Legend of Dragoon: A Year in Flames


   Welcome, friends, to the show that never, ever ends. Of all the reviews and all the features ever run on the site, by far the most "popular" was the Legend of Dragoon review posted one year ago today. While it's impossible to say exactly how many pieces of feedback the review attracted due to a lack of foresight on keeping them properly archived, a safe guess would be several hundred responses; as many as ten of these were positive. (And that's just the ones we received--as you can see here, we're not the only ones to face their wrath.) Come with us on a tour of representative samples, but be careful. It was the rare correspondent that minded his or her manners, and offensive language is abundant--especially near the end!

   We'll start with some of the most benign, including a letter that may or may not actually be a flame.

the legond of dragoon has been being sold for about 4 years now so i think you need toupdate this website. thank you

I think you are wrong in your statements to say that LoD is a shallow and bad game. You just so happen to not like it yourself. It's my favorite game for Playstation and it is much better than alot of others.

I thought it waz unfair that u had given this game a 1/5. I no this is my first fighting rpg but i thought it waz really good. I think all u need iz a bit of patience and a lot of time to actually see wat the game has in store for u. It is also related to final fantasy bcuz they use the same software not bcuz they wanted to copy it but i c ur point on some things.

I got the game for Christmas, and me and my friend started to play it..... it has been very creative and interesting. It makes a lot of sense to both of us... I like the challenge and the characters (especially Lavitz!) Me and my friend give it a 9 out of 10!! We even think it is better than Zelda. So please play the game a few times and consider the imagination that went into that game.... Think of the originalty of the names and the people......

BYE

your review of legend of dragoon was completly and totally wrong i bet u can't even beat the game thats why u don't like it and u must not comprehend the storyline so if u were smart then u would shut up

Hi Nick, I just wanted to say that your wrong. I don't know what game you played because it definetly wasn't The Legend of Dragoon. I wanted to know, what the HELL where you thinkin when you played the game. I have played just about every RPG you could amagin and this was the best one yet.

From,
wouldn't you like to know

Hello

I just read your review of The Legend of Dragoon and was utterly amazed. Never have I read an article in which I actually disagreed on every single point... until now. Not only do I disagree, but I do so vehemently. I found myself playing LoD last night wondering why it didn't gain more attention, now I suppose I know the answer. I am horrified to think that a representative of such a popular gaming site wrote this review. If I were slightly more paranoid I would believe that this was a conspiracy, that you actually work for square and discredited this game knowing that it is far superior to you're own Final Fantasy series (Which, by the way, seems to be an oxymoron - How can you have Multiple final fantasies?). I don't have the time to go into detail and argue each of your points (right now), and I can't think of a courteous way to conclude this, so...

Have you ever played The Legend of Dragoon? Any part of it? Well I am on the 3rd disk, and I think that it is a great game. Plus on that web site that is your thought of the game, you make it sound like the whole worlds thought of it.

From
[names removed--ed.]

P.S. I'm 10 years old and I don't have 60 hours of my life to wast!!

YOU guys should stop bashing legen of dragoon its a well mad game with nice fmv the only reason ff7 was such a good game is that people thought the game was actually the fmv ff7 was cooool but it was the best game of all time u guys should read the gamefaq message board lots of peeps like lod better than ff8 and i know its gonna be better than ff9

Yall some Bitches
LOL sorry yaa made me a lil mad bashing a good game like lod

Most of the above seemed to at least recognize that a review is at its core nothing more or less than an opinion given by one person. Moving on, however, we see the true bile start to seep up to the surface. Loss of faith in the site as a whole was a common theme:

The GIA shines a little less brightly today for as I read your review of Legend of Dragoon
Reviewed by one Nick Maragos...

