The Legend of Dragoon (Part 1) - Our Village Burns Down, Obviously (Disc 1: Start)
- Location
- Netherlands
Hey, you know what I should do, I said? Intersperse a long game with a shorter one! Yeah! So let's... do a...
How many discs is this? HowLongToBeat says its longer? That can't be right. Right?
...Well, at least it's less dense on the text, so that should make it a bit more breezy to cover in LP form, at least. The time playing wasn't the bottleneck with Trails!
It's shorter, right?
Oh dear.
I have fond memories of playing this in the late 90's. And then never again. Beyond a vague concept that I never got past the first disc for one reason or another, possibly because I borrowed it and returned it before I got very far in, I basically remember none of this beyond a few moments. Notably, that does include what I think is a fairly significant twist relatively early on in the game. Beyond that... no idea. Saw a forum post about a new mod, of sorts, for this game - and before you know it I was two hours in and making LP plans. Like a day after I told myself I'd take a week off and do a Doctor Doom update or something instead.
I have no impulse control, clearly.
The Legend of Dragoon is an RPG developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation (1). It was released in December 1999 in Japan, June 2000 in North America, and January 2001 in Europe. Set in a world called Endiness, the game follows a group of warriors led by the protagonist, Dart, as they attempt to stop the destruction of the world... As usual. Notably, this game includes a quick time event called an 'addition' during many attacks, requiring the player to press a button when two squares converge to do significant damage.
Development began in 1996 and took three years with a production team of over one hundred, and cost $16 million, notably high for the time. The game's use of realistic CGI cutscenes drew attention from the press, though the game received mixed reviews, with critics comparing it unfavorably to the Final Fantasy series. Despite that, it has received a cult following over time, and sold more than one million copies worldwide, with most of those sales coming from North America. It was declared, at one point, an alleged 'FF7 Killer' and apparently had a killer marketing team, though some would say it ripped off a lot of the things Final Fantasy was doing without really innovating. I'd be interested to find out how true that is...
I'm not playing a fully vanilla game here, just to let you know. One of the more significant flaws of the original game is its rather atrocious localization, with plenty of stilted dialogue and crappy spelling and grammar, an issue which affects a lot of old JRPGs of its era - even the really expensive and popular ones. A script mod was released relatively recently which cleans up a lot of the dialogue and removes terribly stilted or out-of-place language, so I'm using that to make things a little smoother for myself. At least I'll be able to understand what people mean now, since it makes a lot of the dialogue more coherent! It keeps a lot of the questionable names from the original game, so not all of the jankiness is gone, but it's something!
The music ramps up as we hear a woman sing: 'I had a dream that I could fly… I can feel each moment as time goes by... We'd never be too far away. You would always be here, I heard you say... I never thought, thought that it would be our last goodbye. I still can dream that one day love will come out from the sky…'
While that music plays, images from the game flash by amid all the weird magic letters, and yet more english text appears: 'One soul seeks another and pledges their sworn friendship to another. One mystery begets the next and the doors of fate are opened.' Crumbling buildings, giant dragons and enormous explosions flash across the screen next, with crystals, chains, and whole towns shattering everywhere while strange fleshy pods dangle into view. As we see the dragonfly-like wings of some huge creature open and the song fades out, a final quoted phrase in black flashes onto the screen:
"You are free to sever the chains of fate that bind you…."
We're left on the opening screen, where a mysterious mural with a single glowing green spot forms the backdrop for the title in blazing fiery yellows and reds: The Legend of Dragoon.
The actual opening of the game is another CG cutscene - this time opens on a village in complete darkness, deep in the night. After a few seconds a mote of fire passes by - and then more. They're fireballs! As several more flaming spheres land in town, fire starts to spread and in moments the whole place is an inferno. Well, looks like we're getting our hometown burned with efficiency this time! Soldiers on the backs of vaguely horse-like monsters rush through the streets, smashing everything in their way to smithereens as they spread more destruction while civilians flee from the violence.
We see soldiers armed with maces and other medieval weapons rush by on their mounts, chasing off small animals and people alike. The windows on a large tower blow out and smoke billows out, and we pass by more scenes of destruction - we see the smashed statues of robed women, a broken flower pot, a cracked fountain pouring water all over the street. In the background, soldiers keep rushing by in the firelight, barely in focus. We zoom out to reveal the town at large ablaze, a tall church-like structure highlighted as its spires loom in front of the distant greenish moon, wreathed in smoke.
More soldiers rush by, but one among them has a distinctive cloak which catches the eye. As smoke briefly covers our vision, we return to find the cloaked man slowing to a stop in front of a few soldiers holding torches. He dismounts from his 'horse' and is addressed as 'Great Commander' by the men and led along, with a couple of torch-wielding soldiers forming an honor guard. This guy is in full armor, by the way, with two feather-like protrusions on his helmet. They stop next to an unconscious brown-haired girl on the ground, and the armored man kneels. 'So, this is her…' he remarks.
The commander holds out his hand and one of the soldiers quickly gives him some materia - or a shiny sphere, at any rate. He maneuvers the girl so he can hold it directly in front of her forehead, and as we get more shots of the moon, some kind of magical reaction takes place - motes of energy start coalescing, and then a beam shoots out of her forehead and into the sphere, lighting it up. The commander removes the sphere and concludes that, indeed, this is the one they came for. He tells the men to put her in custody, then does a dramatic twirl with his cape before marching off.
