The Legend of Dragoon

Japan Studio's solo venture into JRPGs began with The Legend of Dragoon, which added transformations and an upgrade system to SMRPG's timing-driven combat. These simple chain combos improve via use-based mastery and carry a light degree of risk (by potentially triggering counterattacks which require different inputs), with items and transform-only skills playing the role of magic. But if the goal was to inject more user interaction into flashy, cinematic turn-based battling, its realization nevertheless fails to change its narrow and samey nature, featuring: At best, a set of tricky rhythm challenges that laid the foundations for Shadow Hearts - and at worst, a looping series of easy one-button microgames. The real highlight - ultimately, turns out to be its environments, whose variety of pre-rendered backgrounds and camera angles establish them as capable Squaresoft disciples. Other aspects testify to that production talent (i.e. cutscenes & animations), while the rest range from inept (dialogue, plot) to standard fare (dungeons & characters), yielding a traditional slow-burn adventure that's visually impressive but a little plain.

Classic PS1 RPG that combines turn-based combat with rhythm game elements which is its most defining feature, and it's definitely a nice gimmick.

While random encounters are usually the tedious part of RPGs, the combination of the game telling you (if you want it to) when you get the next encounter and the combat system being so unique makes you not mind them too much, sometimes you may even want to see encounters so that you can level these rhythm-based skills called additions, and trying to master them is fun since each of them are unique and have different rhythm to them which makes you want to see what you get next by leveling them up.

Apart from the combat however, The Legend of Dragoon falls on the more generic side of RPGs as the story and the characters aren't that interesting and if you didn't know it was a JRPG, it's fairly easy to mix it being western game instead with its lore and presentation - It got me at least until I hit the credits.

Graphically the game looks fairly dated as well considering its release being at the middle of the console's life span. The characters and backgrounds look generally good but some of the monsters are a bit comical looking with the low-poly models like "Wounded Bear" which looks less of a bear than Tekken 1 Kuma; In fact if you don't look at the name you may confuse it with rock golem when you first encounter it.

Despite its faults, it's still a fun game that is a little carried by its combat system.