons fought back on behalf of the slave races they also freed the gods which was the decisive end to the battle against the wingleys at this point the gods join together to create the moon that never sets the black monster who makes appearances in legends across time is also a creation of the gods who for some reason or another seems only to sow discord wherever it goes the black monster appears every 108 years when the moon that never sets glows red when the black monster is reborn the moon child appears shortly after with the two in opposition to one another the cycle appears to be endless with the black monster successfully killing the moon child every 108 years so far leading to a never-ending chaos on earth so that's the legend as we understand it thus far pretty cool not too difficult to follow i hope i'd be lying if i said i didn't need to take a trip or two to the wiki to clarify things for myself here and there but that's not too bad it's interesting when there's a bit of ambiguity to the story keeps it a legend i say so while dart learns about the black monster we see rose's perspective she's in dart's home village of neat where she encounters some members of that religious order rose recalls the black monster and she seems to know something about it a lot of something about it meanwhile the perspective switches to mario who's back in her home village now as it turns out she's a wingley and her village is one of the last remaining wingley communities on the planet only they're all furious that she's been out cavorting with filthy humans threatening the racial purity of the wingly ethno state wingley's in general have a very different interpretation of events than humans do with each seeing the other side as the aggressor however it's clear that wingley's have more of an elitist bend in humans which makes me think their reframing of events is just a big coping mechanism though there's no doubt that their fear of humans is somewhat warranted by this point with wingley's being killed often when they show their faces outside the village as a result the wingley forest has become so insular that they exile meru for leaving in the first place after all said and done the party reunited to find dennengrad under attack from what they called the divine dragon i've already mentioned my appreciation for the dragoon armor and the varage but the dragon designs are fantastic too in my chrono cross review i remarked on how i appreciate the unique qualities that go into each elemental dragon to the point where some of them hardly resemble the traditional dragon the principle holds true here too with pharamoran looking like a giant praying mantis the water dragon resembling a massive leviathan and the divine dragon looks a bit closer to what comes to mind for a dragon but it's downright majestic the scale is off the charts there's a lot of creativity and passion in the designs that i have to commend so it seems like the wingley's had the divine dragon captive but something with the presence of the dragoons freed it and it's really pissed off which is understandable shauna's dragoon spirit begins to reject her and she's unceremoniously replaced in our party with miranda a sister of the sacred order i basically don't have anything to say about miranda she just kind of shows up and replaces shauna we don't have any kind of history with her i guess she's got a bit of a personality it's just a really weird choice to replace a major character halfway through the third of four discs but for story reasons it'll make sense that shauna isn't in the party but i mean come on did we really need a replacement now before you comment that shauna is actually the best character and has amazing magic stats if you equip her with the sacred pantaloons of syragusa she's a plus 15 something other let me just stop you by saying i don't care they don't use additions i don't use them so shauna miranda off to the junk drawer you go to fight the divine dragon we need a magical item called the dragon block staff which presumably is a staff that blocks dragons only problem is that it's hidden deep inside wingley territory and they're still salty on account of they got their asses kicked by our seven power rangers and their pet lizards meru has no choice but to reveal the fact that she's a wingley and the rest of the team takes it very well with the exception of albert who impales her on his spear and spits no i'm just kidding he's very polite despite some understandable trepidation considering dragoons nearly ended their race the winglies in the party enter an uneasy alliance the wrench in the machine here is that the dragon block staff is located deep within the wingley's forbidden territory their abandoned capital of cadesa cadesa was the final wingley city to be taken by the humans the former seat of wingley power the way it's presented here is super eerie it's seen better days no doubt but it's oddly well preserved a monument to the height of wingley civilization and its destruction upon reaching the coliseum meru has a crisis of conscience knowing that her race was responsible for so much suffering is a lot for her to bear and it adds a depth to her character that makes her a little less obnoxious oh yeah in case you didn't pick up on it rose was one of the original seven dragoons from 11 000 years ago that defeated malbu frama that's why she was able to awaken dart's power and why she seems to know so much about esoteric world history she recognizes another virage here as the one who killed her companion it's interesting how she talks about the virage like they have varying degrees of skill and subspecies may be a higher level of consciousness than i'd given them