Moments later we find him along with a guy in more classical magical robes, and he asks if this is really necessary…? The mage says it is His Majesty, Emperor Doel's command to take that girl into custody. Who is she, the commander asks? The mage just answers that's not his concern. With their job finished the soldiers mount up again and rush out of town, leaving it a smouldering mess behind them…
Meanwhile, elsewhere, we look over a verdant forest overgrowing tall hills, and spot a woman in purple-and-yellow armor looking out over the area from a vantage point on a rock formation. Curiously she's only got armor on one of her legs. She must get cold… Anyway, as she looks over the forest we hear a distant cry, and an enormous insect-monster breaches the canopy and roars as it waves its long segmented limbs. 'The Green Tusked Dragon, Feyrbrand,' the woman muses to herself.
She then flings herself off the cliff, bounding from rock to rock to get down towards the forest floor in the direction of the, uh, insectoid dragon…?
Somewhere deep in the forest we watch light spilling down from the branches, illuminating a blond man in red armor that's hanging out on a rock. He's missing his armor on one arm - I guess he and the girl from before go to the same tailor? The guy is busy reading a letter, and muses to himself that apparently war is on the horizon… He hopes it's just another false alarm. Got bad news, son… He suddenly hears noise from the distance and quickly stands up in confusion, before rushing off to check out what's happening.
We soon discover that the noise is being caused by the mounted troops from the introduction rushing down one of the nearby forest paths. As one group of them passes, our red-armored hero arrives and watches them go, only to be surprised by the arrival of yet another contingent of soldiers. They stop dead as they spot the man in red in the street and demand to know if he is one of Basil's mercenaries?! Answer, now! Since they're poking at him with spears, our intrepid hero quickly draws his sword in response, much to the soldiers' shock. He dares to draw steel against them?!
The altercation is interrupted by the arrival of a rather… out-of-context problem, since a gigantic monstrous foot suddenly sets down right next to the group, and that chases off the soldiers in a hurry. The red-armored man squares off with the enormous monster that suddenly fills the screen - it's Feyrbrand the Dragon, of course, but this time the beast is a lot closer than before, and even more alien than it already seemed. It's got a bunch of insectoid legs, multiple mandibles that are presumably the 'tusks' in its description, and a huge mouth. Our hero is baffled - what the heck is this thing?!
After narrowly dodging an attack from the creature, our hero concludes he's gotta do something or he's dead for sure! What a monster! After dodging another blow he sets off running, holding off the monster as it chases him, but only just - he can't even get a proper hit in. As he dodges falling trees and enemy hits, he only barely manages to gets away. Urgh!
As we book it, the woman in armor that we saw before rushes in and grabs our hero, dragging him out of harm's way by quickly hiding behind a nearby rock and shushing him when he asks who she is?! Feyrbrand takes a few moments to try and seek out its prey, smacking its huge head into the nearby cliff and knocking some rocks loose, but it eventually backs away and disappears from view. The armored man sighs in relief and thanks the woman for the rescue. What the hell even was that thing?! The woman explains that it was a Dragon. And our hero is clearly baffled by this. Dragon?!
The woman, meanwhile, muses to herself that it's strange, though… That village could have easily been destroyed without a Dragon… The armored man, confused, repeats that line about 'the village'... Wait, is she talking about Seles!? Then those soldiers were…? Oh no! Our hero makes to leave, but the woman just tells him there won't be anything left by now. Our hero snaps that Seles is his village! With that, he sets off running again.
After he runs off, we linger with the woman for a moment, and she suddenly starts shining with light - or more specifically, something she's carrying with her starts to glow red. What…?! She wonders to herself if he could be…? No, there's no way…! (Are we a special child of destiny? Probably.) Our hero rushes out onto the edge of a cliff to look down towards his hometown of Seles, and he finally gets his name - he is Dart! My god, he mouths, as he beholds the flaming wreckage of his hometown. What have they done…!?
He careens down the slopes, slipping and sliding closer to town all the way, until we finally get control of our main character halfway down that slope. Dart starts at level 1, of course, and comes equipped with some leather gear and a broadsword. He also has the addition 'Double Slash' already - I'll get into what that means in a minute.
As we approach town there's a little pop-up [!] next to the fence, which means we can interact. Doing so launches us across said fence and straight into another cutscene. A couple of soldiers are terrorizing a surviving villager, who asks if the bastards haven't had enough killing yet?! One of these soldiers of 'Imperial Sandora' chuckles and says that maybe if he kills the villager, it'll be enough…! He goes over to kick the man while he's already down, but Dart can't bear to watch any longer. 'Stop!'
