The Legend of Dragoon (2000) [PS1/PS4] review

“When Dragoons meet, blood will flow and as they leave, time does slow.”

– Rose

During its inception, The Legend of Dragoon was known by some as Sony’s Final Fantasy killer. It clearly did not take down the fantasy giant, and it still hangs in the shadow of FFVII to this day, despite coming out years after. The comparisons are not without warrant, given the first discs of these two games have a little too much in common with one another: both parties chase a man in black around the world, the need to pass an area guarded by a giant snake, and a disc one death that hits anyone with feeling with a watery eye, to name a few. The marketing for Dragoon was also off the mark at times (if you haven’t, please search for “Legend of Dragoon commercial” and see for yourself) and depicted this game as a lighthearted romp of silliness instead of the epic story of war, love, and struggle that it actually was. While not without its shortcomings (which game isn’t?) I think Dragoon deserves a spot much higher on many JRPG-lovers’ list of all-time greats.

The Legend of Dragoon was originally release on the Sony PlayStation in Japan on December 2nd, 1999, North America on June 13th, 2000, and finally in the EU on January 19th, 2001. It was also later re-released on the PS3 as a PS1 classic and more recently on the PlayStation 4 on February 21, 2023, finally freeing it from its confinement on the PS1 and opening the door for players in the modern console era to play this fantastic JRPG without resorting to owning a physical copy, a PS3 or emulation… and there’s trophies now! 

I didn’t fully play through Dragoon until it came out on the PS4 despite many of friends being die hard lovers of the game from day one. I frequently saw my high school friend Naked Jake playing it when I was over at his house. He gave the full rundown on how sweet the battle system was one day after we had finished watching the actor commentary special feature on the Dude, Where’s My Car? DVD one afternoon. Also, he wasn’t like a nudist or anything, we were just born in the 80s where everyone had a J name like Jake, Josh, or Jen; so to differentiate from the others, a lot of my J-named friends received nicknames. He made the high-school-brained decision to streak naked through his neighborhood one night and Naked Jake was born. (DUDE.) My friend Jimmy, another J named lover of this game, lent me his 22-year-old strategy guide for this review.

A Little Story to Get Us Going

Dragoon starts off with a full motion video where a man holds an orb up to an unconscious woman’s forehead and some soldiers on gnarly looking horses ride out of a wrecked and burning town. And there’s voice acting! While nothing to write home about in the year of our lord 2024 with voice actors the likes of Ben Starr, Jennifer Hale, and Troy Baker (to name a few) whispering sweet nothings in our gamer ears nowadays, the early 2000s video game voice acting has a special place in my heart with its awkward charm. Anything voiced in Grandia is objectively bad by today’s standard but that doesn’t stop it from giving me a wave of nostalgic glee, and so does the voice acting in Legend of Dragoon. It may be “bad” but it’s also great.

Dragoon follows Dart Feld, a young man returning home after being away for five years, on a revenge quest seeking a person known only as the Black Monster, who destroyed his village and killed his parents. Dart’s childhood friend Shana is kidnapped by the encroaching Imperial Army and after rescuing her from an imperial prison they are pushed into a brewing war between two parts of a fractured country. Traveling through the world, Dart meets fellow warriors in his eventual quest to not only save the world but ultimately uncover the truth behind the Black Monster. This adventure spans the globe, thousands of years of history, dragons, a ghost ship (because of course), and one of the better JRPG battle systems of the early 2000s.

The Battle System – The Basics

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to the battle system in Legend of Dragoon. At the beginning of the game you’ll be limited to just attack, defend and item commands. Every character in the game, except for bow users Shana and Miranda, utilize the addition system when attacking. Additions are a combo system of timed button presses that grant a bonus when completed correctly. They grow in power as they are used and leveled up. Each character has multiple unique additions that they get to yell out when successfully landing one. These are learned when a character reaches certain levels, and one final addition is earned by reaching the max level of 5 with all the previous ones. Early game additions are easy to execute but later ones ramp up the difficulty and make mastering them quite a challenge. There are accessories that can be procured later in the game that when equipped will perform the additions for you but that is at the expense of your one and only accessory slot, so I’d say you’re better off just embracing the late game struggle and learning those additions yourself.

The defense command in battle does exactly what you’d think. It defends! But it also replenishes 10% of that defending characters hit points which is helpful and generous, especially when talking about the item capacity limitation this game handicaps you with. You are limited to 32 total items that your party can carry around which can be used in and out of battle. Now, I generally do not like item bag limitations in my games. It’s one of my biggest gripes with some classic JRPGs (I’m looking at you, Suikoden, and your laughably awful inventory system… if you know, you know). Between keeping a stock of curing, status healing, magic, and the extremely useful and rare reusable items, that 32 item limit is hit quickly. I really disliked this item limitation early on in Dragoon, but without this handicap I could see this game being too easy, and it’s honestly not a very hard JRPG to begin with. The challenge set by limiting my on-hand items did give LoD a level of strategy that games where 99 of everything can be carried around do not. I can appreciate what the developers were going for even though I would normally frown upon the constraint.