credit for so after dealing with the varage and a boss guarding the staff another very difficult fight we secure the dragon block staff and head to the dragon's lair the mountain of the mortal dragon a little on the nose with the name not sure you want to be advertising your mortality but then i guess the dragon didn't name the mountain itself i don't know at the top of the mountain we find lloyd armed with a weapon called the dragon buster already in the middle of a fight despite this we step into the battle ourselves using the dragon block staff to seal the dragon's strength but also making dragoon transformations essentially useless this is a good time to talk about a major problem i have with the game's combat and that's how you're punished for using the dragoon transformations while in dragoon mode you can't use items flee or even transform back until you run out of sp so if two characters are dead and the remaining one is a dragoon with low health it's like tough [ __ ] you can't heal unless that dragoon has a healing spell but they're very few and far between the problem is compounded when you consider that a very significant portion of the bosses actively punish you for becoming a dragoon in this fight the dragon block staff dramatically lowers your combat effectiveness if you stay in dragoon form for longer than one turn the staff's guardian activates the staff which has the same effect many enemies in the game become significantly more deadly or fast if they detect a dragoon on the battlefield which is fine for the occasional challenge but it happens so damn often that i feel discouraged from using the dragoon transformations at all i'll use them if i'm absolutely 100 confident that no harm can come of it but more often than not the advantage the transformation provides is so minimal that it can't even come close to justifying the potential harm of not being able to heal there are times where i tested damage output just for the hell of it and i did more damage with a maxed out standard edition than a maxed out dragoon attack as for magic a ton of bosses in the game have superior magic defense which means magic either doesn't do as much damage as a standard attack or isn't as good as a basic magic attack item the only spells that are reliably useful are albert's rose storm which increases the team's defense or some of the various recovery spells which fulfill the same purpose as an item but cost mp it's such a shame because the dragoon transformations are a cool idea with a lot of potential but like other things in this game they're underutilized in what i'm guessing is an effort to balance things and prevent players from abusing the transformations they created a system that you could conceivably beat the game without ever utilizing how awesome would it be to have three dragoon warriors on the battlefield fighting against these massive dragon enemies well the game seems intent on never letting that happen anyway lloyd takes credit for her hard work and makes off with the divine dragoon spirit it's at this point that lloyd is revealed to be a wingly and nearly kills dart and rose while they recover lloyd manipulates his way into the high court and kidnaps the queen so that she can lead him to an object called the moon mirror for reasons not yet known he wants to gather all the moon objects which include the dagger that he had leanest steal from fletch a mirror is being held at the tower of flanville past a glacier which marks our next destination man i love snow themed enemies woolly mammoth penguins rocket rock turtles all the classics are here one thing i really appreciate about this game is that it never leaves you high and dry there are always merchants somewhere nearby you never have to backtrack across the map to buy potions these guys are always right where you need them to be just the right kind of deus ex machina lamp oil rope bombs you want it it's yours my friend as long as you have enough rubies we fight a windigo here which reminds me there's something kind of funny about rpg bosses we fought dragons fungus trent demons the whole lot of them but because it's later in the story the windigo is stronger than all of them combined like how bunny rabbits in the level 99 area are stronger than legendary knights from the level 5 area just an observation though i can't complain because the windigo's design is really cool and i like its animations those are compliments i can give for most of the bosses in fact they hit it out of the park in that department past the windigo was the tower of flanville it used to be the wingley's floating fortress but now it's crashed to earth just like some other dungeons the game builds up the history of this place which makes exploring it all the more interesting the implication of it flying is that wingley's had access to an absurd amount of magical power far beyond human comprehension the party confronts lloyd whose plan is to use the moon items to usher in a utopia fulfilling the will of a god called sowa reading the story back and watching these cutscenes again i'm struck by how surprisingly good the pacing is in this game plot dumps are rare it's mostly just a consistent raising of the stakes leaving one more question that answers no choice but to keep going so lloyd is bested in combat but not killed an act of mercy that perplexes rose i love this part where dart just drops his sword and falcon punches lloyd's [ __ ] in to be fair to rose lloyd is definitely a machiavellian character manipulating albert dole the sisters of mil sasao in order to get his way on top of that he's arguably started a war that's directly affected every single person in the party or at least exacerbated