The soldiers quickly conclude Dart is a mercenary… but isn't it a little late for him to show up? Dart tells him to shut up, and demands to know what they're doing here?! The soldier sarcastically wonders what it looks like? They're occupying this area, and they're putting these worms in their proper place! Dart is affronted, and demands to know if they were sent here by the Emperor? The soldier answers that even if they were, it's not like it matters to a mercenary like us! We're dead already! With that, he attacks…
The battle system in this game is pretty classic for a JRPG - it's got a similar style to Final Fantasy or Wild Arms, with our party lining up and facing off against the enemy in a similar formation, while a little menu pops up so we can pick what we're going to do. One of the main differences with those other games becomes clear quite quickly, though - every normal attack that we do has a Quick Time Event attached, which turns it from a pretty pathetic slap into a proper attack. Just hitting this guy deals only 2 or 3 damage, but if we complete the rhythm-game style button prompt game, we perform a 'Double Slash' and do double damage. Suffice to say that regularly hitting the prompts is a must…
After handily defeating these soldiers, one survivor rushes off in a panic. Dart lets him go and makes his way over towards the villager the soldiers were harassing, but the man is clearly bleeding out from his wounds. Haltingly he wonders if it's really… Dart? We confirm it's us, and we ask why Seles is under attack?! The villager explains that Sandora soldiers suddenly attacked and destroyed everything! We ask what happened to the truce, but the villager doesn't know. He never imagined they would attack a village like this… It doesn't add up! Dart wishes he'd come back sooner, so he could have made a difference. The villager tells him there is something he can do - that he has to do. Shana! He has to rescue her, only he can…
The man finally keels over and dies, but a furious Dart demands to know what this is about Shana? Hey! Wait…! The man is gone, though, so we slowly stand up. Beating ourselves up over not coming earlier, we check on another nearby body to confirm it's also a corpse, then loot a Burn Out item from a nearby chest - this is a fire-type attack item, basically a grenade which works better for characters with high magic stats. We apologize to the dead for not being there sooner, then wander off to the west, towards the center of town.
We quickly spot another person on the floor in a puddle of blood - and Dart recognizes him as Plos! We rush over and tell the man to hang on, then help him over towards a nearby destroyed building so he can sit down against its walls to recover. As he comes to, Plos wonders if that's really Dart's voice he just heard? We just take a moment to look over the man's wounds, and conclude they're light. He got lucky. Plos guesses he did, but look at this village! If only Dart had come back earlier… It's about Shana, too. She was taken away, and it seems that she was the soldiers' primary purpose here. We ask the man if he knows where the soldiers went, but he admits he doesn't really know…
Before we can ask anything else, though, an armored soldier in silver and red rushes in from off-screen - he's got the same armor design as the man from the opening cinematic, just differently hued. Intent on making this guy talk, Dart raises his sword to face him. The Sandora Captain stops in front of us, joined by two subordinate soldiers, and remarks that besting a private like we did earlier is no reason to get cocky. It seems he was tipped off by the guy who fled!
We demand to know where Shana was taken, and the Captain tells us not to worry about her - she must be enjoying the luxuries of Hellena Prison right about now. Surprised, huh? This whole operation was simply an elaborate invitation! Dart is in disbelief - they destroyed the village just to kidnap Shana!? He can't be serious! The Captain says we're correct about this summation. Not to worry, though, we'll soon follow Shana… Not to Hellena, of course, but to Hell!
[Boss: Sandora Captain, Knight of Sandora*2]
Since this is the very first 'boss battle' and there's only one character we're controlling this is piss-easy, as you might expect. Double Slash is effective in dealing damage, but we've got a small stash of health potions to keep ourselves topped up in case the enemy gets too many hits in. Taking out the two random soldiers is easy - they each go down to one Double Slash, after which it's a matter of burning down the captain. This guy remarks 'That's awfully cheeky of you!' during battle, but I'm not sure what that's in response to. He can use 'Power Up' which increases his attack and defense, and can occasionally toss out a Burn Out which hurts more than his melee blows do.
After winning this tutorial fight we level up, and as a bonus we get a new addition - 'Volcano.' Essentially this serves as another combo similar to Double Slash, but instead of only one button press, you have to time three of them in a row. That said, in return for the higher difficulty this attack's maximum damage is also substantially higher, so if you can get the timing right, that's pretty sweet. Consistently hitting the combo is just free damage, really.
With the captain out of the picture we return to Plos' side, and he concludes Dart is going to go rescue Shana, isn't he? He won't stop us, but we should be careful. Wouldn't wanna die before we can get revenge, right? We warily agree. Plos tells us not to worry about Seles, since there should be enough of the people left who can still move. We thank him, then turn to leave - before that, though, we promise that after all this is over, we'll be back. With Shana. Plos just assures us that the people here can take care of the village, and we should just focus on Shana and ourselves!
If we enter the nearby house a couple of kids rush out, screaming 'Die, Imperial dog! This is for my mom!' We ward them off and tell them it's us, it's Dart! As the two pause in surprise, we observe that the two have really grown up. The girl, Isha, is happy to see Dart, and informs him that Sandora is here, and they got everybody… We reply that we 'got' them right back, so everything is okay now. The other kid, Lowe, mutters that everyone is dead. We correct that - not everybody was killed. There are still people who need his help. We're going to rescue Shana, meanwhile. Plos agrees that we should all do what we can. Isha just promises she'll get the plants that mom showed her and Lowe agrees. The two of them will take care of everyone, don't worry!