 

Please in the future if you wish to have a ten year old sports fan write a review for a fantasy RPG..please find one that can appreciate the medium

Hi, i have just read the Legend of Dragoon review by NIch Maragos and I just like to say it is the worst bull i have ever heard. I have now lost my faith in thegia review gaming. LoD is one of the best RPG ever, my friends who own it agreed with me, almost everyone agreed with me. I don't know what his problem is for dissing LoD like that, but I feel that he should be fired. LoD is a great game, and i feel that Nich Maragos just played the first disc and gave it a bad review so he could play Crono Cross. anyway, thats my opinion and now i have lost faith in thegia review.

How much of an idiot can u be!? u gave Legend of Dragoon a 1!? come on!!! that game is almost if not better than Final Fantasy 7!!! why don't u quit writing reviews cuz obviously u suck at it. you are a disgrace to gamers!!!

Your review of the Legend of Dragoon was terrible. If you actually give the game some time it's alot better than u expect. I think if u wanna waste your time giving bad reviews then don't do it at all because if u actually beat the game then you'd see but u can't waste more than five minutes of your time on a good game, so u just give it a bad review. My message to you is get your facts straight before u screw with a good game.

U suck

Well so you think that legend of dragoon is just a poorly made game that has no story line ,well have you even played the game? You obviously have no idea what the hell you are talking about! First of all some of the points you made about the game were not even right, like the main villain of the game was not a white-haired, armor-clad.... awh shut your mouth his name is Lloyd! If you played the game your little self would of realized that the main villain is the wingly emperor Melbu Frama, and not only him but dart's father zieg. Another utterly ridiculous point you have made was the fact that the characters in the game are just traveling randomly throughout endiness not knowing why. Well if you didn't have your thumb up your ass and you paid any attention to the plot at all you would have found out that... guess what they all give their reasons why they want to travel with dart. All the other points you have made were your choice and I can't tell you what games to play, maybe RPG's are just not up your alley, hell video games in general may not be up your alley! So why don't you try something else like ballet or table tennis, and thats all I got to say about that. So before you go complaining about a game you never even played,all you did was just read the back of the game case at the store, you should make your argument accurate and not little bits and pieces of what some idiot told you!

One fan wrote separate flames to both the author and to staff@, apparently suffering from the delusion that staff@ doesn't reach, well, the staff. The first was sent to the critic, the second was the staff@ missive.

How could you!? Legend of Dragoon deserves at least a 3!!! A 1? You're such an idiot! Only give 1's to games that are BAD, you stupid fool! I thoroughly enjoyed that game, and if you weren't such a dumbass maybe you would too!

I read that "review" of Legend of Dragoon just recently. It puzzles me how such a great game could get just the opposite of the score it was meant to get. I recomend firing the monkey who wrote that review. I recomended Legend of Dragoon to all my friends, and they enjoyed it just as I have. It makes me sad thinking that this shoddy review would keep others from purchasing and, most likely, enjoying the game just as my friends and I have. I think maybe the reviewer should re-write that Legend of Dragoon review after playing a second time, with a clear mind. If the pitiful score stays the same, then check yourself into a mental institution. You need help.

Then there was at least one attempt to get the author blacklisted from the industry.

what is your problem legend of dragoon is a kick ass game one of my favorites it has awsome graphicks sweet story and u turn into dagoons whats better

now i dont know if you do alot of reveiws but since u thougt L.O.D wasnt good i took the liberty of e-mailing some major game,magazine, and web sites telling them about my opinion on L.O.D and your f**ked up reveiws.

Several readers decided that if they could only write a long enough letter, they might be able to elicit a revision of the review. Please note that all formatting and paragraph breaks, or lack thereof, have been preserved intact throughout this feature and where ASCII art came into play, every effort was made to ensure that the full effect was not lost.

This e-mail is concerning your Review on Legend of Dragoon. While I agree with some of what you're saying, I thought I'd point out a few major mistakes you made.

