The Legend of Dragoon

Brilliant game design undercut by incomprehensible localization.

The battle system is pretty fun and challenging, but everything else is as generic and formulaic as you can possibly get for a JRPG.

This has aged incredibly poorly. You had to have been there, because it's almost unplayably poorly translated, and combat is a slog.

When I think of generic PS1 RPG's, this is the first thing to come to mind. The dragoon transformations are cool, but there's literally nothing about it that makes it stand out compared to classics like Xenogears or even FF thematically. Battles feel like they take forever in this game with so little reward that the game ends up feeling tedious. The plot is also the most cookie cutter JRPG tripe imaginable. The game has some good dungeons and characters, but overall it's really overrated.

This gets the generous bump into Royalty tier from me despite its generic nature, because damn, nostalgia. I have so many good memories playing this game. I was so enamored of this battle system, turn-based with a twist, loved the cinematics, and if I'm being perfectly honest, I really dug the storyline even though I realize how by-the-numbers it is. I would take a sequel to this in a heartbeat, but fear that it would immediately flop against a modern gaming audience. Still. Good times, man.

Tedious story, bland characters, annoying battle system. I've never understood its popularity.