The Legend of Dragoon is held in very high regard by Sony stalwarts, a JRPG developed in-house for the original PlayStation.
While it never achieved the same success as other games of that era, it’s retained a cult status, and you still see calls from fans today for Sony to return to the land of Endiness.
Now, fans can say that Mark Cerny, lead system architect for the PS4 and PS5, ranks among their number.
Speaking on the My Perfect Console podcast, Cerny fondly recalls The Legend of Dragoon, choosing it as one of his games in the Desert Island Discs-inspired show.
“[The] Legend of Dragoon was developed by a group that was sort of a cousin of Naughty Dog and Insomniac,” he recalls. “There’s a common link there through Shuhei Yoshida, who was our producer for Japan, but also, in Japan, he was running the team that made that game. And I loved it.”
He looks back on the title and its charms, pointing out various quirks that made it a rough diamond of a game.
“You know, [it’s] one of these JRPG deep, interconnected stories, and it shipped on four discs […] And you get ridiculous things like an extended dream sequence — but of course, there has to be a shop where you can buy things in the dream, otherwise it doesn’t function as a game,” Cerny says.
“A character [dies] in the middle of the game […] the character who replaces them is really a carbon copy, and they get all your stuff, and you can continue without a hitch. But it was great.”
Cerny says he even had his office “just wallpapered with Legend of Dragoon marketing materials for about a decade”, so he was clearly a huge fan at the time.
He and podcast host Simon Parkin talk about whether it’s been re-released on modern consoles (it has), but it sounds like Cerny isn’t too worried about reliving the adventure. “Honestly, I’m not that tempted to go replay it because it can’t possibly be as good as I remember it being,” he says.
Nostalgia can’t blind one of Sony’s finest minds, then, but it’s nice to know he looks back on The Legend of Dragoon with a lot of love.
Is this game one of your favourites from the PS1 era? Tell us in the comments section below.
[source shows.acast.com]
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Stephen has been part of the Push Square team for over six years, bringing boundless enthusiasm and a deep knowledge of video games to his role as Assistant Editor. Having grown up playing every PlayStation console to date, he’s developed an eclectic taste, with particular passion for indie games, arcade racers, and puzzlers. He’s also our go-to guy for Sonic-related matters, much to his delight/chagrin.