First, your comparison of Lloyd with Sephiroth from FFVII. You mentioned that Lloyd was a black-clad, silver-haired, trenchcoat-wearing villain who seeks to alter the world to his own design. Only two of the above "facts" are true. If you'd bothered to pay attention to the details further along in the game, you'd have noticed that Lloyd doesn't wear a trench-coat, he doesn't seek to alter the world to his own ideals, and he isn't even really a villain! He was working with who he thought was the long deceased Emperor Diaz who was in actuality Zieg controlled by the spirit of Melbu Frahma. Lloyd was lead to believe he was working to create a Utopia. You also mentioned that Lloyd was the sole survivor of an ancient species. This also is not true. Meru and Lenus, whom you SHOULD have met if you knew what Rose's true mission was, were also winglies. There was also an entire village of winglies living in Mille Seseau.

On the other hand, Sephiroth's mission was to augment himself into a god by acquiring all of the knowledge of the long-lost ancients. Speaking of which, if you had paid attention to the details in FFVII, you'd have learned that Sephiroth was NOT the sole-survivor of the ancients. He was not even an ancient; rather, he was a piece of the monster "Jenova" that fell to the planet 2,000 years before the time that the game takes place during. He wasn't even a sole-survivor of Jenova, being that the main body of Jenova was still alive, and the hundreds of pseudo Sephiroth-clones roaming the planet.

The fact that Lloyd and Sephiroth shared two physical similarities is completely irrelevant to the major point. If you really want to point out physical differences, you should have included that their personalities were different, their SKILL as fighters was ENTIRELY different, they used completely different weapons, their HAIR-CUTS were different, they wore DIFFERENT styles of clothing, they had majorly different magic... the list goes on.

I'd also contemplate the differences between Weapons and Virage, but I really don't have time.

Have fun, and thanks for reading.

I just read your review of Legend of Dragoon. I must say, before you write your next review, make sure to have mommy give you some formula and change your undies! I've never heard someone whine so much! I've been playing FF since the first game, and gave it up at the second game, cause It just wasn't getting any better! I've been checking out RPG's for years, off and on, and have yet to find one that really grabbed me in style. then I read a review for LOD, and I must say, it looked interesting. When the game came out I thought "what the hell, I'll try it." I ended up playing for hours! I'm a realist, I'm in college, I have a job, a life, and all, but I still find time to play this game when I can, just because of all the little things you can miss/not have by the end. I'm reading a FAQ and seeing stuff in there I never encountered, and I try to check on everything! There are side quests, you can take certain sections non-linearly, and the story is great. Remember that it was meant for all ages, so the story had to be explainable. I agree with you on a few points, such as the translation aspect, it was bad. I loved the graphics however, dispite the monsters being really disjointed, they were origional as hell! I mean, monsters you can't even get in the entire screen without makeing the charictures, mini's! (the devine dragon for one). All the stuff you stated, or at the very least most of it, is opinion. Take the time to say "hey, I didn't like the story, but it may be your cup of tea." And the music was good, especially the ending piece, which could almost hold it's own on the pop charts today as a ballad! I'm not trying to bash you, just your review. Some of us liked the game, and while I know that I did, I know others may not have. But I would never state my opinion as fact for all, including some who may have loved the game but read a review like yours and never even tried it! I'm not sure what is up with your load times, but I think you have a messed up playstation. Mine is a couple years old (I didn't even buy it, I traded a pos paint gun for it) and I have no real problems with load time. Hell, the web and most peoples computers have worse load times than that game. I also thought that the aditionals system was great, an inovation from those who don't want to hold down their autofire and have it kick ass with out them doing anything. Fortuneately, the game doesn't abuse this system. The battles are fairly far between if you want them to be, and the switch off from pop up battles to touch battles in some levels was a nice touch too I thought. Again, this is all my opinion, but at least I say it's my opinion and not that it's true and thats all there is too it. There is more, but I recently cut my index finger working and it is hard(er) to type, so I will end this now. I know this may anger you, but I'm trying to point out that your (anyones) view is NOT the view everyone should have, and that includes my views!

