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What The Hell Happened To The Legend of Dragoon?

EDMIX

Member
I remember it being a derivative attempt by Sony to grab the hype train for big budget JRPG's after FF7 ignited said train.

???? FF7 released in 1997, this game started development in 1996

So at the time of its funding, Sony nor Square would know how FF7 would do in sales because it didn't release yet to really argue this game only existed as some grab at hype as if Sony didn't make games or something.

It definitely wasn’t critically acclaimed at the time

20 years ago, to move over 1 million units, someone must of liked it lol
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Legend of Dragoon was Sony's final fantasy to have its own RPG and not depend of Square....

Since then Sony depends of other studios to bring RPGs to playstations.

The game was fine but was lost in the shadows of better gsmes like FF7,FF8,Xenogears,FF9,Vagrant , Chrono Cross...etc,etc

This is very true, I remember going into EB GAMES when I was a teenager picking this up and chrono cross. I ended up playing both but actually for some reason liked legend of dragoon more because more of my friends had actually played it and we talked about it more on the Bus. Almost no one I knew, besides 1 or 2 friends who were all about JRPG's knew or owned chrono cross, but almost all of my buddies who had playstations owned legend of dragoon.

And almost all of them had FF7 as well and though FF7 was the better game.

Legend of dragoon to me was a big missed opportunity that was too expensive for it's first outing and didnt make enough money back for how much the sequel was going to cost being on PS2.
 
I recall buying the game because of the praise... and being extremely annoyed by the quick time event based gameplay and the laughably bad voice actors in the intro:

I mean, an RPG can't get away with Symphony of the Night level voice acting:


but what killed it for good was the QTE battles.
 

NahaNago

Member
This may sound weird but isn't the visuals of the main characters as dragoon too weird to be popular nowadays. I would be down for a remake but I honestly think the game would flop.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
tenor.gif
 

Metnut

Member
FF7>FF9>FF10>FF7R>>>LoD>>>FF12>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>FF8>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>FF15>>FF13
 

Varteras

Gold Member
Jesus Christ, you couldn’t find a lower bar? FF7 is and always was boring trash,

...the very definition of form over function.

the battle system is sooo boring, and not even finished...they didn’t even fix the UI after major features were scrapped before launch

the only reason to play it was for the fmv, and those aged about as well as the golden saucer sequence
63249203.jpg
 

Erdrick

Member
???? FF7 released in 1997, this game started development in 1996

So at the time of its funding, Sony nor Square would know how FF7 would do in sales because it didn't release yet to really argue this game only existed as some grab at hype as if Sony didn't make games or something.



20 years ago, to move over 1 million units, someone must of liked it lol

And if you don't think that every developer that was making a JRPG at the time for consoles wasn't taking notes to see how it was done properly, I don't know what else to tell you. FF7 was always going to be a success in it's home market. That was never in question. Just look at the amount of sales that Sony had with PS1's back when FF7 was confirmed and shown for the PS1 back in April 1996. It was a bigger question how it would sell in the rest of the world once Sony announced later that they were publishing it.

LoD was absolutely marketed like a FF7 game here and it was totally played up as something that was comparable. Which... They're both games, so that's one comparison, I guess. But as I said in my original post, if one was 12/13 at the time and LoD was one of their first experiences for games of the type, I could see fondness for it. I get it. I love Dragon Quest 1 and it was absolutely a frame of reference for my future tastes in games.

Difference is that DQ and FF are actually good and have had sequels and remade many times over because they are popular enough to make it worthwhile for Square Enix to do so. They still exist to this day in many forms.

Legend Of Dragoon certainly doesn't, million seller, or not. 20 years later, all that's remembered of it is a thread on GAF or other similar nostalgia by fans. Ok, I lied, it's also remembered for some cringe-level voice acting.
 

Roni

Gold Member
I was super into this game when I was a kid, I'd have played a sequel for sure. The dragon stuff was right up my alley back then and I wasn't even a big fan of fantasy.
 
They also had people from Japan studio oversee it. There are still people from Japan studio working at Sony. Just the studio itself has been condensed to team Asobi, and the rest of the World Wide global setup they have for international development.

Shue was one of the original overseer's of Legend of Dragoon.

So if he wanted to over see it he could.
Oversee it, sure. But a lot of top Japan Studio talent have since left the company; if they wanted to they could make it an internal effort between member of Team Asobi and Bluepoint with Yoshida supervising, but I don't think Team Asobi on its own would be able to do a modern-day remake or sequel with the production values gamers would probably expect, considering the AAA production values the original did in its day.

Sega was better at making RPGs with Dragoon in the title.

One of these weekends I'm gonna play LoD but what little I've played of PD Saga was very, very good. If Sega decides to work with those fans doing the Azel Resurrection project, maybe some LoD fans can start something similar for that game if Sony themselves don't, and MAYBE Sony decides to work with them officially as a result.

We'll see.
 