Across the blasted courtyard we find a well, and an injured man nearby says it was a nightmare… The fires scorched the entire village to the ground. Many tried to flee the village, and some of them were cut down. He doesn't know how many escaped, though. In the back of the village there's a small graveyard, where Dart prays for everyone… Inspecting one of the graves nets us an item, though, and it's a special one - it's Stardust. This is a collectible, and there's a whole lot of them scattered throughout the game. You can get some reward for collecting arbitrary amounts of them, I believe? There's guides online which tell you how many are in each town, so I'll try not to miss them if I can help it. Carnelia, here we go again…
A guy wandering the eastern road is rather disgusted by us - look who decided to finally show up! How shameless can we be…? Unlike us, he stayed by Shana's side, and yet… Ugh, forget it. Dart should have come back sooner! Shana deserves better! A man in blue tells us that they want to ask for aid from Indels Castle, but they say there's a creature living in the Limestone Cave on the way there, so they can't send anyone. If it weren't for that monster, he would send for help immediately! Looks like something we'll have to deal with later…
There is a man in armor up here, too - this is Master Tasman, and he is surprised to see Dart. Dart is rather relieved that his old teacher is still alive. Come on now, Tasman argues, he's the one who taught Dart how to swing a sword! He won't be taken down that easily! Despite that, however, he is but one man, and he couldn't stop them all. We've already heard about Shana, right? Dart confirms that he's heading to Hellena to save her.
In that case, Tasman says, he would like to have a quick match with us before we go. You know, to see if we even have what it takes to rescue Shana! We can incredulously ask if now is the best time, or agree by saying that it would be an honor… Tasman just tells us to show him our true power! We shouldn't even think about being easy on him! Shall we begin?!
After we tell our teacher that we've learned enough, we leave combat and he informs us that he's going out on a journey of his own soon, so if we think we need to practice more, now's the time to ask him… With everything done, though, we head out of town and onto the world map…
Before we get there, though, we cut away to Hellena Prison, which is apparently located on a huge pillar of rock some distance away from the land, connected to the mainland with a drawbridge.
We cut to a dank cell inside, where a prison warden marches in and roughly dumps a girl onto the ground, telling her to be good in there. This must be Shana. We then cut again to the middle of the prison, which has a very rough aesthetic, with tunnels and chasms carved into the monolithic rock, and then covered over with layers upon layers of rough woodwork, including rickety bridges, rather unstable-looking roof supports, and thin walkways without balustrades next to deep pits. OSHA would have a field day. Besides a couple soldiers, we can spot two figures standing on a central wooden bridge - one very broad, very large guy with a blue-and-gold cloak and a spiked helmet, and a smaller guy in silver with a dark hooded cloak.
The giant man, Fruegel, wonders who the hell this girl is!? He has a right to know! The hooded man responds cryptically that the world's future rests on her… Fruegel wants more clarification than whatever that was, but the hooded man just reiterates that's all he needs to know. The rest exceeds his understanding. He should simply follow his orders like the rest. Fruegel insists he's not taking the hooded man's orders, though - only His Majesty Doel can order him around! The hooded man wonders if that is so…? Well, he should try to remember this…
The hooded man then lashes out, knocking Fruegel on his ass, and declares that if he lays a scratch on the girl, it'll cost him more than his head! This is a message from Emperor Doel himself! Fruegel gets up and curses out the hooded man, then turns around and fumes, lashing out in his anger and sending an unfortunate soldier screaming to his death as he knocks him into the nearby chasm. Ahhh!
Dart finally arrives on the world map, in a region known as 'South of Serdio.' I think Serdio is the name of the region, so 'South Serdio' could have worked too? The map has several zoom levels - the one where you walk around along predetermined routes is the one we're using now, but we can zoom out to both a regional map which depicts all of South (of) Serdio, and then a further level to depict all of the game world - it seems we're in the far southeast of the place. The only place on the full map I can really make out is the 'aquatic coral reef' in the ocean. Riveting.
It seems this game doesn't have an open world map, as such, but just a bunch of nodes connected to each other, each of which represents a particular location. We might get some form of fast travel down the line, but I imagine this makes long-distance travel a bit of a hassle…
Anyway, we leave the burned down Seles behind us, and now there's only one way to go… to the forest! So far, so cliché...
How many discs is this? HowLongToBeat says its longer? That can't be right. Right?
...Well, at least it's less dense on the text, so that should make it a bit more breezy to cover in LP form, at least. The time playing wasn't the bottleneck with Trails!
It's shorter, right?
Oh dear.
I have fond memories of playing this in the late 90's. And then never again. Beyond a vague concept that I never got past the first disc for one reason or another, possibly because I borrowed it and returned it before I got very far in, I basically remember none of this beyond a few moments. Notably, that does include what I think is a fairly significant twist relatively early on in the game. Beyond that... no idea. Saw a forum post about a new mod, of sorts, for this game - and before you know it I was two hours in and making LP plans. Like a day after I told myself I'd take a week off and do a Doctor Doom update or something instead.
I have no impulse control, clearly.
The Legend of Dragoon is an RPG developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation (1). It was released in December 1999 in Japan, June 2000 in North America, and January 2001 in Europe. Set in a world called Endiness, the game follows a group of warriors led by the protagonist, Dart, as they attempt to stop the destruction of the world... As usual. Notably, this game includes a quick time event called an 'addition' during many attacks, requiring the player to press a button when two squares converge to do significant damage.