Ive read several Dragoon reviews and a lot of them have been bad and a lot have been good, but yours is a very bad review. I feel that whether or not the game was bad or not you went into these ridiculous little quirks with the games that anyone who just wants to play a game doesnt give a damn about. You people who review things whine about the stupidest things, the graphics werent good enough and so on and so fourth. Well that really usually only applies to the few that spend their only free time playing video games. Furthermore, I believe that what you say is very unfair, most reviews say the game is bad, yet everyone I know thats played it loved it. So Im not trying to offend you or anything by sending this, but I think your judgement of the game is misplaced. The games are for entertainment and none are made to go into these tiny little details. What are a couple of extra seconds for the screen to load? Oh my god youre not going anywhere. If youre going to play an rpg its obvious that time is going to be involved and if youre too impatient to wait a whole extra ten seconds for a screen to load how can you expect to play an entire game of any sort? As for having to guard a lot, I really only had to do that on the first disc of the game. Yes, I agree there is too much of a limit on items but its easy enough to handle. Just stop and think for a moment and you wont have to spend most of your time guarding. Its people that are impatient and want to win the easiest way possible that always destroy games. Personally, Suikoden II battles drew out longer for me then Legend of Dragoon and yeah its annoying when some low level bitch gets in your way when you are just so many lvls ahead you say whats the use? Yeah it pisses me off, but thats with every rpg man. I know its your opinion, but a lot of people go off of reviews in the case of buying a game and frankly you do the game no justice when almost everyone that has played it has loved it other then people who do reviews, because they over do it. I enjoyed the game a ton and thats part of the reason why I am sending you this email, but the other reason is that you dont give a fair aspect, one person says its horrid and thats the only taste left in the peoples mouths. Well I think you should put up a good review and a bad one, so they can decide, but just giving it a bombing review is horrid. Its obvious the game is better then you have made it out to be, as they are making a sequel. The fact of the matter is, you over scrutinize the game and you made a huge deal out of tiny little things that no one who just plays an rpg cause they like rpgs cares about. Any fan of rpgs will love the game for what it is, not all the tiny little crap about it. Thats why people are still making little rpgs on that Rpg Maker thing even though the graphics are nintendo style and the music are midis, thats how fans are they dont care about all the little stuff. Not only that but you added in extra little descriptive words to down it even more, yes you can discuss your dislike in things but its going over board by saying it a FFVIII/Mario RPG/Vagrant Story system gone horribly wrong. Thats overdoing it and I know a lot of people that like the additions much more then even FFs popular limit breaks. Thanks for your time in reading this, I hope you dont take offense to what I have said. I just dont beat around the bush and didnt want to sugar coat my opinion on the matter. Feel free to reply if you feel the need to justify to me the reasoning behind your review.

I was wondering HOW in the WORLD you could rate Legend of Dragoon with a 1? That's ludicrous. The game is nothing short of great.

The only thing I can conclude is that you are a Final Fantasy VII fanatic, which means you dub this game FF7.5 like the other FF7 freaks. Frankly, and I am speaking the truth, I think FF7 stinks. I dislike this game about as much as getting run over by a car, which I probably would rather do than play it again. Some people call it the "peak" of Square's series, but I call it the "valley". See, while many people say the story is great and the characters are great and the battles are great, I just laugh at it. The story is too unrevealing. It leaves so many unanswered questions, such as did Holy eliminate the human race? The characters were either annoying, or not a major part of the game. EVERYTHING revolved around Aeris or Cloud, despite the small roll of Barret's and Nanaki's past. The only way to find out about Vincent and Yuffie is to accidentily stumbled upon them...how do you think that's fun? The battles just blew. You press X...and then press it again...and then again. No skill, just point and press. Difficulty plays a big part in my judgment of any game, especially RPGs. FF7 was SOOOOO easy...I think I may have died twice in the whole game, and once was because I bumped into Emerald going for the key, and the other was probably because I wasn't paying attention, most likely assuming I don't have to pay attention to win a battle. The final battle was so simple it made me cry. I killed that guy in 3 moves. What's up with that? Just get your 13 giant friends to kill him...you don't have to do anything.

