Making me play this game again would be tantamount to screaming as well. For a FMV epic, in the grand
Final Fantasy VII style,
Legend of Dragoon leaves a whole lot to be desired. Fun gameplay would be a neat thing to have, for one. A translation that didn’t make your eyes bleed would be another plus. And a lack of hackneyed plots would be a winner as well. But let’s go over some of this one step at a time, pointing out the game’s strengths (er?) and flaws.
You are Clo..er, Stinge... um, Dart, the Generic Tousle-Haired Male Lead, out to save the world and get the girl. This is presented to you at the start of the game, and although Legend of Dragoon tries to throw you a curveball once or twice throughout the four discs, as a general rule you’re going to be guessing what’ll happen next before the game bothers to tell you. Nothing new, interesting, or exciting ever really presents itself in the game’s plot. Dragons as big scary war machines? Imagine. Weird ninja character? Never! Believe me, you’ve seen and heard it all before.
And then there’s the translation. The text in this game is a throwback to the dog days of Japanese to English translations. I’d compare it to Final Fantasy 2/IV’s with its stilted writing. But at least every once in a while, FF2 had a line that was (unintentionally, mind you) funny. (“Spoony bard,” anyone?) Legend of Dragoon reads like someone took an Japanese to English dictionary, did one-to-one correlations, and then mixed the sentence structure up into a rough semblance of how English should be. It doesn’t work, and after seeing games like Vagrant Story and Legend of Mana, you’re going to be wincing every time there’s a long dialogue.
Last, and most certainly not least, comes the gameplay. In an attempt to make the fights more than a “press X until the battle’s over” experience, Legend of Dragoon has what is termed “Additions.” When you attack an enemy, a box spirals into the center of the screen. When it matches a box already in the center, you tap X (or, on the occasions where the box is red, O). Do this enough times in sequence, at the right times, and you deliver a stronger blow to the enemy. The first few times you do this, it’s actually pretty damned cool. It keeps the battles fresh and interesting, as you perfect your Addition technique.
Then you get ten hours into the game, and it just gets worse. Pretty soon, you’re dreading every random encounter, because it means that you’re going to have to bust it PaRappa-style if you don’t want your party to get whomped by the baddies. This is most definitely irritating as hell. A hint: stick with some of the beginning Additions. They’re simpler, take less time to dish out, and often after leveling up, are better than the later ones. Not that you’ll be wanting to do it for long. Sure, you get the ability to turn into Dragoons later in the game, and deal nifty special damage, but do you really want to invest that much time into this game?
