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Product Description
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A four-disc RPG epic, The Legend of Dragoon is set in a time of
s, magic, and dragons. Ten thousand years prior, the Dragon
War pitted Dragoons--humans with the power to control
dragons--against Enslavers, magicians who sought to enslave the
humans. Now Dart, a young warrior, is on a quest to find the
demon that killed his parents.
The Legend of Dragoon features prerendered, 3-D backgrounds and
detailed, polygonal figures. Several nonplaying characters and
many full-motion video scenes take you through the complex story.
The game's turn-based battle engine allows you to increase the
strength of an attack through repeated button taps and shows the
percentage increase you've created. A timing feature in the
battle modes allows you to add devastating combinations to your
attacks. The Spirit Points you accumulate during your quest can
be used to unlock a special power, known as the Dragon attack.
.com
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Talk about going out with a bang! Sony Computer Entertainment
released its four-disc The Legend of Dragoon for the PlayStation
only months before the release of that console's successor, the
PlayStation2. This very absorbing role-playing game, with hours
upon hours of story and inventive gameplay, might just be the
last great title for the glorious PSX.
The copious story begins with Dart, a vengeful young man with
spiky hair and red armor who embarks on a desperate rescue
mission to break his childhood sweetheart out of a castle prison.
The two join forces with a knight who is trying to end a war
that's destroying the region. Dart soon learns that he is a
Dragoon--a human who's privy to the spiritual power of dragons.
Like all RPG heroes, Dart is up against impossible odds, but his
newfound Dragoon magic and battle skills go a long way toward
making the bet even money.
And that's just the beginning. Grab a spare memory card and a
comfy chair and be prepared to spend at least 20 hours getting
through the first disk (there are three others just like it in
the double-wide case). It's hard to sustain a player through this
kind of time span, but The Legend of Dragoon takes chances and
wins. For example, its battle system is turn based, so you can
actually use some strategy, but it also features special
"additions," or fighting combos that unfold if you match the X
button to that addition's timing. When handling three players'
additions, each with unique sequences, it can be quite
challenging. You can increase the potency of the elemental magic
up to 160 percent by quickly tapping X during your cast. Also,
the perspectives often change between battles--players will
direct the action from behind the heroes, behind the villains,
looking down from above, and off to the side.
There are a couple downsides to the game. First, the stylized
transitions into and out of battle mode, while initially cool,
quickly become exhausting--especially when running the gauntlet
through lesser foes in the wilderness or lower ramparts of a
castle. The game's story is built such that you're watching the
sometimes goofy dialog as a spectator rather than participating
in it. There are a few occasions when the game will prompt you to
choose from two different responses, but often either response
will bring about the same conclusion. That tightly controlled
narrative, however, often works in the player's favor by keeping
the game flowing instead of the wandering common in other RPGs,
where players waste time looking to each townsperson for
direction.
Overall, the game's wonderfully illustrated sets, light
exploration and problem solving, and a handful of jaw-dropping
full-motion video scenes make The Legend of Dragoon fun to play
and hard to put down. --Porter Hall
Pros:
* Hours upon hours of story and gameplay
* Turn-based battle made more exciting by combo-attack-style
"additions"
* Many different monsters, spells, weapons, and items Cons:* Very
linear gameplay offers no chance to affect outcome
* Stylish pre- and postbattle sequences quickly grow tiresome
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Review
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After Final Fantasy VII hit the streets, RPGs finally got their
due. As the laws of economics dictate, this spurred everyone to
develop RPGs. Envying Square and touting similarly large-budget
potential, Sony itself entered the fray with The Legend of
Dragoon. While it's a good first try, Sony's inexperience with
the genre shows through, resulting in a highly generic RPG with
some out-of-this-world FMV. The Legend of Dragoon starts out the
same way as many other RPGs. The spiky-haired Dart already has
one vendetta against the mysterious Black Devil, who killed his
her, but it's time he had another. For unknown reasons, the
Sandora Empire burns down his village and imprisons his childhood
friend, Shena. Infuriated, Dart impulsively storms out to rescue
Shena. Shena's kipping is merely the tip of the iceberg of a
much grander, more sinister motive. During his globe-spanning
quest, Dart is transformed into a Dragoon, a warrior cloaked with
the power of the Dragon of Fire. To defeat the Sandora Empire,
Dart will have to find the other six Dragon Spirits and people to
use them so the Legend of Dragoon may be fulfilled. Along the
way, the magical septet will learn about one another, accrue
additional vendettas, and save the world. The Japanese have a
word for stories and setups as predictable as this - sentai. The
name was given to the expansive, formulaic Japanese Power Rangers
genre, and the only thing that doesn't scream sentai here is that
there are seven "rangers" instead of the more traditional five.
