Bad Writing, Fun Battle System = Great RPG?
The Legend of Dragoon was an RPG released for the Sony Playstation back in 2000, it featured some nice graphics, a cool story, one of the most enjoyable RPG battle engines in a long time, but the localization/translation of the game’s text is what impacts this game the most in the long run. The game starts as most Japanese RPG’s do, innocently, a young man named Dart has returned from a quest to avenge his parent’s deaths at the hands of the Black Monster to find his country in a time of war. His village is burnt down and his good friend Shana is brought to a terrible prison. Soon after rescuing her, the story begins to unfold until it is a matter of world safety. The depth of the story is definitely there, as there are some incredible thought that went into the return of the Dragoons, the history of the world and a couple of the games great plot twists. But because of the terrible translation/localization of the game’s text, it becomes more a matter of personal imagination than the game telling you outright in most cases.
If you remember Final Fantasy VII’s translation work and cringe at the thought of it, then this is probably even a step below that. Typos, grammatical errors, oddly placed words, horrible style and many other bad writing breakdowns. A great example is in about the middle of the game, there is a place you visit called the “Valley of Corrupted Gravity” and for a majority of the times it is written in the textboxes just like that. But in a few specific cases, for some reason, the writers spelled “vally” instead of “valley” it’s that kind of stuff that plagues the writing in the game. Giving credit where credit is due though, there are few times when the writing is actually quite superb and that makes those times when it falls flat all the more frustrating. It was as if they directly translated the text and had their good days and their bad days while touching it up.
As in most RPG’s you progress from town to town, location to location, following key story triggers. Dragoon simplifies things by keeping you to set paths of “dots” to each location on the over-world map. The game even goes as far as telling you what location you should go to next when you zoom all the way out with a blue spinning arrow. This feature (we’ll call it) is a double-edged sword, for one, it saves you from the frustration of getting lost on the world map, though on the other hand it pretty much denies you of any exploration off the beaten path. The actual locations and towns are a different story as they consist of amazing looking pre-rendered backgrounds and have many different paths to explore and usually a compliment of treasure boxes to find.
Random battles are what RPG’s are all about and The Legend of Dragoon handles these very well, except for maybe the 15 second wait before each fight. Once you are set and fighting, it takes place in a turn based system with your three characters pit against an assortment of monsters and other enemies. You have a few options when fighting, the first option is the standard “attack”, more about this in second because it worth talking about in detail. Second is a neat take on defending called “guard,” this choice halves all damage taken and restores 10% of your hit points, it adds a neat strategic element to the fights. Of course you have items and the ability to run away. Once you receive the ability to transform in to Dragoons about 3 hours or so into the game, you’ll have that option as well.
It’s now time to talk about the standard attack system, called addition, this system is timing based and once you get the hang of it; it is by far the game’s coolest feature. Once you choose attack, then your target, you’ll see a blue square over the enemy that you picked. A second blue square spirals from near the sides of the screen; you must time your press of the X button when the squares exactly intersect. It starts off pretty easy as most characters only have one button press moves, but later into the game you may have to do 6-7 presses to successfully complete an addition string. But to keep things interesting each character has multiple moves (you pick one from the main submenu) each with different timing and a different amount of button presses. You also have to contend with counter attacks from enemies during slow moves or slow parts of your attack strings, a counter attack, requires you to press the Circle button instead of X. Also each time you do one of your characters addition moves 20 times they raise in strength and how many SP you get. Do a move 80 times to master it, master all your moves and you unlock the characters most powerful addition attack.
The other interesting aspect of the battles are the Dragoon transformations, these require a special stone to be collected, but all but one of them you’ll pick up as you go through the main quest. Once you get this stone you’ll be able to transform during battle, but only for one turn, to get more turns as a Dragoon you must do addition attacks to get what is called SP or Spirit Points. Each hit in an addition string gains you a specific amount of points, the game transparently collects these points and when you gain enough you raise what is called a D. Level, each D. Level (up to 5) gives you 20 more MP, 1 more turn as a Dragoon and in every level except the 4th you gain special Dragoon magic. The characters in this game cannot use magic, so transforming into Dragoon form is their only access to it. Dragoons also gain powerful boosts to their attack and defense, protection from all status effects (except death,) not to mention transforming cures all ailments as long as you can still transform. Dragoons attack using a Dragoon version of addition, in this version you have to press X as a spinning light hits the top of a circular meter, doing it five times successfully nets you a full power Dragoon attack. Another feature of the Dragoons’ is if you have everyone available to transform, then you then have a special transformation that activates all three characters and the character that chose the option gets automatic perfect Dragoon additions. With that amount of strategy Dragoons are best used during the game’s boss fights, because you will want to gain SP and raise your additions during normal combat.
As for items the game has a few unique items called Multis these items are elemental magic and once you toss them, you can pump them up by mashing the X button. Speaking of elementals, Dragoon uses a simple element system for its fights, every element has an opposite (light/dark, fire/water, earth/wind,) except Lightning, twice the damage to the opposite, half damage to same and normal damage otherwise. Dragoon’s battles are what sets the game apart from most RPG’s and trying to master all the characters addition moves gives the game longevity.
Not that Dragoon is a short game in the first place; it will take you upwards of 40 hours to complete, maybe more the first time through the game. If there is one fault to the gameplay is that game is quite easy, there is no EXP grind, as you hardly get any EXP for normal fights, you only need to fight random battles to get SP and raise additions. If you are going to do any levelling it’s after a boss fight as you get massive chunks of EXP from them. And levelling hounds might be disappointed to find that there are only about 60 levels of EXP in the game. This probably needs mentioning as well, the way the game is balanced mostly to Magic Defense, you may find yourself shying away from the powerhouse characters for ones better against magic.
Graphically The Legend of Dragoon is a great looking game, there are a few rough spots but overall the game is very appealing. For example the pre-rendered backgrounds in the game look amazing, especially the ones that feature water, whomever the artist was that did the water sparkles and water animation was spot on. To keep the static backgrounds from being boring Dragoon puts all kinds of effects on them, smoke from chimneys, hazy clouds, birds and other animated objects make for a lifelike look. The battle engine graphics are really great as well; there are plenty of over the top effects for the Dragoon magic, tons of neat little bouncy sparks and light flashes during addition strings and an assortment of other neat looking effects. There are also a few times during the game where a characters polygon model is a “high-res” version; they even have separate fingers, which is pretty impressive for a PSone game. The game also features some outstanding FMV CG movies; a couple of them have to be seen to be believed. The only poor areas are that during sequences on the pre-rendered backgrounds, occasionally the polygons in the characters twitch and it’s a bit distracting and the characters have not so seamless joints.
The sound in Dragoon is quite sharp as well, there are some great slashing sounds, but most of the sound effects consist of your characters grunts during addition strings, these sounds are key as they actually help you with timing of your moves. Characters also call out their moves when you complete a string of presses successfully, it’s pretty cool especially after you nail a tough addition, but it may get a bit repetitive after a while. The music in Dragoon is also very good, it has a slight off-beat score, with off beat meaning instruments that don’t necessarily fit in with the swords and dragons motif of the game. You’ll hear electric guitars, steel drums and other interesting instruments complimenting the more traditional sounds in the music. The game also has a lovely theme song that you get to hear during the intro movie on Disc 1 and at the end of the game.
The Legend of Dragoon is a game that lives mostly by its battle system; the story is also a good point if you can ignore the quality of the writing. The characters are memorable and so is the overall adventure. This game could have been almost perfect if it wasn’t for the poor translation and pretty awful writing. But in the end it’s not a game, any RPG fan should miss.