it and also killed lavitz in front of our very eyes we were there man it was merciless i understand we don't want to play judge jury and executioner but really guys what's the alternative hope that he changes his mind well he does because this game is a playable 90s anime and the power of friendship wins very cool he gives us a little backstory as we witness a conversation between him and emperor diaz who if you recall led the humans to victory during the dragon campaign 11 000 years ago so both diaz and lloyd have a mutual goal in ensuring the prophecy of the moon child has fulfilled this cycle it seems the world has been through many cycles of life and death with humans representing the 106 species and wingleys being the 107th the prosperity brought by the moon child refers to the gestation of the 108th species which can't be ushered in until that dang prankster the black monster stops killing our moon child the winglies were so worried about the 108 species ending their racial superiority that they sealed the species using signets which can only be dissolved by using the magic of the moon objects still following quite a bit to take in and i'd like to say the game explains it better than i can but i'm not sure if that's true lloyd's dialogue leaves just a little too much room for interpretation some of which is never really addressed in a satisfying way lloyd informs the party that shauna was taken to the city of velweb which is the human antithesis to cadessa that is to say it was the seed of human power during the dragon campaign in typical human fashion it's not quite as spectacular or visually interesting as cadessa more like a generic ruin this time around but there are some standout things for example this absolute unit was a colossal projectile launcher which was used to bring down the tower of flanneville to earth i like how the line between utility and scenery is blurred in dragoon a lot of times in these games any kind of meaningful object in the background is a 3d model which makes it pretty obvious when things aren't as they seem but there's always something interesting happening with seemingly inane things here diaz is waiting for the party where lloyd gives him the moon objects expecting him to release shauna after a prompt from rose diaz informs lloyd much to his chagrin that the release of the signet will bring about total destruction rather than utopia don't be mad lloyd i'm just subverting your expectations so diaz announces the virage embryo will purge the world and if you're regularly using words like purge you should probably wonder if you're the bad guy he takes his helmet off to reveal oh my god it's sean penn actually it's dart's father ziegfeld we're treated to some atrocious voice acting to mark the occasion here so zig gives us a quick rundown on the history of the world the divine tree grows fruit which once ripened fall to earth and give rise to species such as humans being the 107th species or fruit if you will the virage embryo was meant to represent the 108th which would cleanse the world by destroying everything and regenerating it in the reflection of so is perfection the winglies caught wind of this and decided they didn't want to die a horrific death at the hands of the viraj so they sealed the 108th fruit by separating its body from its soul what does this mean its soul is represented by the moon child a spirit which possesses a body once every 108 years in our case shana the body is represented by the moon that never sets which i guess you could say is a giant floating egg waiting for a sperm cell that's shana to join with it and give rise to the virage embryo effectively beginning the apocalypse meanwhile back in the more immediate situation zig and rose fought together during the dragon campaign against melbouframa the wingley dictator okay now the scene is kinda [ __ ] up and she takes one look at me and she goes oh my god i've had the old bull now i want the young calf and she grabs me by the wind shut the [ __ ] up after rose discovered the inevitable end of the world 11 000 years ago she took up the task of hunting down and killing the moon child whenever it should appear that's right the black monster is none other than rose interesting situation some moral complexity here rose has done terrible things to dart and countless others i imagine but it seems to have been a necessary evil zeke's obsession with ushering in the age of the virage is baffling to everyone but he chalks it up to soha's will there's a lot going on but i do have to stop and wonder if dad is the appropriate term here i feel like maybe father realistically just zigg would be more appropriate he's not gonna toss the pigskin with you dart he's trying to kill you and everything you ever loved zeke holds on to shana in order to execute his master plan so that's chapter three wrapped quite a dense addition to the story with many beats i find fascinating once again i can't help but wish a more competent translation was carrying the story but i'm digging the complexity you can even slow down and ask rose some questions if you're feeling overwhelmed i'm trying to find plot holes because i like ruining things but i'm coming up short good work sunny the final chapter begins with the gang wandering through the desert trying to find a wingley city according to rose's instruction you know everybody always talks about how much they hate underwater levels but it's deserts for me they always pulsum you have to walk endlessly nonsense i'm not a fan this area is basically a maze if you walk into the wrong area you're pulled into an underground cave where you have to restart syria is visually bland and the obligatory desert music