Development began in 1996 and took three years with a production team of over one hundred, and cost $16 million, notably high for the time. The game's use of realistic CGI cutscenes drew attention from the press, though the game received mixed reviews, with critics comparing it unfavorably to the Final Fantasy series. Despite that, it has received a cult following over time, and sold more than one million copies worldwide, with most of those sales coming from North America. It was declared, at one point, an alleged 'FF7 Killer' and apparently had a killer marketing team, though some would say it ripped off a lot of the things Final Fantasy was doing without really innovating. I'd be interested to find out how true that is...
I'm not playing a fully vanilla game here, just to let you know. One of the more significant flaws of the original game is its rather atrocious localization, with plenty of stilted dialogue and crappy spelling and grammar, an issue which affects a lot of old JRPGs of its era - even the really expensive and popular ones. A script mod was released relatively recently which cleans up a lot of the dialogue and removes terribly stilted or out-of-place language, so I'm using that to make things a little smoother for myself. At least I'll be able to understand what people mean now, since it makes a lot of the dialogue more coherent! It keeps a lot of the questionable names from the original game, so not all of the jankiness is gone, but it's something!
Introduction
Before the title screen even appears, the game opens with a cinematic of some kind of mural or inscription on stone, quickly followed by a barrage of some alien script that seems vaguely Arabic in design. We see images of armies in the background, and an engrish opening statement manifests in bits and pieces in the middle of the screen: 'When the clash of swords echo, the journey chasing the past ends and the journey to know today begins.' A definitely not Cloud Strife-like blond guy in a red bandana, presumably our player character, stares at us as the title of the game appears. It's stylized with a curved flaming sword as part of its design, which is pretty neat.
The music ramps up as we hear a woman sing: 'I had a dream that I could fly… I can feel each moment as time goes by... We'd never be too far away. You would always be here, I heard you say... I never thought, thought that it would be our last goodbye. I still can dream that one day love will come out from the sky…'
While that music plays, images from the game flash by amid all the weird magic letters, and yet more english text appears: 'One soul seeks another and pledges their sworn friendship to another. One mystery begets the next and the doors of fate are opened.' Crumbling buildings, giant dragons and enormous explosions flash across the screen next, with crystals, chains, and whole towns shattering everywhere while strange fleshy pods dangle into view. As we see the dragonfly-like wings of some huge creature open and the song fades out, a final quoted phrase in black flashes onto the screen:
"You are free to sever the chains of fate that bind you…."
We're left on the opening screen, where a mysterious mural with a single glowing green spot forms the backdrop for the title in blazing fiery yellows and reds: The Legend of Dragoon.
The actual opening of the game is another CG cutscene - this time opens on a village in complete darkness, deep in the night. After a few seconds a mote of fire passes by - and then more. They're fireballs! As several more flaming spheres land in town, fire starts to spread and in moments the whole place is an inferno. Well, looks like we're getting our hometown burned with efficiency this time! Soldiers on the backs of vaguely horse-like monsters rush through the streets, smashing everything in their way to smithereens as they spread more destruction while civilians flee from the violence.
We see soldiers armed with maces and other medieval weapons rush by on their mounts, chasing off small animals and people alike. The windows on a large tower blow out and smoke billows out, and we pass by more scenes of destruction - we see the smashed statues of robed women, a broken flower pot, a cracked fountain pouring water all over the street. In the background, soldiers keep rushing by in the firelight, barely in focus. We zoom out to reveal the town at large ablaze, a tall church-like structure highlighted as its spires loom in front of the distant greenish moon, wreathed in smoke.
More soldiers rush by, but one among them has a distinctive cloak which catches the eye. As smoke briefly covers our vision, we return to find the cloaked man slowing to a stop in front of a few soldiers holding torches. He dismounts from his 'horse' and is addressed as 'Great Commander' by the men and led along, with a couple of torch-wielding soldiers forming an honor guard. This guy is in full armor, by the way, with two feather-like protrusions on his helmet. They stop next to an unconscious brown-haired girl on the ground, and the armored man kneels. 'So, this is her…' he remarks.
The commander holds out his hand and one of the soldiers quickly gives him some materia - or a shiny sphere, at any rate. He maneuvers the girl so he can hold it directly in front of her forehead, and as we get more shots of the moon, some kind of magical reaction takes place - motes of energy start coalescing, and then a beam shoots out of her forehead and into the sphere, lighting it up. The commander removes the sphere and concludes that, indeed, this is the one they came for. He tells the men to put her in custody, then does a dramatic twirl with his cape before marching off.
Moments later we find him along with a guy in more classical magical robes, and he asks if this is really necessary…? The mage says it is His Majesty, Emperor Doel's command to take that girl into custody. Who is she, the commander asks? The mage just answers that's not his concern. With their job finished the soldiers mount up again and rush out of town, leaving it a smouldering mess behind them…
Meanwhile, elsewhere, we look over a verdant forest overgrowing tall hills, and spot a woman in purple-and-yellow armor looking out over the area from a vantage point on a rock formation. Curiously she's only got armor on one of her legs. She must get cold… Anyway, as she looks over the forest we hear a distant cry, and an enormous insect-monster breaches the canopy and roars as it waves its long segmented limbs. 'The Green Tusked Dragon, Feyrbrand,' the woman muses to herself.
She then flings herself off the cliff, bounding from rock to rock to get down towards the forest floor in the direction of the, uh, insectoid dragon…?
