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Why do people hate Legend of Dragoon?

mrjohill said:
Man I love legend of dragoon. I know a lot of people don't like it but I really enjoyed it and have gone back to it multiple times. Love the addition system to death
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Same here, I really liked it.

SarusGray said:
Enjoyed it plenty though the addition system was infuriating at times. Not one of the best JRPGS I've played but I do wish Sony pursued more JRPGS.
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Yeah, I'm glad they at least later started doing the collaborations with Level-5 and kept the awesome Wild Arms going, but I really wish they had continued making more big internal JRPGs like this, and done both. Would have loved to have seen this team keep going.

SolVanderlyn said:
Still one of my absolute favorite JRPGs to this day. People hate on the OST too, which I also loved... seems to be a very divisive game. I thought the story was great.

Dragon Campaign game someday? Maybe...
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Yeah, the soundtrack was great, my only complaint I recall, it might have been just in the first half, was that I wished it had more tracks.

So many great tracks, like the menu music, etc.
 
I enjoyed it but I can see where the hate would come from. It feels that a lot of the budget went towards the animations (of the playable characters) and FMVs. Cheap sound effects, generally crap looking enemies, terrible translation drags the presentation down.

Additions were cool.
 
People here (Italy) seem to hold it as dear as the PSX FFs.
Probably a better translation. I miss the days.
 
I don't hate it. I don't like it either. Feels mediocre and forgettable. I can't even remember the names of the cast even if my life depended on it. It's serviceable overall. Just not as good as other PS1 RPGs.
 
LoD is simply average. Honestly, this game gets more love than it deserves on some parts of the Internet.

The rampant typos in the localization bothered the hell out of me. I also disliked the world map and sidequest design. These elements made the game seem amateur. I also despised the inventory system.

The core gameplay is solid, and it has a few epic scenes. It's still not enough for this game to be great.
 
This game, along with Chrono Cross, Xenosaga and Breath of Fire 3 are the four beloved PSX JRPGs that I can't get into. I might try Xenosaga again but I've given up on the other three. They don't bring anything unique onto the table.
 
I never beat this, made it to the start of disc 3 and was just completely uninterested in it. I liked the world, and designs but the combat system had some serious jank to it. I cheated for the item to make those target things automatic to make it bearable. All I remember was the story never hit a high or interesting point for how much I wanted it too.

Was a check list RPG for sure but I still liked it enough.
 
The incredibly bad translation. It feels like it was translated by robots that don't understand human emotion or inflection.

The battle system novelty also wore off quick.
 
250px-Thirdagebox.jpg


Closest game that comes to mind.

It just felt like a big company looked at what people were playing and went "me too!"

Vapid and not very fun.
 
I really didn't like the combo/combat system. It felt really slow and tedious. It was interactive turned based system gone wrong and bland. And I used to like most games I played at that age. This was just one that I couldn't get into.

I remember really wanting to like it. Mostly for the prerendered backgrounds. Didn't mind the power ranger characters nor the story but the combat killed it for me.
 
warheat said:
cuz they can't combo to save their life and only manage to pull 'double slash'
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I think this may be the case. Without proper combos the game would be painfully slow. And those require perfect timing.

I've enjoyed LoD much more than FF8 and many other jRPGs from that era. LoD battle system is awesome, imo.
 
Inuhanyou said:
Maybe it was just me, i really liked the political stuff between the kingdoms at war in the first disk, ending in the climactic fight with doel, then the manhunt with lloyd and fight with the divine dragon, culminating in the semi end of the world of the final disk.

While Shana was a generic love interest type character and Dart was pretty much the everyman of JRPG's protagonists, i really liked Haschel's journey to find his daughter, Meru's symbolic means of trascending the racism and generations of isolation of the Winglies and other races, Rose's slow struggle to act like a normal human being again after so many years of acting like a automaton.

