Looking Back: Legend of Legaia

Talking about The Legend of Dragoon last week got me thinking about another “Legend” game, and that game happens to be Legend of Legaia. Now these two games have very little in common other than the fact that they are both amazingly well done games. One thing they do have in common though is that they both sought to change up the classic RPG gameplay. Dragoon did it with the combo timing system, Legaia went about it through the combo input system. Each character is given a selection of 4 physical attacks during combat. High, Low, Left, Right, these were the four simple commands you could input into your action bar which has a limited amount of space for you to input combos. Now that may seem like a boring tedious system, but its not, using this system you can unlock tons and tons of combos for each character ranging from regular “Arts” up to “Miracle Arts” which are about 40 hit combos. The monsters in Legaia also responded to this system and fought in a similar way and they also were realistic about it too, for example, flying monsters do not get hit with low kicks and ground based enemies who are very low to the ground don’t get hit with high kicks. So depending on the enemy you face you have to change your combat style up, now yes there are a few Arts that are pretty good all around if you want to be lazy but in order to perfect the system you have to use a wide variety of combos and tactics to win your fights, especially some of the later boss fights.

Legaia had a wonderful story that I enjoyed so very much even though it was a typical “save the world from the ultimate evil” kind of thing it was just so well executed that I couldn’t get enough. The game is incredibly deep and you can find things to do that aren’t necessarily part of the story but they can unlock special items or different character development scenes. An example of this would be the Tower of Sol, a tower that is half infested with monsters and half normal and city-like, you can access the fighting tournament here which allows you to take one of your characters and put him through a series of very tough fights against some previous bosses which you will need to be very high leveled if you want to have a chance. The tournament was probably one of my favorite parts of the game since it is very challenging unless you are close to the maximum level or have some intense gear. There are numerous other things that you can do to enhance your experience and some of them, like the dancing minigame, are pretty funny. If older games really aren’t your thing this game has seen a sequel on the Playstation 2 and while I don’t think it is quite as good as the first one, it is still highly enjoyable to any RPG fan, both games carry my stamp of approval and I recommend them to anyone who likes classic RPG stories. Well that’s it for Looking Back, hope to see you on Wednesday for the Red Dead Redemption review!