plays here boo boo i say we find a portal to the city of ulara and i'd like to mention here how much i appreciate the commitment to differentiating wingley culture the architecture and clothing in all of their different cities is totally different than anything we've seen in the main story come to think of it the culture in all the cities is unique it's not something restricted to the wingleys the fortress town of hoax the crystal palace at deningrad the canals of fernie and this massive housing structure in lohan which is like exploring a dollhouse they're all human cities and they really carve out an identity amongst each other there are no generic villages in this game each area feels like a place where people could actually live but the wingley cities really take the creativity to a new level it's bizarre and alien i mean this is literally like alien kind of a weird comparison but it makes me think of morrowind it's like you're a stranger in an even stranger land but i digress in the city of ulara we meet charles rama the sister of melbouframa she clarifies some elements of the plot and explains that the three signets located in three different wingley cities are all that seal the virage embryo apparently you don't necessarily need the moon objects but just magic power equivalent to them as far as i understand after spending many late nights studying the vast trove of lore by candlelight charles and melbou both decided to create the cygnets in order to prevent the 108 species from wiping out the world but charles secretly used the signets to restrain the magic power that malibu was using to become an unstoppable dictator melbou found out and created the divine moon object so he could break the signets and regain his power this is the first moment i've had in the story where i suspect the plot element was retroactively changed so a story would make sense it's these kinds of large overarching oh yeah i also did this thing i never told you about without further explanation that sends my antenna up i guess i'm still traumatized by all the cybernetic organisms and dimensional singularities from chronocross but it's cool it's cool we cool once again i appreciate the opportunity to ask questions here a luxury not afforded to me by some other games the three wingly cities containing the remaining signets are the magical city of agles the lost city of xenobattos and the death city of mayfield i guess they've managed to keep these areas guarded or hidden since the dragon campaign not entirely sure how that works but we're told to head to hashel's home city of rouge where the way will be open for us once there we witness the city of agles risen out of the sea somebody within the city is spying on our team so creates a massive part in the water to open the path for us talk about rolling out the rouge carpet i don't have much to say about agles as a dungeon aside from its visual design which is similarly impressive to the other wingley areas it looks like the gungan city from star wars there's also these funny little guys that seem like the product of gun genera george lucas's imagination too they tell us that on top of dealing with the signet we've gotta prepare something called the psychedelic bomb righteous each character needs to dive into their own subconscious and answer some questions if you answer correctly you power up the psychedelic bomb it's a cool idea for a section that's actually done in a much better way later on the problem here is mainly that because of the translation i'm not sure if what i'm doing is the right thing i can only assume it wasn't meant to be a guessing game but the grammar or terminology the game uses is often so obtuse that you can't be sure it means what you think it means thankfully this is pretty straightforward so my psychedelic bomb is so strong it becomes a repeat item that means i can use it to summon joe rogan once per battle i did dmt three times in a day wow the the third time it was a really strong one and it'll always regenerate right after this thing is pretty damn strong almost overpowered at times because it does non-elemental damage it's a great reward for completing this section if you do somehow screw up well there's a save point right here so the game is basically begging you to try again the kraken guards the signet here damn they've got the kraken the windigo if i don't see the flatwoods monster or the jersey devil next i'm going to be very disappointed we try to save the signet but it's too late something about the resonance of the team's dragoon energy causes a runaway reaction which destroys the signet and sets a citywide meltdown into motion you find all these little guys dying oh no no you can't do this to me i've already lost so much don't take my ruff away we're allowed to transfer directly to zenbattos from agles once again a gorgeous vista zenbatos looks like a floating mothership an upside-down city suspended high above the world absolutely crazy we're also greeted by a creature named kulon that allows us to fast travel to some major areas of the map it's helpful but only to a certain degree there's only a handful of points he can take you to if you have a specific destination in mind you have to walk the duration yourself the whole city of zen battles is under martial law patrolled by these robots so under legal decree we're not allowed to go to the cignet but we won't brute force our way there we believe in the system damn it so it's off to change the laws of zenbattos and no i'm not kidding it's actually a fun idea you need to go to the legislative center stand in line while dart complains about the inefficiency of government workers and request an amendment to a law