Fantastic review! I'm loving the game, though my respec-itis and stubborn desire to play the game in mostly turned-base "Core" has kept me from getting past Chapter 4 yet.
The different Mythic paths are a fantastic addition for replayability. I'm absolutely loving my Shonen Anime Protagonist playthrough as an Azata, but in the back of my head I'm already thinking about what I'd like to do in an Angel path playthrough, or a Lich. Also Trickster looks like a blast.
Legend of Dragoon was such a weird game to experience in its time. I am not entirely sure I beat it, because despite being in Highschool and a giant JRPG nerd, it was grindy and difficult and didn't make much sense.
I did find out years later that Legend of Dragoon was intended to interact heavily with the Sony Pocketstation, a memory card add-on like the Dreamcast's VMU that was intended to be the main way to grind out currency in LoD. The Pocketstation never made it out of Japan, so apparently they jacked up the currency earnings by 300% in the US/EU version of LoD and called it a day. I remember it being VERY difficult to get currency in the game though, so I don't think it was very well balanced of a solution.
It's maybe the third worst JRP I played on the PS1, behind Beyond the Beyond and Granstream Saga. Granstream Saga is probably the worst, because no one in the world has a face so it feels like all the human characters are horrific anime marionettes.
GB got me through a lot of stuff over the last 10 years. Thanks from the staff for all the hard work you've put in over the years. I wish you all the best.
The recent Katamari Damacy remaster is pretty great on the Switch. I'd really like We Love Katamari on too, because while it isn't as good as the original, it plays around with the central conceit in a fun way.
@flstyle: Considering how little we've seen of DA4 and the current state of Bioware/EA, Ben has enough time to play all three games at a leisurely pace before DA4 is even given a rough release date.
I'd argue that playing DA:I without playing the previous two games makes less sense. DA:I builds heavily from DA2 (the game even hints that you were originally supposed to play as Hawke from DA2), and a large number of the main cast are from earlier DA games. On top of that, neither DA2 or DA:I spend a lot of time going over the lore and the politics of Thedas compared to DA1.
@admiral_crunch: Looks like you can rent it from a bunch of places online for $3 USD, at least in the US, but the only free online a quick search turns up is a site called Shudder that has a free trial.
kodamun's comments