It starts out with a promising cg scene showing a village being burned and an army unit running through. They find a girl, test her with a glowy stone, and take her into custody. With voice acting. Hah! Take that Final Fantasy! We have voice acting in our game. Neener neener. When cut to our protagonist, Dart, as he returns to town, he is saved from a dragon by a mysterious stranger, named Rose. He makes it back to his village to find that it’s been burned down and his childhood friend Shana has been kidnapped. So, he sets out on an epic quest to save Shana, save the world, save Shana, learn the secret histories, save Shana, and right wrongs. Oh, and save Shana. It’s not a great story, but it might have been alright. There are some interesting myths associated with this world, and a number of the locations you visit look like they could be interesting. It’s really hard to tell, because a horribly mangled translation mars the whole project, and makes it so the story does not flow. The dialogue is stilted, and, when not outright grammatically incorrect, sounds awkward. It ruins the mood when the characters talk with a strange mix of over-formality and poorly-used informal speech.
The characters suffer from the same transration plobrems, which damage characters to one degree or another. The main character is pretty okay, if bland. He is completely oblivious to the fact that Shana has the hots for him since forever, and apart from that, he’s full of hot-blooded determination. Shana is the worst. Literally her only purpose in the story is to be kidnapped and serve as a thing for you to rescue. She’s not even an interesting character. Prince Albert has some interesting conversations acting as the well-educated ruler of a country, assuming you can understand through his awful translation. Meru is actually pretty good, because her perkiness makes it such that weird translations fit her character. Rose is good at being dark, brooding, and somewhat mysterious, and even seems to have suffered less bad translation issues.
It’s a good thing the battle system of this game is good, or it would have been a total bust. Each character has a number of “additions” that you can equip before battle. These additions are basically the normal attack of this game. Whenever you attack, you have to press a button (usually the X button, but occasionally the O) at the correct time. If you hit all of the timings correctly, the attack does significantly more damage, nets you more sp, and ends with the character announcing the name of the addition. In case you were wondering, that's what was with the beginning of the review. The voice acting on the attack names is definitely "so bad it's good." Anyhow, sp powers your other major battle ability, the titular Dragoon Spirits. Once a character has a Dragoon Spirit, they can transform into a Dragoon. Each turn in Dragoon form costs 100 sp, so mastering additions is very important. Dragoons can attack or use magic, and their defense power is doubled while in Dragoon form, as well as boosting all other abilities. This is the only use of magic in the game. Otherwise, players use attack and healing items. In this game, defending not only reduces damage, it heals 10% of a character’s hit points. It’s a good mechanic, as it gives you a reason to use the guard command, which is pretty much neglected in many RPGs. The various additions are really great, because each one deals a certain amount of damage, hits a certain number of times, and grants you a certain amount of sp per hit. They’re set up so that none are strictly better than any others, since even ones that do more damage and more sp gain frequently have more hits, so more opportunities to mess it up. Though there are some that you’ll find you want to use more frequently, it’s nice that you have to weigh the pros and cons. Similar balancing occurs in the equipment sector, where many weapons and armor have special abilities that make up for slightly lower power levels. It’s obvious that a lot of thought went into the equipment in this game, and the uniqueness of the items is another high point. Dragoon form is somewhat underwhelming, as it removes your ability to heal with items or guarding, and forces you to attack in some way each turn, even if the enemy has a counter attack. There’s a number of battles that you are heavily discouraged from using Dragoons in, making Dragoon form less a super form and more of a gimmick.
This game is very long. Four discs of long. Each disc will take at least 15 hours to complete, and probably several more. Part of this stems from the “random” battles, which are encountered after a set distance traveled. Most areas are set up that simply walking through the area will trigger at least one battle. Battles are fun, but they can get tedious if you’re just trying to get from point A to B. That, and the complete lack of any significant customization for characters, or a new game plus feature, or even many sidequests doesn’t help this game in giving players cause to replay it. Thus, this game is pretty much “nah, no thanks. Once was enough,” on replay value.
Well, it’s hard to tell by looking at all the things wrong with this game, but it is not exactly a terrible game. The game systems are balanced, so that there’s a decent amount of strategizing available to you. While the game is pretty easy on the whole, there are some boss fights that are remarkably challenging. If there had been a good translation of the mediocre story, it would have made for a pretty good game, where the battle system carried some of the weight of the story. However, with the translation as bad as it is, the story and characters are pretty much dead weight, and so the battle system is the only thing you look forward to. I frequently found myself becoming impatient during story sequences, because I wanted to get back to the battles. So, as it stands, the game gets a 7.2 out of 10. It’s still not a terrible game, but there are enough problems that I can’t even give it an average rating. It’s severely underwhelming for all the hype it’s given on the back of the case.
Quick Tip: On the ghost ship, make sure you play the treasure chest combination segment until you get an Ultimate Wargod. It’s a very useful accessory for when you just can’t quite seem to get a certain addition to work out.
How I Broke Game: So, I figured out that an enemy called OOPARTS frequently appears on the map stretch between the prison and halfway to the commercial city. It’s fast, and frequently instakills your party members and runs away. If you defeat them though, you get a spirit potion and 600 gold, which is very handy for buying some snazzy equipment.
If you liked this game, then you might get a kick out of one of these games. The Shadow Hearts series (Shadow Hearts, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, and Shadow Hearts: From the New World) has a similar timing based battle system. Final Fantasy IX has a somewhat comparable high fantasy genre, with a world that is equally populated with interesting locales. Final Fantasy VI has a good amount of unique items, and lots of good ways to deck out characters with equipment.
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