which will allow you to reach the cigna pretty funny but i hope you remembered the number for the associated law because you can't change anything without it if you listen to these robots speak you can hear other law numbers and request amendments that allow you to avoid random battles and stuff like that it's such a great touch i wish more dungeons did stuff like this to differentiate themselves so after receiving a copy of the amendment you take it to the law launcher where it's processed and made official the entire time you've got to avoid detection by sneaking around and if you're caught they throw you in prison where congo rescues you oh yeah it's a pretty fun section overall really amping up the creative energy compared to some other areas after some more boss fights and exploration we arrived to find that zigg has beat us here and deactivated the cygnet already boy talk about an 18 carat run of bad luck ring-a-ding-ding baby there's only one signet left located in the death city of mayfield the implications of this place are pretty mortifying upon death every living creature's soul is suspended here so even in death melbourne can exact totalitarian punishment on people it's basically limbo and it's here that we encounter the souls of the dragons we've fought you can choose to battle with them to grant them final death which i do because i'm trying to see all of the content i can and they may for some pretty satisfying fights it's interesting to see an angle on the dragons that doesn't cast them as mindless beasts but noble companions worthy of eternal peace speaking of optional objectives now's a good time to talk about the game's side quests of which there are several noteworthy examples the game spanning collectible objective has you hunting down stardust for a woman named martel stardust supposedly has healing powers and martel is desperate to save her sick daughter for every 10 you collect you receive a pretty good item that boosts your stats there's a special reward for finding all 50 and more on that momentarily the first sidequest of note is hunting down dart's ultimate weapon soul eater back at the glacier there's a path you can follow to reach an abandoned structure once here rose has flashbacks which imply she was to marry zig after the dragon campaign the team is then accosted by a suit of spectral armor called the poulter armor it's a pretty tough fight and you're rewarded with the soul eater it saps dart's health but i found you encounter it by equipping him with a health regenerating accessory i was dismayed to see that equipping it doesn't change the in-battle sword model that's pretty weak remember in final fantasy 7 when you found the hard edge for the first time how pumped you were to see it actually changes the way clad looks in a fight having weapons and in rare cases armor reflected on the in-game models is a fun reward that serves to give weapons some utility beyond an increase in attack in this case an element of cosmetic customization dragoon is missing that your characters and their weapons always look the same which i consider a weakness since this game came out so late in the playstation's life another side quest has us returned to valweb in order to defeat the spirits of rose's former companions granting them final death as their souls have been trapped and mayfield there's four in all and they make for the best fights in the game bar none there's a solid level of challenge here requiring you to think carefully about every move since their strategy changes depending on your approach there's a level of care and forethought put into these encounters that's lacking in a lot of the game's main bosses i think it's because of the devs conception of what difficulty is sadly the standard fights are usually way too easy because of all the tools you have at your disposal while the most difficult fights begin to tap into the combat system's potential in a way the whole game should have been doing at any rate fighting the dragoons rewards you with experience and some stat boosting accessories but i think it's worth it for the fun of fighting them alone so the most noteworthy side activity involves finding all 50 stardust i make a rare exception to my self-imposed rule and grab the walkthrough because if you think i'm going to walk up to every single surface hitting x and hoping i'll find a secret like wolfenstein you're out of your goddamn mind once you have the stardust martel gives you an item called the vanishing stone which is required to unlock this game's version of the optional superboss heading back to the tower of flanvale and the glacier you have to find your way through a maze where the apparition of a magician named faust confronts you without the vanishing stone you can't make it past this part but with it in hand i can approach the real faust and get my ass kicked okay let's equip some magic boosting items and try that again it was even worse this time i literally didn't get a chance to move okay so i'm not under leveled what's the problem apparently you need a helmet called a legend cask for your characters in order to survive his magic attacks they cost an inordinate amount of gold and there is no secret money making techniques in dragoon trust me i looked so what did i do i did what any self-respecting adult would do in this situation i grinded i grinded and i grinded till i couldn't grind no mo and then i grind it again at this point i've max set additions for almost every character and still only have enough money for two legend casks oh well it'll have to do and it does the fight suddenly becomes more tenable fair and pretty fun one thing i appreciate about these side activities is they