Now, as for Legend of Dragoon, well this game DID have its bad points, but nothing to deserve a fricking 1/5. So the characters weren't as good as they should have been. Who cares? Graphics aren't an important factor if you are a TRUE RPG fan. They only care about it being fun and having a story that tells everything. Legend of Dragoon was fun, FF7 was not. The story told everything the player might wonder. The ending reveals all the questions left to answer, while FF7 leaves you only to assume what you think is right. Pardon me, but I'd rather KNOW what happened, then have to argue with all the other "gamers" about what they think happened. The battles of Legend of Dragoon actually require you to pay attention to what is going on. You don't press X once and take off 100,000 HP, like in FF7. You have to time your hits to get more damage. That, to me and lots of others, is fun. No summons=good. Especially when a summon deals about 80,000-85,000 of damage. That's just ridiculous. I like to actually have to try to win a battle, and LoD gave me that pleasure.

Many people say LoD is the same story as FF, but aren't all RPGs the same? One guy (maybe a girl) trying to save the world from destruction, or domination? I can't think of but a few similarities between the games, and those the ones that exist between all RPGs.

I hope I didn't come across to you as a bad person or anything, I just couldn't let this go without me E-mailing you. I had to share my anger...

I found your reveiw of Legend of Dragoon somewhat disturbing. First of all I would like you to know that I and my friends are heavy RPG players. We have played all of the Final Fantasies from 1 on regular Nintendo up to The new Arrival of FFIX. We have also played and beaten the entire Breath of Fire series. We are Squaresoft fans as much as we are Sony fans. Now we not only found Legend of Dragoon to be one of the best written games ever, we also found it to have some of the best movie scenes.

Now I know that challenging your opinion would be foolish, seeing how you are a professional, well then ......I must be a fool! You see I would figure that a professional critic wouldn't be so shallow as to really think that a bit of challenge ruins a game. Yes I will admit that it is hard to use healing magic frequently but I would hope that someone as "experienced" as you could handle a diminutive challenge such as this. Yes I will again admit that another fault (according to you) is that battles may last more than two minutes but when did games become a race instead of an epic journey meant to enjoy? I know that the game in length is nothing compared to FFVIII or FFIX. I beat it in a mere 60 hours, which included all of my additions, Dragoon magic and Lvl's, and all sub quest's complete. No one that I have heard of that didn't use a strategy guide beat FFVIII in that amount of time and yet you would use time as one of the factors to rate Final Fantasy VIII over Legend of Dragoon.

Now let's discuss this little plagiarism accusation. Why on earth would they spend three years on something they were copying. And you accused sony of having no common sense. And now you yourself said that graphics don't make a game so why on earth would you make such a big deal about them? One last thing, I hope that a battle system more complex than button mashing won't overcapacitate the ability of your mind. You yourself admitted to hating button mashing but how can you call such a strategic form of fighting button mashing.

I, as did all of my friends, found your review an insult. An insult to games and rpgs everywhere. It was the type of game that gets new psx players addicted to RPG's and you tore it apart crudely and un fairly. Please reconsider what you have written and reprise it.

Among a certain stripe of fan, inquiries into the reviewer's sexual orientation were quite popular. Additionally, there were certain members of our audience who couldn't resist vicious ad hominem attacks. This is where it gets nasty.

your all punkass bitches, the legend of dragoon was an awesome game, i have had enough of you guys bad mouthing it, me and my friends use to come to your site all the time but now were over you fags, learn what a good game .

how dare you trash dragoon! the cinema scenes in that game were some of the coolest scenes ever, rivaling that of even final fantasy (the most recent editions). how can you talk trash about an epic battle that spans 11.000 plus years?! the hunt for the moon child? the hunt for the "Black Monster?" YOU SUCK GIGANTIC DONKEY COCKS!!!!!!

hey asshole, I liked Dragoon. You're damn well entitled to your own opinion, but try not to insult everybody who liked it. Your pathetic generalizations are the reason I don't like you. I'm done with your crappy, insulting site for good. Oh yeah, fuck you. You may think your little comments are funny, but you just lost a reader. I'll remember to spend my time at sites where I don't get insulted for my opinions. Gia should stand for The Gaming Idiots Agency. How do you like it fucker? Keep your mouth shut next time.

