playoldgames

First Released : 1999

First Played : 2003

Recently Played : 2026

When I was a kid, I remember having this game. I don’t remember getting, I don’t remember playing it all too much, especially since I didn’t have the 4th disc. I do remember thinking that Dart had an insane amount of aura. One of my roommates had a similar story with the game, and so we set out to play it. And we got to about halfway through the first disc. I put it down for about 2 years, and recently revisited it.

The Legend of Dragoon is the story of a guy named Dart who lives on a planet called “Endiness” which isn’t important but is a good name for a planet. It’s very fantasy, with a mix of sci-fi. If there is a high point of this game, it really is the story. Most of the characters in the game have compelling narratives, but it would be hard to talk about much of it without spoiling it. Towards the end there is a little bit of “Glup Shitto” if you know what I mean. The scifi elements take off in some weird ways. It’s also visually impressive for the time, it closely resembles the visual style of Final Fantasy 8. Beautiful backgrounds, and mostly interesting environments.

About halfway through playing this game, I was curious about who made it, seeing as Sony published it and they aren’t really known for first party RPGs. Well the Producer for the game was Shuhei Yoshida, one of the founders of Playstation. Some of the other games he produced for the PS1 were Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Gran Turismo. Quite the resume, but not really RPGs. The Director is a guy named Yasuyuki Hasebe, who is not credited on many games, the only one I can directly find is an IMDB page that says he worked on the Battle System of Super Mario RPG.

It might sound like i’m telling you fun facts for no reason, and I am, that’s actually the entire point of this website, but the reason I’m bringing this up, is that while the game is good, it’s kind of clear that the people making this game weren’t used to making RPGs. The combat is a great example of this.

Every single fight in this game takes at minimum a minute. The battle transition is like 10 seconds (probably hardware related on the PS1), you want to turn into a dragoon? You know the main draw of the game? That’s a 30 second transformation. Even if you turn on the “short” transformation, it takes like 15 seconds. The additions system of the game makes it stand out, and actually reminds me a lot of Paper Mario and Mario RPG. Attacks are a series of Quick Time events. None of these things are necessarily bad, but they really draw out the experience and make the whole game feel significantly longer than it actually is.

Outside of these pacing issues, the game is a lot of fun and has a great story. If you grew up on PS1 RPGs, you will probably enjoy the vibe of this game. If you have grown accustomed to the modern quality of life changes in games, this may not be the game for you. One of the reasons I was interested in revisiting this game is that it is so unique, a first party RPG by Sony, during what I view as a real golden era of RPGs. It really feels big budget for the time too. Highly recommend at least giving it a try.