don't just give you tangible rewards but let you understand a little bit more of the world's hidden history returning to the main story in mayfield we encounter the restless spirit of lavitz he recognizes and speaks to the party but the only reason he's allowed to talk with us is because of a deal he's made with a demon which has taken possession of his body we battle the possessed lavitz who regains control after impaling himself on a spear dart and albert are given a chance to say their final goodbyes to lavitz and if you didn't shed manly tears then leave this video and never return even if you're not a man you should have shed manly tears here with his final ounce of strength lavitz teleports us to the final signet and surprise surprise guess who's waiting for us with the final lock released the moon that never sets crashes to earth landing in the divine tree zigg leaves for the moon and we chase him down on cool on who forces a crash landing after being shot down by a verage swarm this swarm by the way looks terrifying if you weren't aware of the gravity of this situation you sure are now as you move throughout the tree you can see the remnants of different fruits giving you a glimpse into what some of the 108 species were i like how my curiosity continues to pay off my interest in some of the more arcane aspects of the plot is always rewarded with these interactions it's a treat to see we arrive on the moon that has officially set and it's an eerie scene that unfolds we're presented with familiar images and tunes from some of the game's more pleasant areas but with these weird distortions the whole thing is an illusion meant to represent the memories and thoughts of the party the scene reminds me a lot of the moon and majora's mask though to be fair the legend of dragoon the game predates it by about a year in each of these different areas the party members must go alone and confront some deep-seated fear or burden they've been carrying it gives us some insight into everyone's past hell i even care a little bit about miranda now you explore places frozen in time the remnants of failed civilizations what this park conveys is how senseless the fight feels the party is quite literally battling against the will of the universe senselessly trying to overcome the rules of nature a lot of rpgs have similar themes but i think it's presented in a very tangible way here if neither humans nor wingleys are the apex species of this universe are we just delaying the inevitable even if we do succeed well dart is too pure of heart and dumb of ass to reflect on these questions and that's why we love it we finally arrive at the end the music and visual design of the scene really heightens the momentum and sense of buildup you ever play a game where you're not sure if you're at the end or not well i'm sure we do battle with zieg who we promptly strike down at which point he reveals himself to be melbouframa it reminds me a little bit of sephiroth's reveal we've only heard legends and seen the destruction caused by this guy and now he's in front of us eleven thousand years ago zieg managed to defeat mel buframa but melbou cast a spell which transmigrated his soul to zeig's dragoon spirit in other words his body died but his soul became immortal but imprisoned within zeke who went about his business until the black monster attacked his village of neat at which point zieg donned his dragoon spirit for the first time in thousands of years to defend the village unaware that doing so would release mel buframa who then possessed zigg so zieg became the avatar of melbouframa trying to release the cygnets in an effort to regain the power that was taken from him and then some now this part is a little hard to understand without some supplementary research the game does a pretty lousy job of communicating all of this knowledge to the party but there's enough suspense at this point in the game that this mess is forgivable melbou from his spirit possesses the virage embryo making him the harbinger of the apocalypse a god and also saving himself from doom lloyd valiantly flies into battle and is promptly slapped around by senator framma not for nothing though as dart is given the dragoon spirit and dragon buster before lloyd passes and we're given one chance to amp up the party before the final battle thought you'll love it when rpgs do that the final battle isn't the most difficult in the game but it's unmistakably the most spectacular he looks sick and i'm not even sure what meaning of the word i'm using there but it's a really twisted representation of a god the final battle theme is okay i'm just not and never will be a fan of synthesized brass instruments and there's some stiff competition as far as final battle themes go but it's not too bad dart's dragoon transformation is now totally different and look malibu can trap dart inside his pouch get me out of this crazy thing as you damage the boss he goes through different phases classic but the transitions are worth mentioning i'm not sure what the significance of the generations are but it's as if he's evolving alongside history the music that plays during these segments is always really bizarre and atmospheric and melbou emerges in a different but equally imaginative form as he evolves into the sixth generation there are these fragments of history flashing on the screen i've read that the developers were inspired by sumerian creation myths which really shows here it's just cool i don't really know how else to say it nor do i understand what the context is for seeing it but i'd love to know his final form is a little less spooky than his original one but after defeating him he begins to destroy the