Sony’s cult RPG The Legend of Dragoon has been fondly remembered by PS5 architect Mark Cerny during a chat on the My Perfect Podcast, although he’s not convinced it remains as good today as he remembers.
Cerny highlighted some of the more idiosyncratic features of The Legend of Dragoon, including the fact it shipped on four discs and extended ream sequences. He described the development team, which an in-house Sony outfit, as “sort of a cousin” to Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games, with Shuhei Yoshida being the main link.
[The] Legend of Dragoon was developed by a group that was sort of a cousin of Naughty Dog and Insomniac. There’s a common link there through Shuhei Yoshida, who was our producer for Japan, but also, in Japan, he was running the team that made that game. And I loved it.
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You know, [it’s] one of these JRPG deep, interconnected stories, and it shipped on four discs […] And you get ridiculous things like an extended dream sequence — but of course, there has to be a shop where you can buy things in the dream, otherwise it doesn’t function as a game. A character [dies] in the middle of the game […] the character who replaces them is really a carbon copy, and they get all your stuff, and you can continue without a hitch. But it was great.
Despite this, Cerny wasn’t keen on replaying the game after all this time, “because it can’t possibly be as good as I remember it being,” he stated.
The Legend of Dragoon was released for the PlayStation in Japan in December 1999, and arrived in the US and Europe in June 2000 and January 2001, respectively. The game takes place in a fantasy world known as Endiness, and follows a bunch of warriors fronted by hero Dart, as they battle to stop the end of the world. Developed by the now-defunct Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, The Legend of Dragoon had a budget of over $16 million and sold the majority of its one million units in North America, and went on to become a cult favourite among RPG fans.
Sony re-released The Legend of Dragoon as part of its PlayStation Classics Catalog on the PlayStation Store, where it is available for PS5 & PS4.
[Source – My Perfect Console via Push Square]