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Papacheeks

Banned
Oversee it, sure. But a lot of top Japan Studio talent have since left the company; if they wanted to they could make it an internal effort between member of Team Asobi and Bluepoint with Yoshida supervising, but I don't think Team Asobi on its own would be able to do a modern-day remake or sequel with the production values gamers would probably expect, considering the AAA production values the original did in its day.



One of these weekends I'm gonna play LoD but what little I've played of PD Saga was very, very good. If Sega decides to work with those fans doing the Azel Resurrection project, maybe some LoD fans can start something similar for that game if Sony themselves don't, and MAYBE Sony decides to work with them officially as a result.

We'll see.

Blue point could. Demons souls and Shadow of the colossus is proof. But I would argue that Sony has such good standing with other Japanese studios that they could do what Square did for Neir:Automata and outsource. I think Sony could straight up pay for a collaboration between some people they hire to oversee the project like shue to work with Nomura's team for world building/combat system. Maybe people from Sony approve of certain story rewrites and what not to update it.

But main issue will be will they want to spend the money?
 
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Blue point could. Demons souls and Shadow of the colossus is proof. But I would argue that Sony has such good standing with other Japanese studios that they could do what Square did for Neir:Automata and outsource. I think Sony could straight up pay for a collaboration between some people they hire to oversee the project like shue to work with Nomura's team for world building/combat system. Maybe people from Sony approve of certain story rewrites and what not to update it.

But main issue will be will they want to spend the money?
Well speaking of Nier, there is Platinum and maybe they could, but I can't think of too many other Japanese devs who'd be interested in that over their own JRPG IP. Square-Enix are busy with FFXVI and Forespoken; maybe the DQ team would be up for it but they're also probably busy with the next DQ game. Sega/Atlus have their plates full with PSO, Persona, SMT. Capcom have their MH series to focus on not to mention several other games like RE Village and certainly SFVI, don't know what team(s) they'd have to spare. And Koei-Tecmo aren't really too versed with JRPGs as a genre or adapting JRPG works as far as I know.

With Sony's focus seemingly more on Western-style 1P games and having Western studios handle IP built from Japanese studios initially, Blue Point is probably a good bet provided they aren't too busy, which I guess is going to depend on how true those MGS Remake rumors are. But I also agree that it comes to a matter of if they'd want to which is why they'd probably want to do a simple remaster of a re-release and see how that's received and how it fits in with the rest of their 1P focus before going any further.

Personally I want them to bring back Parappa and Tomba!, but that's another discussion.
 
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EDMIX

Member
. FF7 was always going to be a success in it's home market.

I don't buy that every publisher believed that as if it was a default thing.

Several FF's have failed, NOTHING is a guaranteed success. So we know it was successful now, I don't believe all publishers knew that before hand as some guarantee.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Well speaking of Nier, there is Platinum and maybe they could, but I can't think of too many other Japanese devs who'd be interested in that over their own JRPG IP. Square-Enix are busy with FFXVI and Forespoken; maybe the DQ team would be up for it but they're also probably busy with the next DQ game. Sega/Atlus have their plates full with PSO, Persona, SMT. Capcom have their MH series to focus on not to mention several other games like RE Village and certainly SFVI, don't know what team(s) they'd have to spare. And Koei-Tecmo aren't really too versed with JRPGs as a genre or adapting JRPG works as far as I know.

With Sony's focus seemingly more on Western-style 1P games and having Western studios handle IP built from Japanese studios initially, Blue Point is probably a good bet provided they aren't too busy, which I guess is going to depend on how true those MGS Remake rumors are. But I also agree that it comes to a matter of if they'd want to which is why they'd probably want to do a simple remaster of a re-release and see how that's received and how it fits in with the rest of their 1P focus before going any further.

Personally I want them to bring back Parappa and Tomba!, but that's another discussion.

Level 5 would take contract work in a heart beat.
 

Laieon

Member
I always feel weird when reading about Legend of Dragoon on the internet. It's a game I've replayed many times over the years (last time being probably around 2014 or so), and as a kid my friends and I preferred it to Final Fantasy 7 (which we were never really able to get into). Lavitz is the bro-est of bros, the world itself was gorgeous, the characters were a lot of fun. It's definitely one of my favorite RPGs. I'd love for Sony to do something with it.
 
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They did well on DS and 3DS but IIRC they thought Switch would fail and didn't support it at first. And they're paying for it.

They would jump at making Legend of Dragoon 2 for Sony.
TBF lots of devs didn't support Switch at the start but I think the bigger ones had the leeway to be passive on it earlier. Level 5 was a much smaller, niche dev; dunno why they held out when others like Atlus committed to it from Day 1 (granted as an announced game that's yet to come out IIRC...or did some SMT game come to Switch I'm unaware of?).
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
I was going to create a new thread, but I came across this and figured I'd necro a bit.



This graphics overhaul mod is currently a work-in-progress, but that looks freaking amazing. Now I want to play this game all over again.
 
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