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Going for a full Ps1 Collection
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
I only have my PAL copy to remind me of how bad gaming can get and not to give up on it like I nearly did because of that game.
Also it's fun ti break out at retro meet ups to throw it on for people that haven't played it. Good fun laughing at how awful it is although the poor unfortunate playing it has yet to survive very long.
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
In fairness I want to play it to clear it....
Good luck with that. The story is so naff and the battle system so devoid of any options and strategy that you'll more than likely give up and play something better before you hit the 40 hour mark. That's the clever thing to do. Don't be like me and clear it
I'll never get those 80 hours of my life back.
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Retr0gamer wrote: »This **** might make it worth it :
Most of the games of that time had bad dialogue.
Like Resident Evils voice acting is laughably terrible
and you would be convinced some of the dialogue
is a sexual innuendo but you play it for the laugh
because you get enjoyment of playing through
the game even tho the tank controls and laughable
bad dialogue.Its the same reason you'd watch a B horror
movie
Final Fantasy 7's Character models are terrible for its time
and the dialogue was terrible and Cloud even gets abused
and thats considered a classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRxtxTfjiq4
Most of the classics on the ps1 are cringe worthy now
and Legend of Dragoon is by far not the worse lol
I can look past the flaws of the ps1 libary.
Theres alot of superior JRPGS on the psp/ps2/ps3/Nintendo DS/
But this was one of the best JRPGS of its time.
You just hate it because it dosen't hold up well today but when
you loved it as a kid there wasnt really much better.Most ps1
games dont hold up well you just look past it.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
We can say PS1 games like Resi 1 and FFVII had crap dialogue and the latter had bad character models but that doesn't excuse Legend of Dragoon. Those 2 games came out in 1996 and 1997 respectively while LoD came out in 2000, or 2001 in Europe. PS1 games and had moved on massively. It came out looking terrible with a terrible story and dialogue and was up against stuff like Valkyrie Profile, Front Mission 3, Chrono Cross, Suikoden 2, Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story. Now if the graphics were bad it wouldn't matter if the gameplay was good but they substituted any semblance of strategy with a battle system that relied of a rhythm action mini game every time you wanted to attack or perform any other action. Most PS1 RPGs have a flaw that battles last too long what with loading times and such but LoD was excruciating.
A lot of early PS1 games haven't aged well but by late 1997 devs had the console under control and games were being released with decent framerates. I don't feel any of the PS1 RPGs really aged badly because RPGs aren't really affected by framerates, just look at FFVII, a game that runs at a disgraceful 15 FPS in NTSC yet is still playable. A few have plots that have aged since when I was younger I was willing to think FFVII and Xenogears trying to copy Evangelion was deep and meaningful
I take back what I said about LoD being the worst RPG on the PS1, that honour goes to Beyond the Beyond but I'd definitely place it 2nd worse.
BTW I'd take FFVII over Crisis Core any day. I couldn't stand the immature story with the delusions of pretentiousness and it felt a bit shallow even if it was fun in short bursts.
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The PS was home to simply tonnes of great games, end of.
Sure, it can be argued that polygons don't hold up in the same way as sprites but Wipeout 2096 and Rollcage 2 would beg to differ.
Good dialogue, good visuals and stunning games are not the exclusive purview of 8/16 bit games, as any Saturn and DC owner will attest to.
I actually never mentioned graphics.I mentioned that Final Fantasy 7
had terrible character models for its time.
Heres an example
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
Depends what you mean by 'terrible' though. Does less lifelike automatically mean terrible? I always really liked the FF VII character models. They were simple but it worked.
Well you could argue that. I think FFVII's worse crime in terms of character modeling is the inconsistency of the art. You have the popeye type characters for the world map and the much higher detail characters for battles. It's a little bit jarring and I'd say the popeye models were made early in development and they didn't update them later on, the game was a big rush job remember. Of course the in game models changing isn't too bad but it's inexcusable in the cutscenes were the early CGI done in japan uses the popeye models but since there was such a huge gap in when all the CGI was made there's different quality models in the CGI with gorgeous models used in the later stuff by the Hawaiian studio followed by cutscenes with popeye characters.
The devleopment of that game was a mess which lead the game to being a complete mess but somehow that managed to be part of the charm. It's so annoying how cagey japanese studio's are about talking about the development process of their games because there's probably a hell of a story about the games devleopment.