And in general the world cohesion, i loved how how interconnected everyone and every area was to the main plot. You go to bale to meet albert where had one of the moon sigils, you had to go to hoax to meet Kongol and awaken the Dragoon spirit, you had to go to Deningrad to meet the Queen, Miranda in her sisters ect.

There's literally no area in the game that could be cut without a portion of the story being missing in some way.
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This is a great way of putting it. A lot of longer games burn out or lose their vision to some extent towards the end. In Dragoon, every "disc" or story arc feels important and builds a greater story while each arc retains its own distinct feel. I have to say disc 2 is the weakest, even if it has the best world map theme - not that it was bad, per say, but the struggle against Emperor Doel had a lot more gravitas to it. The second arc's purpose is to show you more of the world and escalate the story to a world scale, but getting there is the biggest lull of the story, IMO. The rest of the game matches its first arc in terms of how engaging it is, however.

Other RPGs that do this well are Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger. Great pacing, and hardly a filler moment to be seen.
 
Well I played it as a kid and as a kid I liked every game more or less. The music stood out for me though. The opening music with the vocals was extremely mesmerising.
 
I never "hated" the game, but when it launched, it felt like Sony's mediocre attempt at making an FF7-level game, and for me, it just fell very far short of that at the time.

I've tried to give it a second chance since then, but it's just never grabbed me.
 
What? People hate it? What the fuck? I absolutely loved it. It was my favourite RPG, just behind Final Fantasy IX. Still one of my favourites, even. I enjoyed it a whole lot more than FFVII, that's for sure. I like VII, though, don't get me wrong.
 
Input Lag. When your combat is based on timing and you need to learn to push the button in a different moment than what the screen is telling you, there is no saving grace.

Also, when the novelty of the combat wears off, you're stuck with too many battles that drag on for too long and crazy load times.
 
On the contrary, the game seems pretty well fond of round these parts.

I think it's alright, a solid 7 out of 10 kinda game. Playing VII again straight after completing it didn't do TLoD any favours though. It wanted to compete against the Final Fantasy's during the PS1 era, but it paled in comparison.
 
I love it!

One of the best JRPGs ever. And it has one one of the best songs ener (If you still believe....). Ex-Final Fantasy 6 people worked on it.
 
I don't think it's that widely hated, in fact I think it's viewed generally positively. Personally I did think it was another mediocre me-too rpg that wasn't good in 1999, and certainly doesn't hold up now.
 
Cleve said:
I don't think it's that widely hated, in fact I think it's viewed generally positively. Personally I did think it was another mediocre me-too rpg that wasn't good in 1999, and certainly doesn't hold up now.
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Reviews were mixed at best. The Playstation magazimes were throwing around 9s like they did for all first party games, but places like EGM and Gamespot were handing out 5s and 6s.
 
To me, it's mediocre, but not terrible. It had some interesting ideas, but it never really followed through.

The combat system had some inspiration, but it never really developed enough and got fairly stale. The input system was a novel idea, but they never went anywhere interesting with it, yet at the same time the battle system as a whole, neglecting inputs, was incredibly simplistic and boring.

The writing was also pretty boring. It was a fairly straightforward high-ish fantasy game and rather forgettable, despite interesting ideas like the Dragoons.

Just about everything comes off like that.


Also, the inventory system was annoying. The 32 item limit was annoying, and the fact that they removed the player's ability to expand it the US version is mildly infuriating. (It makes the game's spell caster a bit useless.)
 
Data West said:
It was an okay JRPG that was completely overhyped years later because nostalgia. That people would say it was this amazing game because they played it when they were young and everyone would nod and then the sensible person would say, 'It was bad then tho' and they'd say 'no it wasn't!' and they'd later try to replay it and realize it was in fact, bad then.

It's like the JRPG version of
Crash Bandicoot or Space Jam
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Accurate.
 
I've never seen much actual hate for it, but it does seem like people are more fond of it now than they were when it was new.

I did like the game, actually was surprised how much I enjoyed it considering the reviews it got. The battle system is neat but it gets REALLY tedious for regular random encounters. I hardly remember the actual plot but most of the characters still stand out to me, especially Rose.

