Legend of Dragoon can be best summed up in the phrase "Sony's Answer to Final Fantasy." Their stylistic choices were clearly meant to invoke the spirit of that series. The game is set in the "Fantasy Medieval" land of Endiness, 11000 years after the Dragon Campaign, where Humans won their freedom from the oppressive Winglies. Ever since then, the Moon that Never Sets has hovered over the horizon, and watches over the land. The legend has it that every 108 years, the Moon Child is born, and will give a great blessing to the world, but instead, the Black Monster descends upon the world, and wreaks destruction at its whim. As the story begins, we see our two main characters. A mysterious swordswoman named Rose, and our assumed protagonist, Dart.

The graphics in LoD are a somewhat mixed bag. The polygons are fairly substandard by today's comparative measurements. They are about on par with FFVII, but considering that LoD's polygons are as good as a game that's been outdated for years is far from complementary. The CG sequences are nicely done, and I actually liked the choice of illustrating history by showing images of the relief carvings from the ancient days. That was a nice stylistic touch. The Dragoon transformations are interesting, and if you don't want to see the long versions, you can turn them off. The Dragoon magic spells are where the real Special effects wizards came into play. Spells such as Dart's Final Burst, Rose's Death Dimension, and all of the Dragon summon spells are most stylish.

The music mostly fits well with the areas, but none of it is too memorable. The boss music is nice, but for some reason, I just can't think of any descriptive words, good or bad to attach to LoD's musical score. The battle sound effects are nice, but the voice acting is usually fairly bland. The fact that they shout out the name of their additions after performing them gets old quick, and some of the CG sequences offer up rather laughable voice acting. It's read with little emotion at times.

While playing the four disc game, I had many opinions about it. During pretty much the entirety of the first disc, and the greater portion of the second, I was completely overwhelmed by two thoughts:

a) This has got to be one of the most derivative and cliched storylines I've ever seen.
b) The translators must have been on crack.

It's not that any one part of the storyline was a blatant rip-off of anything I'd seen previously, but the whole affair just had this air of "Déjà vu" about it. I couldn't help thinking that I'd seen and done it all before. The characters are more or less walking cliches, and I found it very hard to feel anything for any of them with the sole exception being Rose. For a long time, I was playing the game under the impression that perhaps this storyline is so over the top in its cheese factor that it is in fact a satire aimed at lampooning the desires of the "hardcore 3D suX0rs" crowd. After all, they've been demanding a return to the "good old days," so why not go all out? And you can't accuse this one of putting graphics over gameplay, considering that its graphics aren't all that spectacular either. They even let the translators in on their little idea, and so the translators did a job that would make the old 8 and 16 bit titles blush with pride!

However, this little theory of mine sort of fell through when I reached Disc 3, when the storyline actually began to get interesting. I kept repeating the question "Why did you take so long to show any semblance of depth?" All of the mythology and history set forth so awkwardly at first begins to come together in a good way once you reach that point. It's a real shame, though, because the average gamer would likely give up on (and I might have to say rightly so, despite the fact that I ended up liking the game) long before it truly shows its worth. Or worse still, that they're so underwhelmed by the beginning that they can't put it aside to appreciate the latter half.

Another interesting notion is that this game's storyline was an experiment. Because, despite Dart being the character you control, the notion that this game is primarily about him and his would-be love interest Shana is merely a façade. The true main character is someone else. I ended up appreciating that from the standpoint of a writer. The thing that bothered me in the end, though, is that the Dragon Campaign 11000 years ago seems far more interesting than the story you play through in the present day of Endiness. If there were to be a sequel to this game, I personally would hope it takes place in the past.

The gameplay is a fairly chewy little morsel that served to keep me interested in the game through the first two discs of languishing storyline, until it was good enough to stand on its own. When you do a normal attack, you're prompted to attempt an "Addition." Additions can increase in power by up to five skill levels… one for each 20 successful attempts. The experience is reminiscent of Mario RPG, except that in MRPG, the combos were weapon dependent. New additions are gained at experience levels.

Each addition requires you to press the attack button just as the character strikes, in order to initiate another strike. Different additions have a different maximum number of strikes, and the timing is different for each. Enemies can attempt to counterattack during your additions, in which case you press the O button instead of the X when you strike them. In human form, you have no spells. You can carry magical expendable items, though, that inflict elemental damage. Rapidly pressing the X button during the casting animation will increase the damage on these items.

The Healing items are well executed in this game, because they don't return a set number of HP. Normal potions recover 50% of max HP, and better ones restore it fully. There is no such thing as an outdated healing item in this game, and that makes every purchase worthwhile. Another, secondary method of healing is that every time you "Defend" you receive 10% of your Max HP back. This gives defending a whole new usefulness, since you don't ever want to let your HP fall too low, just defend while you're healthy, and you'll tend to stay that way.

The characters don't truly have "Magic" until they become a Dragoon. Every time you do an addition, you gain SP, and for every 100 SP you accumulate, you can become a Dragoon for 1 turn, up to a maximum number of turns equal to the Dragoon level. When all characters in battle have maxed out their SP, they can perform a special that will turn all the characters into Dragoons, and give the field an elemental enchantment that strengthens the one who initiated the change, and weakens their opposite element. In almost all cases, Dragoons are far stronger on the offense and defense than in their human form, but they cannot use items (even healing items), and they cannot Defend… that's bad news if you don't have a Dragoon with healing Magic and you're all stuck in Dragoon mode. Later on, proper strategy is required to win fights, and a good deal of that strategy comes from finding what equipment works best overall to shore up any weaknesses the character may have.

An interesting idea in this game is that GP is rather rare, which means smart players will look for all the hidden chests they can. Most of the best stuff is available in chests if you just look for them, and it's a lot easier than fighting a million random battles to get enough money to outfit your entire party. Saving money early allows you to splurge later, when it's handy to do so. Also, there is very little EXP gained from random enemies. Instead, you usually don't level up until you've fought a boss. And the game is paced well enough that you should never have a problem beating bosses at the level you meet them.

In the end, while the parts that go into LoD aren't particularly spectacular, they were tied up in a manner that made the experience more worthwhile than less, and left me more satisfied than not.