moon sadly they decided to use voice acting here which really undermines how great the last couple of hours have been i have been waiting for this moment i kept you waiting rose decides to stay behind and die with zeke considering their expiration date is about 11 000 years overdue and the remaining party manages to rescue shanna and escapes with their skin intact there's no big conversation or anything we're just given scenes of the characters sometime in the future hashel is teaching kongol martial arts miranda is tending to her duty as a sister of that religious order maru lives out her lifelong dreams of exotic dancing no not that kind of what is wrong with you people she's 16. i mean dancing in an exotic location she's in the desert albert marries princess a meal of fletch and dart pours one out in honor of lavitz before coming back to celez where the game began and rebuilding with shauna a pretty great ending and just how a game like this should end legend of dragoon is a cult game for a reason and i mean that in both a positive and negative sense negatively because there were too many poor decisions made for it to ever have any mainstream success the translation is a massive letdown the equivalent of running dialogue through google translate and there's no excuse given the stiff competition there were many playstation rpgs out at this time which had downright well done charming translations which did a much better job of conveying humor prose and complex story elements to an english-speaking audience legend of dragoon is also far too limiting in a genre that was increasingly being driven by player freedom to explore this game is robbed of its mystique by never letting you stumble across things on your own you're railroaded through the game in a linear fashion leaving little to the imagination and being robbed of agency the item limitations random battles and generic approach to characters and world building are all aspects one could easily get hung up on at the same time being a cult hit isn't all bad and the legend of dragoon community is still alive to this day maybe more so than ever before there's a white hot level of passion present for this game i rarely see for others is nostalgia a part of it undoubtedly to an extent but don't take that the wrong way nostalgia is like the msg of video games it enhances everything there's a reason i can still enjoy tiny toon adventures on game boy and it's not because that game is a certified hood classic i think it's fair to say a lot of legend of dragoon fans experienced this game in their formative years which makes it easier to look past a game's flaws and love it unconditionally i think that's a great thing the fact that so many people associate this game with positive memories and feelings of simpler times that makes the game a time capsule and it's not hard to see why people identify the game with those feelings it has many good qualities the presentation is bright and colorful or dark and atmospheric where necessary the pre-rendered backgrounds can be downright spectacular i don't know what else you could do to ring better presentation from playstation 1 hardware the plot trips and stumbles over itself but there's a lot of passion and heart in the story you can't miss it it's ambitious with its themes and largely does a respectable job of remaining internally consistent delivering on its otherworldly promises and culminating in one of the most rock solid finales i've ever seen in this genre many jrpgs tend to overstay their welcome as you reach their final hours but dragoon grew on me the story crescendo is in an upward trajectory showing you sights sounds and plot developments that demand you play just a little bit longer to get some answers its systems are simple but they work so well that legend of dragoon has carved out a niche for itself that no game has nor do i suspect will have encroached on do i recommend playing the game yes and no if you aren't a jrpg fanatic if you can't look past glaring flaws to see the delicious nougat center of this type of game you'll probably become frustrated or disinterested with legend of dragoon the onus is on you the player to give this awkwardly presented story the benefit of the doubt to enjoy the simple act of performing an addition even the thousandth time you've done it but if you're somebody who loves this type of game who feels that strong sense of secondhand nostalgia when they boot up a ps1 rpg they've never played then you're a likely candidate to join the cult of the dragoon i can't rightly say i'm eager to go back into it but i can say with certainty if i had played this game 20 years ago when it came out it would have made a big impact on me it would probably be on my yearly replay list like it is for many people i can't share in that white hot passion that fans feel but i can understand it as i watched that montage of dart and his friends living their lives after that final epic confrontation i felt like i was completing a journey that began 20 years ago when i first laid my eyes on this game and the journey was worth it thanks for watching this review a little long in the tooth but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless if you did i'd appreciate a like a comment or if you're feeling really saucy the subscription goes a long way if you want to start a discussion or otherwise see what i'm working on make sure to follow me on twitter and or instagram and as always stay healthy wealthy and wise until i see you next time

Channel: Majuular

Views: 821,320

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Id: rAKCidREozU

Length: 82min 45sec (4965 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022