975: The Legend of Dragoon: The Eighth Spirit – Chapter One

Title: The Legend of Dragoon: The Eighth Spirit
Author: PhoenixofShadows
Media: Video Game
Topic: Legend of Dragoon
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
URL: The Legend of Dragoon: The Eighth Spirit
Critiqued by TacoMagic

Hello, patrons, welcome back to the Library!  This week we embark on a horrible fic based on a somewhat esoteric game: Legend of Dragoon.

Legend of Dragoon was a JRPG released for the PS1 very late in the life of the console.  In North America, this release was actually two months after the PS2 was on the market and everyone was already transitioning away from the older platform.  Because of this, the game never drew as much attention as it really should have, but rather was overshadowed by all the new titles on the PS2.  Even so, Legend of Dragoon was a little gem of a game that managed to do a lot of things right.  Without getting into too much detail, I found the battle system particularly engaging because of the pseudo-active approach the game took.  It was actually criticized for this very feature, since it required timing and attention to the battles rather than mashing the x button until everything was dead, but I found it a refreshing new look at a system that was otherwise already old by the time the PS1 was released.

I highly recommend giving the game a play.  If you’ve got a PSP or PS3, you can pick up an electronic copy in the PSN store for $6, a fair price for a great game.

The plot of the game is a hard one to sum-up because it was fairly tortuous, as with many PS1 era JRPS.  The big overriding plot is that there was an ancient war between the winglies, a magical race who ruled the planet, and the humans that ended in the cultural extinction of the winglies (and indeed near extinction of the species, though some still remain in hiding).  The war was waged primarily through champions of both races.  On the wingly side, they had champions paired with Virage, a creature born from the God of Destruction.  The humans, on the other hand, paired up with the dragons.  This partnership took the form of seven champions known as Dragon Knights, or Dragoons.   The war was appropriately named The Dragon Campaign.

11,000 years later, humanity has control of the planet and the war is all but forgotten.  However, starting in a small village called Neet, the war starts up again with the assassination of one of the last living Dragoons from the original Dragon Campaign, Zieg, and his wife.  From here, his son, Dart, inherits the powers of the Fire dragon and, 17 years later, begins his own journey to save the planet from the machinations of one of the last living Winglies to annihilate the planet.

Read the rest of this entry »