I READ YOUR SHITY ASS PAGE I MUST SAY NICE GOING TRASHING A GAME! YOU ARE THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE ON THE FACE OF THIS PLANET!!!!! OHN AND LLOYD HAS PLATIUM HAIR NOT SLIVER IDIOT! DON'T YOU EVER COMPARE LOD'S GRAPHICS TO FF7!!!! THE MOST IHAVE SEEN FROM THAT SITE IS AL LIES! FIRST OF ALL ITS NOT DONRU ITS DONAU!!!!! AND MERU IS A WINGLY YOU SHIT FACE MOTHER FUCKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I KNOW THAT CAUSE I ACTUALLY PLAYED THE GAME YOU PROBABLY ARE JUST A DICKLESS CRITIC WHO NEVER EVEN PLAYED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IN YOUR FACE GIA, LEGEND OF DRAGOON IS #1 FOR A MONTH.  THAT THIS GOES TO SHOW YOU WHO THE REAL REVIEWERS ARE. US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

I have a few things to say about yopu Legend of Dragoon Reveiw #1 its totally wrong LOd is a Great game and its layout is absolutly awsome #2 The CGs Are NOT Poorly thought out or Hard to understand whats going on...you just need to pay more attention to whats happaning ....#3 the backgrounds are also a great standout to the game either you just don't have taste or you need to check your eye sight <chuckle> also you donau wrong "Dornau" heh heh #4 what you said about additions is absolutly wrong additions can be fun and some can be boring its all part of the attack and FF7 was a great game but its not screwing its afect and the graphics are good as well you just have bad taste#5 the people of LOD are thought out just fine you stupid retard you just like to insult on games that are better than your run of the mill xenogears(peice of shit) plus you are just a tasteless 28 I.Q. also Your a scar on the face of sociaty and one more thing before i close this YOUR MOST LIKELY GAY!!!!!! A FAG A QUEERBATE !!!!! and besides that everyone in my neighborhood has the game and they also think its a great game and your TACKY remarks are so rude its also insulting everyone who bought the game so your basicly insulting LOD fans all around....... bye you stupid homo

p.ss YOU SUCK YOUR DADS BALLZ!

8====(((()=>  scrotum strecter
Dog rapeist   )*( <=8

this was writen by a 15 yr old who hates you gay ass guts

And finally, a letter from one of our overseas readers who diagnosed the review's problem at a nationalistic level.

Can I guess, from your incredibly clever, well placed bashing of The Legend Of Dragoon that you are from the United States? How could I guess because you are a type of person I classify as a DUMB ASS. You are the type of person who writes 20 pages on something while completly missing the point. Have you ever posted on http://st-armada.com? From what you hace said I have pieced together the game that you were describing as an emulated game run on a computer that just doesn't have enough system resources. There were no 15 second loading times. Did you expect Kongol to be a Nobel Prize winning, financial worker? DUMB ASS!! You completly missed the point. The graphics don't matter. Have you ever played Riven and the origional one that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. At the time the game had ground breakingly good graphics in yet still are possibly the worst games in recorded history. I get it were you on the production staff for Battlefield Earth, the person quoted as saying "Screw the script" You, and everyone like you, are what's wrong with the video game world, you are the avarage that makes us all shoved under the banner of Nerd. Well I have divised a sub-banner for all of you...DUMB ASS. The type of people that whine and complane whenever something isn't up to there almost unreachable "standards" coughbribecough. So in conclusion you took a perfectly good game and "Americanized"(took the game jumped on it, sold the parts for money too get a permit to go to the forest to get a stick to threaten the bank teller with so that you could get enough money to buy a gun to beat your self over the head with after you relized that you forgot to buy bullets.)Got the jist of it, eh?

Indeed I do, sir. Indeed we all do.


Feature by Nich Maragos, GIA.
 
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