Kinda funny, it was my first experience with emulating a Playstation game. I rented it from my local corner store - I beat disc 1 in a day but as soon as I started disc 2 it shattered in my computer's CD-ROM drive. I was dirt poor and horrified at the idea of getting charged 60 bucks to replace it but nobody ever noticed or said anything about the missing disc. That store only let you rent games for a day at a time, so I guess nobody ever got that far. Or nobody else ever rented it, more likely. Was one of the first things I bought when I got a real PS1.

Also a year ago there was an anime con around here (anime north) and I got stuck in traffic so badly that all the cosplayers on the sidewalk were moving faster than my car. There was a Dart cosplayer and I yelled MADNESS HERO out my window but I don't think he heard me :(
 
swit said:
I think this may be the case. Without proper combos the game would be painfully slow. And those require perfect timing.

I've enjoyed LoD much more than FF8 and many other jRPGs from that era. LoD battle system is awesome, imo.
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Let me introduce you to the divine item goddess Meru, soloer of all bosses till Frahma.
https://www.speedrun.com/The_Legend_of_Dragoon
I'm not a mash god and can only do moderately well (around 210-220%), but even at lower mashes you can wreck most of the game.

Definitely one of my favorite PS1 RPG's
 
One of my favourite games ever.

Shoutouts to my friend that grinded to get Lavitz' gust of wind dance or whatever his last addition was before Lavitz got bopped
 
At the time it was marketed as a Final Fantasy killer, but committed the crime of being just an okay, fairly forgettable game.

I personally thought the battle system was bare bones and uninteresting, that the plot was meandering and predictable, the characters were lifeless, and the soundtrack was awful.

It was pretty looking though.
 
This was my favorite game growin up, and I still treat it that way today. It doesnt hold up incredibly well since games have comes so far, but I can still sit down and enjoy it thoroughly. There are better JRPGs, but this one and FF Tactics will always be two of my utmost favorite because they were my first experiences getting lost within a game. I would kickstart the fuck out of a sequel.
 
It's really, really painful mediocre. One of the few PS1 RPG I couldn't finish, and I played a bunch.

Got as far as CD2 and then stopped. It just wasn't fun.
 
Because it is a terrible game.

Even ignoring the story, writing, gameplay.... I don't see how anyone can handle such a slow battle system.
 
pa22word said:
I remember really loving it as a kid. I remember the OST being full of awesome, though. Still listen to the main menu theme here and there.


Speaking of old Sony Legend of X games, where's the love for Legend of Legaia? I loved the hell out of that game when I was young, but I never see anyone ever talking about it.
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There are a few members here on gaf who like that game, me particularly it was my first rpg so its got a special spot in my heart.

Aters said:
This game, along with Chrono Cross, Xenosaga and Breath of Fire 3 are the four beloved PSX JRPGs that I can't get into. I might try Xenosaga again but I've given up on the other three. They don't bring anything unique onto the table.
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You mean xenoGEARS right? XenoSaga was ps2 era.
 
That game is godly! Finished it maybe 5 or 6 times. Always aiming for the perfect game. For me that game is in my top 10 (because there's so many RPG/JRPG in this world).
 
I love this game so much. The story, characters, graphics, cheesy voice acting, BATTLE SYSTEM. All of it. It seems to be a very divisive game. I miss the additions system :(
 
It was my first console rpg that I fell in love with and finished. I liked it more than the time I put into FFVIII. And the battle system was interactive and had some cool combos and voice clips. And the transformations were epic and gave me that super saiyan feeling when DBZ was at its peak in North America.

One of my top twenty games for me.
 
It was probably the most highly advertised JRPG for the PS1 that wasn't made by Square. You're going to see a lot of opinions on it both ways since it was pretty prominent for the genre(Final Fantasy killer lol)

I thought it was an okay RPG. Nothing more and nothing less.
 
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