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Retr0gamer wrote: »We can say PS1 games like Resi 1 and FFVII had crap dialogue and the latter had bad character models but that doesn't excuse Legend of Dragoon. Those 2 games came out in 1996 and 1997 respectively while LoD came out in 2000, or 2001 in Europe. PS1 games and had moved on massively. It came out looking terrible with a terrible story and dialogue and was up against stuff like Valkyrie Profile, Front Mission 3, Chrono Cross, Suikoden 2, Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story. Now if the graphics were bad it wouldn't matter if the gameplay was good but they substituted any semblance of strategy with a battle system that relied of a rhythm action mini game every time you wanted to attack or perform any other action. Most PS1 RPGs have a flaw that battles last too long what with loading times and such but LoD was excruciating.
A lot of early PS1 games haven't aged well but by late 1997 devs had the console under control and games were being released with decent framerates. I don't feel any of the PS1 RPGs really aged badly because RPGs aren't really affected by framerates, just look at FFVII, a game that runs at a disgraceful 15 FPS in NTSC yet is still playable. A few have plots that have aged since when I was younger I was willing to think FFVII and Xenogears trying to copy Evangelion was deep and meaningful
I take back what I said about LoD being the worst RPG on the PS1, that honour goes to Beyond the Beyond but I'd definitely place it 2nd worse.
BTW I'd take FFVII over Crisis Core any day. I couldn't stand the immature story with the delusions of pretentiousness and it felt a bit shallow even if it was fun in short bursts.
Isnt Legend of Dragoon known for how good its visuals were for its time.
Didn't the bad review you sent me even point that out about how good the
visuals were.?
parasite eve is survival horror and Chrono Cross and Vagrant story etc had its flaws aswell.
Thats 5 games out of a system thats known for its JRPGS
and back in the day.
It had a few bad lines of Dialogue and a simple Battle system
But it had an amazing soundtrack,its cutscenes could pass off
as an early ps2 game.The character models are some of the best
I have seen on the system and the voice acting in the cutscenes
were decent.I even like its simple battle system.
Like Id rather play the operation rainfall wii games but once
your done one jrpg you move on to the next and legend of dragoon is
not the worst.Its an excellent entry for anyone getting into jrpgs because
the battle system is so simple.
Its a decent game,its not perfect but its still enjoyable.
It still gets 3-4/5 off critics and its highly praised by users
on metacritic.They must have done something right for people
to praise it so highly.Just look on the user reviews. http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/the-legend-of-dragoon0 -
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I actually never mentioned graphics.I mentioned that Final Fantasy 7
had terrible character models for its time.
Heres an example
Well now, my comment wasn't just limited to graphics either.
And your character models are a tad selective too.
The more popular a platform the more suck ass crap is out on it.
The percentage of dung on popular formats like the gameboy, MD, Snes, PS, PS2 and so on is high.
It is lucky for us, from our lofty perspective in the future of these machines, that we can limit our focus on the best each format offers, and none disappoint.
Comparing the Jumping Flash games to each other and to earlier and later games is interesting.
The first one looked, if not terrible, then at least perfunctory, but the gameplay was and is sublime, nothing really evolved a better way to represent 3D platforming in the first person.
The first sequel made a feature of the visuals, using the low tech polygons to it's advantage making it date slower than other games of the time while preserving the gameplay.
The third Japan only release brought the visuals up to date and it looks lovely, still with the winning mechanics, still on the PS.
And there the franchise ended.
But there really is nothing around to compare, and only the Metroid Prime series had gotten 3D first person platforming right since.0 -
Retr0gamer wrote: »Well you could argue that. I think FFVII's worse crime in terms of character modeling is the inconsistency of the art.
I dunno, I kind of like it Experienced something very similar in Fire Emblem Awakening.
At the highest level there are absolutely incredible cut scenes with lifelike characters.
Then there are cut scenes with cutesy type models.
In game you have cutesy sprites, but then during conversations you have detailed anime drawings.
So I count that as 4 different representations of the characters which you are being thrown between constantly - but it does work. Well I quite like it anyway. I know some others have complained about it.
So you reckon in FF VII the in game character models may have originally been set out to look like the battle models? (but they didn't go for it as the game was rushed?) that's pretty interesting. Would give the game a completely different feel.0 -
Look how beautiful this low res image of gameplay of Legend of Dragoon is
how detailed it is and the shading of the grass and trees.
Legend of Dragoon has more beatoful scenery than Digimon world
but look at its character models they are amazing.
The Character models in Legend of Dragoon are just as
impressive and theres another impressive and detailed
background
Then heres a character model and background from
final Fantasy 7.
