Legend of Dragoon was a game I never owned. A friend of mine had it, and I played it once at his house after he moved away. Since this was the early aughts, that was akin to being on Jupiter, so I never got a full grasp on the story. What I did see intrigued me. I have odd memories of doing all the spell items button mashes, telling my friend to sell all his bastard swords, and making a small bestiary with how much HP the enemies had. Ten years later, when I learned of emulation, LoD was a game I rushed to play. Ten more years later, after playing it during my depression induced amnesia years, I’m playing it again. Critics found the game middling, but I’ve heard good things from players. Does this game from this random company known for co-developing other titles as a Sony First Party Studio hold up? Let’s find out! For some reason, I'm playing on the PAL edition, which has a lower FPS limit. Consider it my punishment for stealing it.
We start the game on a CGI cutscene. The camera is in a small village as fire begins to rain from the sky. A small horde of knights on dragonback storm into the village, as the population screams. The background music is peaceful and totally not fitting with the scene, and I laugh a little. I don’t know who decided to pair this music with this scene, but it was a bad call. As the scene continues, a high ranking soldier enters the burnt town and goes to an unconscious woman. He asks a subordinate, with voice acting, if this is her. He pulls out a rock, cut to the moon, and the woman begins to glow. The officer says this is the one. He wonders why they came to this village for this one woman but dares not question Emperor Dole.
We then go game engine as a woman in purple, wearing one pant leg, is on a cliff overlooking a forest. Suddenly, a green dragon, who looks like a praying mantis, raises out of the woods. She calls it Feyrbrand and runs down to it. We then cut to a man in red reading a note. He hears a commotion and runs off to see what it was. It’s the soldiers running somewhere. Probably home is my guesstimate. He stops two stragglers when the dragon appears behind him. The soldiers flee, and the man, Dart, tries to avoid the dragon’s attacks. He quickly realizes he should run too. After avoiding downed trees, the purple woman manages to tackle Dart to safety. She gets him to stay silent, and the wyrm goes away. The woman wonders why the Imperial Army would need a dragon for a small village, and Dart realizes the village alluded to is his home. As he runs off, the woman remains and becomes startled when something starts glowing.
Dart enters the destroyed ruins of his home, Seles. He confronts a few remaining soldiers, and we have our first battle. The system, I think, is turn-based. There’s no ATB meter, hut speed seems to have some element in order. The unique thing about LoD is the QTE attacks called Additions. Every time a character attacks, they can do more damage if they press X at the proper time, as indicated by the UI. Some Additions can also be counter-attacked, so be prepared to press O when that happens. Right now, Dart only needs to press X once for the additional damage, but I know it gets rougher late game. These few battles, as you’d think, are pushovers.
Dart searches on and finds a few survivors. Plos, who remembers Dart from before he became a wanderer, says the army took Shana, a mutual friend, to Hellena Prison. We now have our first quest. What remains in the village is Dart's master, Tasman, who properly tutorializes the battle system and an item called Stardust. We’ll learn what that is later, I hope.
We leave the village and enter the world map. Or, at least, a portion of it. There seems to be several world maps, each hosting several sub-areas to explore. Right now, we can only enter the Forest. The Forest is an early contender for best song in the game, and I already added it to my Spotify playlist. A shame the menu music interrupts it when I bring it up. Enemies here all die in one good attack, but it’s the battle backgrounds that blow me away. They’re stunning, and not just for its time. They hold up well today. I don’t know if they’re worth the massive load times, though. Towards the end of this section, we see a memory of Dart and Shana as children. They're running along the road and get attacked by a wild dog. Dart tries to scare the hound off to protect Shana, but we return to the now before we know how it went. It's a save assumption it well well.
Continuing on, we come to Hellena Prison. It appears to be a partially capsized boat just off the coast, but the innards don’t correlate to such a feat. Dart sneaks his way in, and I try to sneak my way around inside. I think stealth is optional, but I liked Dishonored, so I go with it. We cut to a scene where the Head Warden, Flugel, is told by a man in a hood not to harm the girl. Flugel, upset he can’t hurt anyone, throws a subordinate off the ledge his death. Eventually, I come to a battle between a knight trying to save his brethren and the guards. The knight does his job, but reinforcements arrive and do away with escapees anyway. Before the guards turn their gaze on the lone spearman, Dart shows up. As they go back-to-back, we do battle. The guards die in two attacks, and we learn the knight is named Lavitz. After the fight, he accompanies you to save Shana. Facing off against the guards together taught him Dart is an honorable man and says nothing more of the dead men he failed to save.
The two march on and eventually save Shana. Shana, now grown up, says she doesn’t need Dart to protect her. She walks over to a bow and arrow and joins the party as a playable character. She has no additions, though, so she’s boring. The three fight their way out and, as they do, come to face Flugel themselves. The large fatman tells us we're going, "Not to Hellena but to Hell."
The battle here consists of the fatman throwing a wave of regular guards at us, followed by a second wave of actual worthwhile wardens at us. As the wardens die, they use a magic item to do high damage to the party. So don’t be afraid to use potions before they die. You know they're about to die because the targeting indicator turns red. Neat feature! Flugel only has single target attacks, but they hit hard. I used a few magic items, myself, and finished him in one round. As we think we've defeated the foe, Flugel gets back up. He commands all guards to sacrifice their lives in getting the girl back, so the party commandeers some dragons to flee. They raise the drawbridge, making Lavitz, who's fallen behind, need to do some Fast and Furious moves to jump out. I'm sure the dragon's knees appreciate it.
Now free, I called it a night. I got really sick last night, and it’s carried over to tonight. Because if that, I want to keep my playtime low to limit how much I wrote for blog one. Since I’ve been here for an hour, I’ve failed, so goodnight. I should be better tomorrow. Sorry this wasn't a more thorough write-up.
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