Dart, for example, fits into the typical leader position, as he
is clad in red. Before too long, you'll be able to easily predict
who will join the party simply by the color of their outfit
rather than whether they have a character portrait or not. With a
story so trite and borrowed, one would hope the gameplay was at
least a little different. Arguably it is, but not at all in any
of the right ways. You guide Dart, with the rest of the party
cleverly concealed on his person, around prerendered backgrounds
and get in random encounters with monsters, much like the recent
offerings of the Final Fantasy series. Eschewing magic almost
altogether, The Legend of Dragoon relies on its more mundane
"Additional System" for spice. When attacking, you must tap the
button as the character connects multiple times, allowing said
character to perform a stronger attack. Only one such Additional
may be used at a time, gradually gaining strength the more times
it's successfully used. Every few levels the characters will get
new Additionals that can be turned on from the submenu, but only
one can be used at a time, forcing you to watch and tap out the
same attack over and over again. Once your characters have the
ability to transform into Dragoons, Additionals also charge the
character's spirit meter. Once the meter is full, the character
can transform into a Dragoon and remain that way for one turn for
every time you fill the meter. As a Dragoon, you have two options
- Dragoon Additional or Dragoon Magic. The former prompts you to
tap a button four times consecutively to charge a meter, which
results in a powerful aerial assault on the enemy. The latter
fits the standard definition of magic, but on a grander, more
time-consuming scale. Without general access to magic, how do you
heal your party? Legend of Dragoon relies heavily on defending, a
first for RPGs. Not only does defending halve all damage taken
from enemies, but it also restores 10 percent of the character's
max hit points. This fact, combined with a limited inventory and
a short supply of money, means you're going to be spending a lot
of time defending. In fact, defending for five or ten turns in a
row when fighting a boss is not only common but also necessary.
With so many steps required to fight bosses, heal, or use magic,
Legend of Dragoon sports some of the longest and most tedious
monster encounters in any RPG to date. Expect to get bored
quickly with spells and attacks that you've already seen a
thousand times before. Legend of Dragoon lacks a visual style to
make it interesting to look at - the character designs are
missing personality and innovation, with characters often only
describable by the color of their clothing. The world, too,
follows the same line of thinking, resulting in a boring world
rendered by some rather talented 3D artists. The large number of
CG movies that fill the game's four discs are technically
impressive, but they still lack that certain visual edge needed
to really captivate you. The real-time 3D graphics, however,
aren't as technically impressive as the prerendered stuff.
Fraught with rendering errors that seemed to disappear long ago
from most other PlayStation games and being low on textures, the
game's real-time graphics fit somewhere in between the
flat-shaded sameness of Final Fantasy VII's art and Final Fantasy
VIII's textured wonders. The models themselves are blocky and
heavily jointed. As Legend of Dragoon is generally devoid of
magic, the minor spell effects aren't impressive in the least,
and the Dragoon magic sequences are overdone and overlong. The
game's sound is neither technically nor aurally impressive,
relying on hackneyed instrument samples and uninteresting musical
composition to push the game along. While token voices do appear
in CG scenes or when characters call their moves, they don't
particularly add to the experience. Sony's on the right track,
but it's got a ways to go before it can hope to produce an RPG
with the polish of a Square game - pieces of the puzzle are here,
but the overall experience just isn't there. Legend of Dragoon
borrows too heavily from other games and lacks that "hook" to
make it worth dealing with excessive defending, a thin story
you'd expect to see on Power Rangers, and aural competence.
--Peter Bartholow
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot Review
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