Chapter 1 - Serdian War
Seles - Our Village Burns Down, Obviously
Somewhere deep in the forest we watch light spilling down from the branches, illuminating a blond man in red armor that's hanging out on a rock. He's missing his armor on one arm - I guess he and the girl from before go to the same tailor? The guy is busy reading a letter, and muses to himself that apparently war is on the horizon… He hopes it's just another false alarm. Got bad news, son… He suddenly hears noise from the distance and quickly stands up in confusion, before rushing off to check out what's happening.
We soon discover that the noise is being caused by the mounted troops from the introduction rushing down one of the nearby forest paths. As one group of them passes, our red-armored hero arrives and watches them go, only to be surprised by the arrival of yet another contingent of soldiers. They stop dead as they spot the man in red in the street and demand to know if he is one of Basil's mercenaries?! Answer, now! Since they're poking at him with spears, our intrepid hero quickly draws his sword in response, much to the soldiers' shock. He dares to draw steel against them?!
The altercation is interrupted by the arrival of a rather… out-of-context problem, since a gigantic monstrous foot suddenly sets down right next to the group, and that chases off the soldiers in a hurry. The red-armored man squares off with the enormous monster that suddenly fills the screen - it's Feyrbrand the Dragon, of course, but this time the beast is a lot closer than before, and even more alien than it already seemed. It's got a bunch of insectoid legs, multiple mandibles that are presumably the 'tusks' in its description, and a huge mouth. Our hero is baffled - what the heck is this thing?!
After narrowly dodging an attack from the creature, our hero concludes he's gotta do something or he's dead for sure! What a monster! After dodging another blow he sets off running, holding off the monster as it chases him, but only just - he can't even get a proper hit in. As he dodges falling trees and enemy hits, he only barely manages to gets away. Urgh!
As we book it, the woman in armor that we saw before rushes in and grabs our hero, dragging him out of harm's way by quickly hiding behind a nearby rock and shushing him when he asks who she is?! Feyrbrand takes a few moments to try and seek out its prey, smacking its huge head into the nearby cliff and knocking some rocks loose, but it eventually backs away and disappears from view. The armored man sighs in relief and thanks the woman for the rescue. What the hell even was that thing?! The woman explains that it was a Dragon. And our hero is clearly baffled by this. Dragon?!
The woman, meanwhile, muses to herself that it's strange, though… That village could have easily been destroyed without a Dragon… The armored man, confused, repeats that line about 'the village'... Wait, is she talking about Seles!? Then those soldiers were…? Oh no! Our hero makes to leave, but the woman just tells him there won't be anything left by now. Our hero snaps that Seles is his village! With that, he sets off running again.
After he runs off, we linger with the woman for a moment, and she suddenly starts shining with light - or more specifically, something she's carrying with her starts to glow red. What…?! She wonders to herself if he could be…? No, there's no way…! (Are we a special child of destiny? Probably.) Our hero rushes out onto the edge of a cliff to look down towards his hometown of Seles, and he finally gets his name - he is Dart! My god, he mouths, as he beholds the flaming wreckage of his hometown. What have they done…!?
He careens down the slopes, slipping and sliding closer to town all the way, until we finally get control of our main character halfway down that slope. Dart starts at level 1, of course, and comes equipped with some leather gear and a broadsword. He also has the addition 'Double Slash' already - I'll get into what that means in a minute.
As we approach town there's a little pop-up [!] next to the fence, which means we can interact. Doing so launches us across said fence and straight into another cutscene. A couple of soldiers are terrorizing a surviving villager, who asks if the bastards haven't had enough killing yet?! One of these soldiers of 'Imperial Sandora' chuckles and says that maybe if he kills the villager, it'll be enough…! He goes over to kick the man while he's already down, but Dart can't bear to watch any longer. 'Stop!'
The soldiers quickly conclude Dart is a mercenary… but isn't it a little late for him to show up? Dart tells him to shut up, and demands to know what they're doing here?! The soldier sarcastically wonders what it looks like? They're occupying this area, and they're putting these worms in their proper place! Dart is affronted, and demands to know if they were sent here by the Emperor? The soldier answers that even if they were, it's not like it matters to a mercenary like us! We're dead already! With that, he attacks…
The battle system in this game is pretty classic for a JRPG - it's got a similar style to Final Fantasy or Wild Arms, with our party lining up and facing off against the enemy in a similar formation, while a little menu pops up so we can pick what we're going to do. One of the main differences with those other games becomes clear quite quickly, though - every normal attack that we do has a Quick Time Event attached, which turns it from a pretty pathetic slap into a proper attack. Just hitting this guy deals only 2 or 3 damage, but if we complete the rhythm-game style button prompt game, we perform a 'Double Slash' and do double damage. Suffice to say that regularly hitting the prompts is a must…
After handily defeating these soldiers, one survivor rushes off in a panic. Dart lets him go and makes his way over towards the villager the soldiers were harassing, but the man is clearly bleeding out from his wounds. Haltingly he wonders if it's really… Dart? We confirm it's us, and we ask why Seles is under attack?! The villager explains that Sandora soldiers suddenly attacked and destroyed everything! We ask what happened to the truce, but the villager doesn't know. He never imagined they would attack a village like this… It doesn't add up! Dart wishes he'd come back sooner, so he could have made a difference. The villager tells him there is something he can do - that he has to do. Shana! He has to rescue her, only he can…
The man finally keels over and dies, but a furious Dart demands to know what this is about Shana? Hey! Wait…! The man is gone, though, so we slowly stand up. Beating ourselves up over not coming earlier, we check on another nearby body to confirm it's also a corpse, then loot a Burn Out item from a nearby chest - this is a fire-type attack item, basically a grenade which works better for characters with high magic stats. We apologize to the dead for not being there sooner, then wander off to the west, towards the center of town.
