Hrm. The graphics in Legend of Dragoon are definitely a mixed bag. The backgrounds are your typical static 3D renders, with some animation in various screens. On the whole, they actually look quite nice and detailed. They may feel a little too computer generated, not quite alive, but they are pretty pleasing to the eye overall. The character models, on the other hand, are mediocre at best. Blocky and chunky, they remind me more of poorly-made Final Fantasy VII models than anything else. And the first time I faced the snake-boss, with his sausage-link body, I laughed. It looked that stupid. Not all the models are terrible -- some look pretty cool, notably a few of the later bosses -- but as a general rule, they are sub-par.

The sound in the game leaves something to be desired as well. The battle music drove me up the friggin’ wall after hearing it the first few times, and it didn’t help that battles have a good ten second load time. Argh! The rest of the music ranges from irritating to simply forgettable. Nothing hummable, toe-tappable, or interesting presented itself to me in the game. As for the sound effects, they’re standard slices and shouts and booms and whatnot. Everything you’d expect. The voice acting in the battles deserves special note -- you’ll find that a given character’s voice acting bits don’t even sound like they’re said by the same person at times. They’re not terrible, but they certainly failed to impress me. And if I hear “Spinning Cane” one more time, I’ll have to scream.

Making me play this game again would be tantamount to screaming as well. For a FMV epic, in the grand Final Fantasy VII style, Legend of Dragoon leaves a whole lot to be desired. Fun gameplay would be a neat thing to have, for one. A translation that didn’t make your eyes bleed would be another plus. And a lack of hackneyed plots would be a winner as well. But let’s go over some of this one step at a time, pointing out the game’s strengths (er?) and flaws.

You are Clo..er, Stinge... um, Dart, the Generic Tousle-Haired Male Lead, out to save the world and get the girl. This is presented to you at the start of the game, and although Legend of Dragoon tries to throw you a curveball once or twice throughout the four discs, as a general rule you’re going to be guessing what’ll happen next before the game bothers to tell you. Nothing new, interesting, or exciting ever really presents itself in the game’s plot. Dragons as big scary war machines? Imagine. Weird ninja character? Never! Believe me, you’ve seen and heard it all before.

And then there’s the translation. The text in this game is a throwback to the dog days of Japanese to English translations. I’d compare it to Final Fantasy 2/IV’s with its stilted writing. But at least every once in a while, FF2 had a line that was (unintentionally, mind you) funny. (“Spoony bard,” anyone?) Legend of Dragoon reads like someone took an Japanese to English dictionary, did one-to-one correlations, and then mixed the sentence structure up into a rough semblance of how English should be. It doesn’t work, and after seeing games like Vagrant Story and Legend of Mana, you’re going to be wincing every time there’s a long dialogue.

Last, and most certainly not least, comes the gameplay. In an attempt to make the fights more than a “press X until the battle’s over” experience, Legend of Dragoon has what is termed “Additions.” When you attack an enemy, a box spirals into the center of the screen. When it matches a box already in the center, you tap X (or, on the occasions where the box is red, O). Do this enough times in sequence, at the right times, and you deliver a stronger blow to the enemy. The first few times you do this, it’s actually pretty damned cool. It keeps the battles fresh and interesting, as you perfect your Addition technique.

Then you get ten hours into the game, and it just gets worse. Pretty soon, you’re dreading every random encounter, because it means that you’re going to have to bust it PaRappa-style if you don’t want your party to get whomped by the baddies. This is most definitely irritating as hell. A hint: stick with some of the beginning Additions. They’re simpler, take less time to dish out, and often after leveling up, are better than the later ones. Not that you’ll be wanting to do it for long. Sure, you get the ability to turn into Dragoons later in the game, and deal nifty special damage, but do you really want to invest that much time into this game?

The only real difficulty in Legend of Dragoon is sticking with it. You’ll be bored with the plot, bored with the rhythm-game battles, and bored with the characters before you finish the first disc -- and then you’re almost nowhere in the game. Sure, cool FMVs start cropping up soon afterwards, but the cost is too great to even bother getting to it. The game itself is generally quite easy, although some of the boss fights are absolutely interminable as the game brings attack-heal-attack-heal to its most literal interpretation.

The controls in the game itself are simple enough to learn, being standard RPG button presses. A rather cool feature is a little arrow that floats over your head when you’re in the field. When it turns yellow, a battle is soon to occur, and when it turns red, you’d better get ready. It’s a nice visual warning of the imminent battles, but you’ll start loathing its color-changes once you get tired of the battles. And as stated before, the actual mechanics of battles themselves soon become taxing.

I’ve played worse RPGs -- Beyond the Beyond springs to mind, as does Blaze & Blade for the PC. But Legend of Dragoon is no Final Fantasy VII killer. It’s a trite game, with a trite battle system and a dull set of characters. A better translation would have helped, but not much. In the end, your money is better spent on a decent RPG. Legend of Dragoon is nothing more than a poor knock-off, mediocre on all counts, and downright bad on some. Unless you have to have every RPG for the system, feel free to steer clear.