The Legend of Dragoon hasn’t aged particularly well. We’ll just start with that. If you are super crazy about graphics, don’t play through this game. It’s about 50 hours long and if the graphics make you want to vomit all over your shiny LCD TV, you won’t make it too far. If you can get past that, however, you will be in for an amazing experience.

I first got this game in 2001. I didn’t know much about RPGs. I was eight. This game pretty much became my life. I played it for about 130 hours cumulatively. I never finished it as a child (because most of that time was spent wandering around leveling up my character) and when I got my PS2 I gave it away (bad move on my part). About a year ago I got it back and started it up. It was like starting my memories up again. From the menu screen to the music to the opening cutscene, everything about my experiences with this game was coming back.

Because I had grown up, I noticed a lot of things about this game’s story and dialogue that really stuck out like a Japanese game developer trying to appeal to children. The game takes place in medieval times but the characters say “Yo!”. I’m not from the 12 century but I think it’s safe to say that that’s not part of their everyday vernacular. The translation in general has some really rough patches where the sentences make no real sense at all. For the most part the translation is the big criticism of the game when reviews get really critical.

If you can ignore all the Japanese craziness though you’ll discover the real gem of the game – the story. The story is pretty nonsensical in parts (name a JRPG that isn’t) but it is more of a ‘real’ game than others. The characters for the most part are believable. They have motives that actually make sense given the context of the world and that’s about all you could ask for in terms of believability in an RPG. The combat is pretty basic with only a few options. There is attack, defend, item, escape, and when your meter fills up you have Dragoon. The Dragoon is your special move basically. The game keeps the basic attacks interesting by giving you ‘Additions’ which are basically combo moves that are activated with precise button presses. The game gets challenging but that’s nothing a little grinding can’t solve.

If you like JRPGs and can deal with some aging and bad translation, this game will deliver for you. For me personally this game is probably my favorite RPG ever and it will always stick with me. I love how bad the translation is, honestly, and how well the characters are created. I’ll play through it at least one more time before the system cycle ends.

4.5/5

~David Eitle