Legend of Legaia

"Everything in this one was excellent, except those long, drawn out battles"

I'll review the most important aspects of an RPG:

Storyline: This is this games strongest point. While at first saving the world by finding trees may sound cheesy, the character devellopement is incredibly well managed and the plot is very intriguing. Its just too bad you need to do so much work to see it advance. You only have three characters but they have much more personality than games where you have about 8 or 9 characters (hello squaresoft). Each character has its own solid past and life. 9/10

Graphics: The graphics don't really shine but they are still good enough. Only the seru(strongest)spells impressed me. The theeder one made with laugh a bit but anyway, you know what I am talking about if you played the game. The pre-rendered cinemas deceived me, not that their ugly, but there is about two minutes of them in the entire game. The in-game game graphics and battle graphics are nothing less than acceptable. Still, there is much more technical flair in this game than in(the very present)2D old school games. So I guess its above average. Total 8/10

Sound: I find that the musical score is a masterpiece(for a playstation game). Its got much variety, but unlike most RPG's, almost all of the music is entertaining. The battle voice-overs are quite something, but some of them are not understandable. Total:9/10

Battle system: Goodeness gracious why? This excellent game is totally overshadowed by its battle system. While some might say its innovative, I just get tired of it because of its length. The spells are much too long, while the combos take much longer than a simple sword cut or a fired gun. The encounters are very frequent, making the dungeons extremely long. Its to the point that when you see a treasure chest somewhere a little far, you ask yourself, should I endure 3-5 minutes of battle to get what could be the equivalent of a potion. This game is just one cd and it took me 15 hours more than to beat FF7. In one word AWFUL. Total:4/10

Outside story/dungeon stuff: The mini games are very fun in this game. There is also a wide variety of them, ranging from dancing to fishing and much more. The town/city talking is the usual and the translation is very good. Total:9/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99