We quickly spot another person on the floor in a puddle of blood - and Dart recognizes him as Plos! We rush over and tell the man to hang on, then help him over towards a nearby destroyed building so he can sit down against its walls to recover. As he comes to, Plos wonders if that's really Dart's voice he just heard? We just take a moment to look over the man's wounds, and conclude they're light. He got lucky. Plos guesses he did, but look at this village! If only Dart had come back earlier… It's about Shana, too. She was taken away, and it seems that she was the soldiers' primary purpose here. We ask the man if he knows where the soldiers went, but he admits he doesn't really know…
Before we can ask anything else, though, an armored soldier in silver and red rushes in from off-screen - he's got the same armor design as the man from the opening cinematic, just differently hued. Intent on making this guy talk, Dart raises his sword to face him. The Sandora Captain stops in front of us, joined by two subordinate soldiers, and remarks that besting a private like we did earlier is no reason to get cocky. It seems he was tipped off by the guy who fled!
We demand to know where Shana was taken, and the Captain tells us not to worry about her - she must be enjoying the luxuries of Hellena Prison right about now. Surprised, huh? This whole operation was simply an elaborate invitation! Dart is in disbelief - they destroyed the village just to kidnap Shana!? He can't be serious! The Captain says we're correct about this summation. Not to worry, though, we'll soon follow Shana… Not to Hellena, of course, but to Hell!
[Boss: Sandora Captain, Knight of Sandora*2]
Since this is the very first 'boss battle' and there's only one character we're controlling this is piss-easy, as you might expect. Double Slash is effective in dealing damage, but we've got a small stash of health potions to keep ourselves topped up in case the enemy gets too many hits in. Taking out the two random soldiers is easy - they each go down to one Double Slash, after which it's a matter of burning down the captain. This guy remarks 'That's awfully cheeky of you!' during battle, but I'm not sure what that's in response to. He can use 'Power Up' which increases his attack and defense, and can occasionally toss out a Burn Out which hurts more than his melee blows do.
After winning this tutorial fight we level up, and as a bonus we get a new addition - 'Volcano.' Essentially this serves as another combo similar to Double Slash, but instead of only one button press, you have to time three of them in a row. That said, in return for the higher difficulty this attack's maximum damage is also substantially higher, so if you can get the timing right, that's pretty sweet. Consistently hitting the combo is just free damage, really.
With the captain out of the picture we return to Plos' side, and he concludes Dart is going to go rescue Shana, isn't he? He won't stop us, but we should be careful. Wouldn't wanna die before we can get revenge, right? We warily agree. Plos tells us not to worry about Seles, since there should be enough of the people left who can still move. We thank him, then turn to leave - before that, though, we promise that after all this is over, we'll be back. With Shana. Plos just assures us that the people here can take care of the village, and we should just focus on Shana and ourselves!
If we enter the nearby house a couple of kids rush out, screaming 'Die, Imperial dog! This is for my mom!' We ward them off and tell them it's us, it's Dart! As the two pause in surprise, we observe that the two have really grown up. The girl, Isha, is happy to see Dart, and informs him that Sandora is here, and they got everybody… We reply that we 'got' them right back, so everything is okay now. The other kid, Lowe, mutters that everyone is dead. We correct that - not everybody was killed. There are still people who need his help. We're going to rescue Shana, meanwhile. Plos agrees that we should all do what we can. Isha just promises she'll get the plants that mom showed her and Lowe agrees. The two of them will take care of everyone, don't worry!
Across the blasted courtyard we find a well, and an injured man nearby says it was a nightmare… The fires scorched the entire village to the ground. Many tried to flee the village, and some of them were cut down. He doesn't know how many escaped, though. In the back of the village there's a small graveyard, where Dart prays for everyone… Inspecting one of the graves nets us an item, though, and it's a special one - it's Stardust. This is a collectible, and there's a whole lot of them scattered throughout the game. You can get some reward for collecting arbitrary amounts of them, I believe? There's guides online which tell you how many are in each town, so I'll try not to miss them if I can help it. Carnelia, here we go again…
A guy wandering the eastern road is rather disgusted by us - look who decided to finally show up! How shameless can we be…? Unlike us, he stayed by Shana's side, and yet… Ugh, forget it. Dart should have come back sooner! Shana deserves better! A man in blue tells us that they want to ask for aid from Indels Castle, but they say there's a creature living in the Limestone Cave on the way there, so they can't send anyone. If it weren't for that monster, he would send for help immediately! Looks like something we'll have to deal with later…
There is a man in armor up here, too - this is Master Tasman, and he is surprised to see Dart. Dart is rather relieved that his old teacher is still alive. Come on now, Tasman argues, he's the one who taught Dart how to swing a sword! He won't be taken down that easily! Despite that, however, he is but one man, and he couldn't stop them all. We've already heard about Shana, right? Dart confirms that he's heading to Hellena to save her.
