@flexy5: Legend of Legaia didn't even use the double disc case if I remember correctly. The second section was empty other than the game manual. And yeah Noa dancing in a night club at whatever under 18 age she is was a bit weird

For the record, I totally just made an account to tell you how awesome you are for writing about this game. It is my favorite JRPG of all time. I'm surprised you didn't talk about the massive disappointment that was the sequel, but I don't blame you.

Also, I would KILL for another game with that combat system.

@scottspain: I didn't know there was a sequel when I had my ps2 connected, and by the time I found out I knew better than to play it. None of the reviews I read had anything nice to say about the sequel.

I also just made an account to reply to this (almost year-old) article, but I hope it isn't too buried. Legend of Legaia remains my favorite game of all time, without a doubt. I think that a lot of the difficulty when I was younger came from how it was fairly easy to power through the regular sections without adequately leveling up your party. By the time you got to boss fights, however, you weren't nearly powerful enough to take them on. It wasn't a matter of grinding levels, though. It never felt like grinding, only that you were being deliberate and taking your time by not rushing through.

The only time that I did feel like the game dragged was at Sol Tower, when you needed to get the Soru Bread to feed the Sage's Chests. Damn things were so expensive, and the only ways to get them were by winning them through points in the arena or actually grinding money and buying them in a shop. It usually took about an hour or two to do, but in a game as long as Legaia, any point that doesn't feel well-paced really begins to drag. Luckily, that was really the only point I felt was really dull in the game.

And while I will say that Legaia 2 was disappointing compared to the first, I do still think it is worth playing. It remains a favorite of mine, and I think that it just suffers from being the sequel to a truly extraordinary game that could never really live up to the original. Against many other JRPGs it holds up well, and most of the elements that made the first one great were still present in the second. It also introduces some concepts that I thought worked really well, like camping. Camping was a mechanic that was very useful without becoming cheesy. It allowed for a crafting system to upgrade weapons and armor with materials you found throughout the world, a cooking system where you could make food to provide stat boosts (occasionally with balancing negative effects) to your party, and also served as a saving system. But one of its really significant aspects was that it gave you an opportunity for conversation between party members to really help flesh-out their backgrounds. The characters from both of these games are so pivotal to the stories, and knowing them better is a real treat as you play through. The characters from both games remain some of my favorites throughout all of the games I've played.