Heres a voice acted opening scene in legend of dragoon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esznHPru_vU
The animation is terrific and voice acting is impressive.
The soundtrack is decent.
Now heres vagrants storys opening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chO8hTZylA8
The animation is less impressive and theres speech bubbles
instead of voice acting and the animation runs very slow.But still a great game none the less0 -
Join Date:Posts: 50165
Didn't the bad review you sent me even point that out about how good the visuals were.?
Nope, every review pointed out how awful the graphics where. The pre rendered backgrounds looked great but the character models, world map and battle graphics were terrible for their time. The review I pointed to you says that as well if you read it as does every other.parasite eve is survival horror and Chrono Cross and Vagrant story etc had its flaws aswell.
Parasite Eve is an RPG. PE2 on the other hand is a ropey resident evil clone. Chrono Cross and Vagrant Story had flaws but at least they had depth and weren't boring. a few flaws won't kill a game especially if it tries something interesting but in comparison LoD tries absolutely nothing new and is boring, and boring kills games.The character models are some of the best I have seen on the system and the voice acting in the cutscenes were decent.
Not sure how you can say that with a straight face:
The delivery of the final line cracks me up It's even worse in the ending cutscene and the characters calling out the name of their attacks gets old fast, although the awful translation error 'Flurry of Styx' is hilarously bad, how the hell did that make it through QA!
Those character models are a small step above FFVII but FFVII's character models looked a bit ropey on release and by then you had fully texture mapped characters like in FFVIII 2 years before LoD came out.Its a decent game,its not perfect but its still enjoyable.It still gets 3-4/5 off critics and its highly praised by users
on metacritic.They must have done something right for people
to praise it so highly.Just look on the user reviews. http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/the-legend-of-dragoon
User reviews mean nothing. LoD has a rabid fanbase of really obnoxious individuals. Not saying you're one of them because you like the game but those types are the ones that are posting those positive reviews and really rabid fanboys are not the best barometer of quality. As for how obnoxious these LoD fanboys can be, just look at the comments in my own review or else the comments that the Gaming Intelligence Agency review got:
http://thegia.psy-q.ch/sites/www.thegia.com/features/f010625b.html
The critics slated the game on release and rightfully so. Even IGN which gave any JRPG at the time a 9 gave it a seven and said it was boring for anyone but novices to the genre.I dunno, I kind of like it Experienced something very similar in Fire Emblem Awakening.
At the highest level there are absolutely incredible cut scenes with lifelike characters.
Then there are cut scenes with cutesy type models.
In game you have cutesy sprites, but then during conversations you have detailed anime drawings.
So I count that as 4 different representations of the characters which you are being thrown between constantly - but it does work. Well I quite like it anyway. I know some others have complained about it.
So you reckon in FF VII the in game character models may have originally been set out to look like the battle models? (but they didn't go for it as the game was rushed?) that's pretty interesting. Would give the game a completely different feel.
Well it's a theory of mine. However the visual inconsistency in the CGI is definitely not intended. For example:
Gorgeous character models:
'What's wrong with your face!' models:
You have a point about the in game ones maybe being a distinct style, possibly unintentional but it's really weird to have cutscenes vary in quality like that but it's also interesting to see the difference in CGI quality from the cutscenes rendered in 1995 to 1997.
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
Back then I was more forgiving of the inconsistencies in visual style but play it now and the game is like some kind of weird fever dream. There's lots of really out of place areas like costa del sol, Wutai and the snow resort which are in stark contrast to the rest of the game which also has visual inconsistencies in their style. It's like they rendered a load of backgrounds and then had to use them because it would take too long and cost too much to render more so used what they had. Even the story is weird. Oh Aeris is dead, let's go snowboarding. That first video was made very early while the second was made near the end probably by the Hawaii studio which had much more resources available to them and 2 years of advances in CGI and processing power to help them.
It's such a strange inconsistent game and I never noticed it until I was older. The game was meant to be more like Parasite Eve at the start, being only 20 hours long and about a detective in Midgar solving a murder mystery conspiracy. It seems they chickened out at the end and went more traditional which is why Midgar was so well developed and the rest of the game seems slapped together and rushed with a story that totally rips off Chrono Trigger. Even the battle system and materia system are just a dumbed down version of the FFVI esper system (which was kind of basic to begin with as well).
