I recently went back and finished Legend of the Dragoon on my Raspberry Pi recently. Never finished the game back in the day, had an unfortunate memory card erasure due to an ex-girlfriend. Sadly I came away not all that impressed, I don't think the game holds up as well as people say it has.
The combat was a bit of a twist on the old turn based combat of JRPGs at the time, but after awhile it becomes rote and dull imo.
The Dragoon attacks are rather annoying too, especially if you level your characters up enough. You get to a point in the game where your normal Addition attacks are far superior to Dragoon attacks, which makes no sense. Gotta wonder if they even tested that out end-game.
The dialogue is a bit weak at times, and there are a number of similarities to FF7's plot which makes the game feel a bit cheap.
I wouldn't go so far to say it was a bad game even in hindsight if you consider the era it came from, I just think people have looked at it with nostalgia goggles a bit too much and have overstated it's value.
I'm currently replaying Chrono Cross next as I've been leading my daughter through Chrono Trigger and I figured it was a good move from Legend of the Dragoon. For all the vitriol Chrono Cross gets being tied to Chrono Trigger I find it to be a pretty decent game at the end of the day.
There's just a ton of characters and some are fleshed out decently, although there are definitely a lot of throw-a-ways with a cast of 45 playable party members. It's hard not to find several favorites with that many to choose from.
Much like LotD the combat isn't straight forward turn based attacks as you have some choices to make in how you use your stamina, but the nice thing is I don't have to worry about timing unlike LotD. If I'm tired and can't be arsed to get the timings right I can just enjoy the game without having to worry about it.
As far as other features the Magic is effective and doesn't have long ass animations like LotD.
The dialogue is interesting because it can change based on which of the 45 members you've included in your party in that moment.
The antagonists and the plot are intriguing, which is more than I can say of the unclear nature of Lloyd (Sephiroth clone?) and Melbu Frahma (Weird fucking name) from LotD.
The transitions from the map/overworld to the battle screen aren't quite as long in Chrono Cross too...in LotD it can drag often times as they have a pixelated blur effect going into the battle screen...and then the camera spins around showing you the enemies and the terrain, and then it finally flips around and shows you the menu after a 10 second montage. Having a 10 second montage like this before every fight gets tedious.
Other than replaying CC I've also been dabbling with 7 Days to Die again which just released Alpha 20. I'm playing on a server with some friends. One of them has a mod with some Quality of Life additions added like fishing traps, some added drinks, and a few other things found in other mods. Nothing game breaking, it's all pretty balanced.