Exploration and the Item Shop

While Legend of Dragoon has a lot of great looking pre-rendered backgrounds, it’s sometimes hard to figure out what doors you can go through, especially in towns. Luckily, Dragoon has us covered with the option to turn on arrows above any entrance or exit. Final Fantasy VII also did this with red arrows marking any screen change, but Dragoon goes a little further. Item and weapon shops have a blue arrow above the door. Clinics and inns are marked with yellow arrows and any other area is denoted by green arrows. This makes navigation around some of LoD’s bigger towns a lot easier. 

While Legend makes navigating around towns a little easier, it makes selling items a chore. You must sell items one at a time, going in and out of the menu and then scrolling through the item list from the top to select the next item to sell. I found myself selling extra items in towns to free up room for what I was going to use. Even though max capacity is only 32 items, every time the game forced me to scroll through those items over and over again to just sell a couple body purifiers it got aggravating. Especially when I can buy multiple items all at the same time without getting kicked back to the first menu screen after each purchase. Is it a small, petty gripe? Sure. But it drove me nuts every time, since I was selling off items in every town I was in to make room in my inventory.

Even More Battle System Talk – Dragoon Edition

Only as you start to unlock the character’s dragoon forms does this game go from a good battle system to something I feel is truly special. Dart’s dragoon form is unlocked after defeating a Giganto named Kongol while defending the town of Hoax (this game has ridiculous town names).

When a character is a dragoon, they can now use magic but can no longer use items. Some dragoons don’t have healing spells and once you’re in that form you cannot revert to normal human mode until the turn limit has been reached. Every character and enemy in this game also has an elemental affinity. You can easily see what that element is based on the color of the enemy’s name plate when hovering the cursor over them. Elements are paired together, being both strong and weak against one another in a twisted version of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Fire does more damage to water but is also weak to it. Light and dark are opposing elements, as well as wind and earth. Lightning is the oddball out having no yin to its proverbial yang and is not strong or weak against any enemy. Why do I bring this up now? Even though the dragoon form has its benefits, it’s not a transform to win option. You can just as easily be defeated after transforming all your characters to dragoons because you can’t use items for three turns, and a strong enemy can still wipe you out because you can’t push out damage quick enough to finish the fight while not in that form. 

Now with the ability to turn dragoon at your fingers the addition system has an added feature. Every time an addition is successfully completed the character gains SP which replenishes the dragoon gauge. Once 100 SP is accrued a character can turn into a dragoon for one turn. This earned SP also gets added to a running total that levels up the dragoon form to a max level of 5 allowing that character to be in dragon form longer—but beware, because longer isn’t always better, at least that’s what I’ve been told. The game ingrained in you the importance on using additions early on and then a couple hours later incentivized the incentive. Chef’s kiss.

Some Favorites & Features

Throughout this game I met some of my favorite characters in any RPG I’ve ever played. With nine playable party members, there’s someone for everyone, and I wanted to highlight a few of my favorites. Lavitz Slambert was shown to be a gentleman, a strong loyal knight, and a true friend to Dart even during their short time knowing each other. He is also a Lancer and I have a soft spot in my heart for anyone willing to represent the polearm in my video games. Meru is a bubbly young lady who wields a ridiculously giant hammer in battle. She gets so fast that later in the game she usually gets to take multiple turns before most enemies and allies take one. Rose shows up within minutes of the game starting but doesn’t join the adventure until she helps Dart activate his Dragoon abilities for the first time in Hoax. She is an enigma spouting off firsthand knowledge of world lore 11,000 years past and is the only party member that shows up already with her Dragoon Spirit. I could honestly go around the horn and list off something about each character, but these were the ones that stayed in my party most of the game, so they deserve a little limelight. But that’s another reason why Dragoon was so great, I have Shana, Haschel, Kongol, Albert and Miranda to utilize on my next playthrough sometime down the line.

My total gameplay time with Dragoon was around 55 hours, so LoD is not as big of a commitment as other JRPGs tend to be. And I did everything I could! I fought the optional secret Dragoon bosses and the hidden mega boss, Faust. I also platinumed the game on PS4 but besides collecting the stardust there wasn’t much to this straightforward trophy list. The PS4 version doesn’t add all the bells and whistles like some other older PlayStation JRPGs have gotten on modern consoles such as battle assist, no encounters or speed boost options. It does come with the ability to make save states and a rewind function that can bring your gameplay back a little way to retry a late game addition during a pesky mega boss… not that I would ever do something like that.

Dragoon brings a deep world full of charming and troubled characters, a battle system that can hang with the best of them and a fantastic soundtrack. If you missed it on PS1 it’s available on PS4 for those looking to add an amazing JRPG to their list of must-play classics. Maybe one day we’ll see a sequel from Sony to this fantastic game but until then at least it’s easily available on modern consoles. 

PIXEL PERFECT

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TigerCastle spends his days thinking about the next RPG or platinum trophy he can tackle. His nights are spent making YouTube videos and hosting a couple podcasts, First & Last (a TV podcast) and Mega Potion (a podcast that attempts to talk about video games). You can also find him on the highest peak spreading the good word of the Suikoden series.