I can only imagine the paradigm shift the game would have caused for RPGs if they had been a bit braver and went with the short 20 hour RPG. Some RPGs need to be long but then if you play something like Panzer Dragoon Saga or Parasite Eve and the way they have no filler they just belt along at a wonderful pace and never get tiring. It's probably the big reason those games are so much fun to play. I suppose there was so much riding on the project they couldn't afford to take too many chances so made it more traditional in the end.
It's such a mess that it's amazing it turned out so well. I guess even though it's about 40-50 hours long it manages a good pace which helps. It's a fascinating game whatever way you look at it. It might not be perfect and does a lot wrong but it's a weird mix of 16 and 32-bit RPGs. It tries and fails to go for that Evangelion philosophising, just like most 32-bit RPGs but it can't let go of it's goofier moments from the 16-bit games.
I've got to hand it to square, they might have played it safe in terms of gameplay in FFVII but that total reinvention that they go for with every FF game was still there in FFVII is how it was structured and it formed the scaffold of most JRPGs in the 32-bit era. Most RPGs built and added to it but LoD just blatantly copied it, from structure and story and managed to mess up the battle system as well.
It's like he designers were listening to the main complaints about FFVII at the time, the fact that you choose from a menu and watch your characters attack. They made it so you pressed a button in time to attack without realising the idiots making these complaints weren't RPG fans and the game wasn't aimed at them. There's so much crazy design decisions in that game. Even using an item means you have to bash the button as fast as you can to get the maximum effect of it. Then there's stuff like the way there's no real spells in the game so every character has an elemental affinity. If you go into a boss battle with the wrong set of characters it's a disaster, not so much a disaster that you have to start again since the game is a cakewalk but a disaster that the battle could last 30-45 minutes. There really is no strategy to the battle system since all you have is attack and when you get your dragoon (which is basically just a sort of limit break) you can cast spells or attack which just raises your attack power, very few characters have spells that do anything other than attack. Defending gives you 10% of your health back which is a good idea in practice but for a game with a problem with how long battles last it just prolongs them even more.
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Saying user reviews mean nothing.....
I favor user reviews over Critics
because they tend to be biased
inaccurate and money tends to
sway there view.
The users are the players and the gamers
which play the game and majority of those
gamers who played it gave it a good review
on metacritic,Some said it was their favorite
game of all time.
How can a big handful of people call a game
the best game they ever played and the game
not have any redeeming qualitys.
The link you posted was full of messages of
people praising the game and maybe they
have a valid point.
There cant be thousands of people who
pretend to like that game because their fanboys.
The pre rendered backgrounds did look great.
But the Character models look great aswell
This model at the bottom of the post
from the game looks just as good
as the tomb raider 3d models.
It has it flaws but maybe people do actually like the game
and get enjoyment out of it? I played it and it was a good enough game,It wasnt my favorite game of all time but It was a decent JRPG
and you just don't like the game.
Just like I don't Final Fantasy 7 that much which is one of the most
praised ps1 games.
Maybe its just your taste ?
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
How can a big handful of people call a game
the best game they ever played and the game
not have any redeeming qualitys.
No matter how bad something is or how critically panned it is you will always find people that love it and call it the best thing ever. The fact that those people don't have a full grasp of english grammar says a lot about them. Welcome to the internet.
While sometimes the critics can get it wrong (say hello Nier) user reviews aren't objective at all. Look at any metacritic user section and it's all 9-10 or 2-1. Something is either than best thing ever or the worst thing ever, comic book store guy style. The people that don't like LoD aren't the ones bothering to post user reviews unless they are trolling (the LoD fanbase is full of fantastic trolling opportunities).
Also the 3D model you showed isn't from the game, it's pre-rendered and possibly fan art. Let's look at some real in game photo's:
Legend of Dragoon from 2000:
FFVIII from 1998:
LoD can't even manage to texture map everything, resorting to gouraud shading bare polys.
Sure you might have got enjoyment out of it, I can't deny you that you did but with all those flaws it might be more a guilty pleasure. I've no problem with that. I do have a problem with people recommending the game to other people that like JRPGs since this game was so bad it nearly put me off JRPGs and gaming forever.
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IGN game Lollipop chainsaw a 5.0
While the community gave it a 7,4
because the gamers know its a hilarous
quirky ecchi game and its easily a 7.
If I listened to IGN I would have missed out
on a lot of good games.
IGN are pretty much terrible anyway. They gave God Hand 3/10 for crying out loud.
Games journalism is really crappy at the moment. You really should never trust a metacritic score. There's far too many hack journalists out there that colour reviews. They're all either in their early twenties and very impressionable or just trying to get a better journalism job. I should know how many hacks there are, sure I did a stint in it myself for a while that says more than enough!