In that case, Tasman says, he would like to have a quick match with us before we go. You know, to see if we even have what it takes to rescue Shana! We can incredulously ask if now is the best time, or agree by saying that it would be an honor… Tasman just tells us to show him our true power! We shouldn't even think about being easy on him! Shall we begin?!
Tutorial (Battle)
We transition to a battle screen, where Tasman says he'll give us a little refresher course about the ABC's of combat. This is a tutorial, of course, and he goes over Additions and how you have to hit the X button in the correct moment. If the button is gray then we were too fast, if it's blue we were too slow, but a white glow is perfect! He also mentions enemy counterattacks - if the normal blue color is interrupted by orange, you have to actually hit O instead or get blasted off your feet mid-combo by the enemy. You'll still do some damage from the hits you landed, but you'll take some damage yourself if you fail that input.
After going over attacks, Tasman points out that swinging our sword is not the only tactic we can use. During bad times we should defend and wait for a chance. Defending recovers HP a little, and also halves the damage we take. It completely protects against attacks which cause status ailments too, which is handy. We can learn more skills by gaining experience, and they can be selected on the 'Addition' screen in our menu. We can't actually change our chosen ability in-combat, though, so we should equip it beforehand like we would an item.
Some additions are easy to use, some are powerful, they're all unique. All of them look good, but we shouldn't be fooled - the secret of survival is to select the skill that suits us. Even the lowly Double Slash can be effective, it all depends on our skill… Basically, the more you use a given addition the more it levels up, increasing its damage over time, to a point.
We transition to a battle screen, where Tasman says he'll give us a little refresher course about the ABC's of combat. This is a tutorial, of course, and he goes over Additions and how you have to hit the X button in the correct moment. If the button is gray then we were too fast, if it's blue we were too slow, but a white glow is perfect! He also mentions enemy counterattacks - if the normal blue color is interrupted by orange, you have to actually hit O instead or get blasted off your feet mid-combo by the enemy. You'll still do some damage from the hits you landed, but you'll take some damage yourself if you fail that input.
After going over attacks, Tasman points out that swinging our sword is not the only tactic we can use. During bad times we should defend and wait for a chance. Defending recovers HP a little, and also halves the damage we take. It completely protects against attacks which cause status ailments too, which is handy. We can learn more skills by gaining experience, and they can be selected on the 'Addition' screen in our menu. We can't actually change our chosen ability in-combat, though, so we should equip it beforehand like we would an item.
Some additions are easy to use, some are powerful, they're all unique. All of them look good, but we shouldn't be fooled - the secret of survival is to select the skill that suits us. Even the lowly Double Slash can be effective, it all depends on our skill… Basically, the more you use a given addition the more it levels up, increasing its damage over time, to a point.
After we tell our teacher that we've learned enough, we leave combat and he informs us that he's going out on a journey of his own soon, so if we think we need to practice more, now's the time to ask him… With everything done, though, we head out of town and onto the world map…
Before we get there, though, we cut away to Hellena Prison, which is apparently located on a huge pillar of rock some distance away from the land, connected to the mainland with a drawbridge.
We cut to a dank cell inside, where a prison warden marches in and roughly dumps a girl onto the ground, telling her to be good in there. This must be Shana. We then cut again to the middle of the prison, which has a very rough aesthetic, with tunnels and chasms carved into the monolithic rock, and then covered over with layers upon layers of rough woodwork, including rickety bridges, rather unstable-looking roof supports, and thin walkways without balustrades next to deep pits. OSHA would have a field day. Besides a couple soldiers, we can spot two figures standing on a central wooden bridge - one very broad, very large guy with a blue-and-gold cloak and a spiked helmet, and a smaller guy in silver with a dark hooded cloak.
The giant man, Fruegel, wonders who the hell this girl is!? He has a right to know! The hooded man responds cryptically that the world's future rests on her… Fruegel wants more clarification than whatever that was, but the hooded man just reiterates that's all he needs to know. The rest exceeds his understanding. He should simply follow his orders like the rest. Fruegel insists he's not taking the hooded man's orders, though - only His Majesty Doel can order him around! The hooded man wonders if that is so…? Well, he should try to remember this…
The hooded man then lashes out, knocking Fruegel on his ass, and declares that if he lays a scratch on the girl, it'll cost him more than his head! This is a message from Emperor Doel himself! Fruegel gets up and curses out the hooded man, then turns around and fumes, lashing out in his anger and sending an unfortunate soldier screaming to his death as he knocks him into the nearby chasm. Ahhh!
Dart finally arrives on the world map, in a region known as 'South of Serdio.' I think Serdio is the name of the region, so 'South Serdio' could have worked too? The map has several zoom levels - the one where you walk around along predetermined routes is the one we're using now, but we can zoom out to both a regional map which depicts all of South (of) Serdio, and then a further level to depict all of the game world - it seems we're in the far southeast of the place. The only place on the full map I can really make out is the 'aquatic coral reef' in the ocean. Riveting.
It seems this game doesn't have an open world map, as such, but just a bunch of nodes connected to each other, each of which represents a particular location. We might get some form of fast travel down the line, but I imagine this makes long-distance travel a bit of a hassle…
Anyway, we leave the burned down Seles behind us, and now there's only one way to go… to the forest! So far, so cliché...
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