You should never go on aggregated users scores or metacritic aggregated review scores. What I do is I have a few games journalists that I know I can trust and use them to gauge whether a game is good or not. For me it's people like Jeremy Parish, Jon Davidson, Kat Bailey and a few others. I find a lot of other people get caught up in the hype with games and award large scores to undeserving games or ignore unknown games. Just look at SMTIV which is kind of getting ignored with 8's while people I trust are saying it's be best thing to happen to RPGs since Xenoblade. I've not played it myself but the circle of gamers I trust and reviewers all have that opinion and it's a better opinion to go on.
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Retr0gamer wrote: »No matter how bad something is or how critically panned it is you will always find people that love it and call it the best thing ever. The fact that those people don't have a full grasp of english grammar says a lot about them. Welcome to the internet.
While sometimes the critics can get it wrong (say hello Nier) user reviews aren't objective at all. Look at any metacritic user section and it's all 9-10 or 2-1. Something is either than best thing ever or the worst thing ever, comic book store guy style. The people that don't like LoD aren't the ones bothering to post user reviews unless they are trolling (the LoD fanbase is full of fantastic trolling opportunities).
Also the 3D model you showed isn't from the game, it's pre-rendered and possibly fan art. Let's look at some real in game photo's:
Legend of Dragoon from 2000:
FFVIII from 1998:
LoD can't even manage to texture map everything, resorting to gouraud shading bare polys.
Sure you might have got enjoyment out of it, I can't deny you that you did but with all those flaws it might be more a guilty pleasure. I've no problem with that. I do have a problem with people recommending the game to other people that like JRPGs since this game was so bad it nearly put me off JRPGs and gaming forever.
So under every youtube video I watched,Every user review section
on multiple websites.Friends,Youtube reviews and reccomendations
I have heard nothing put praise about this game all the comments
are all positive everywhere and I go and buy and play the game myself
and end up liking it and you havent considered that maybe that you just
didnt like the game but a lot of other people do and that they arent wrong
or fanboys for liking the game.
I understand if you dont like the game because peoples opinions differ.
But you cant tell thousands of people their wrong because you dont like
the game they love.
Its not a guilty pleasure.I liked the game.
I played Final Fantasy 8 and 9 and legend
of Dragoon is visually more pleasing.
Nier is an amazing game I complete it years ago,I have to
finish the alternative ending some time.0 -
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Join Date:Posts: 50165
Yes I would say they are wrong. Youtube reviewers are ordinary people with a camera and are definitely not an authority on videogaming tastes. Youtube comments and user reviews are a cesspit. I'm going to sound like a total hipster but screw it because it's true, the common consensus about something is usually not a barometer of taste. If it was the dirty dancing is one of the greatest movies ever made.
I do however understand why people can like it and it's mostly down to people playing it as one of their first RPGs during a time when they were young and impressionable and would swallow up anything that was an RPG. They might have enjoyed it then but looking back in retrospect it might not be so good. There's nothing wrong with doing that but it amazes me that so many people will defend their views on something when they were younger and not change their mind (that's not to say everything you look back on in retrospect is automatically crap). I can tell you now looking back on my collection of music from the time I wasn't a barometer of taste during the PS1 days (I played LoD in 2003). Kat Bailey, who I would consider to be the best journalist around when it comes to RPGs, doesn't like the game either but did write a great piece trying to understand the love the game has, it's worth a read: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/02/understanding-the-legend-of-dragoon/
Of course I can't tell you what you did or did not enjoy, if this comes across as a bit argumentative it isn't. I'm just debating with you, so don't take it personal. I enjoy doing this I just don't understand how you can say the graphics in the game are good if you compare it to games that came out even 2 or three years beforehand let alone games from 1999/2000 or deny that the game has flaws. People can enjoy games with flaws in them, hell Fragile Dreams is one of my favourite games this gen, it's just that the ones that LoD commits are sins to me
As for Nier, you've not played New Game +??? You need to get on that, it totally changes the game, it's the best thing about it!
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The fact that he stands over the Zelda CDi games so much worries me somewhat... :pac:
Another reason not to listen to youtubers and populist games journalism. They might be flawed and not the best games ever but they are pretty good, far from contenders for the worst game ever lists. The third game that most of them seem to say is good is however one of the worst games ever made. It's pretty obvious they never played the games or at least never played them on original hardware.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQc7o2rm7po
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