The original "Legend of Legaia" was a delightful game. Started out feeling simplistic and child-like, ended up surprisingly stirring and sophisticated. The graphics fit the style of the game, and it was the first game I ever played where the characters' outfits changed drastically in combat as they got new weapons, armor and accessories. It was truly a gem for the PSX.
The new game sacrifices most of the charm for "improved" graphics, which are shockingly bland. The colors are very drab, the characters festooned with strange lines that are supposed to delineate muscle tone, and the camera just sits squarely on the floor, with very few dramatic angles used throughout the game. It's a very boring game to look at, honestly.
The music...how can I say it? I understand reusing themes in new arrangements, but they've reused the music with no improvement in instrumentation or arrangement. It was a marked disappointment.
The only good thing this game kept from the original is the combat system, and the improvements made there are dubious at best: I liked the concept of "charging up" your AP gauge and your arts bar with a "Guard" move...it required me to make decisions about how to fight every single turn. In the new game, the Normal Arts moves add AP, and the Super Arts and Hyper Arts consume it. With special items, the length of your arts bar changes, but is always fixed, otherwise. As a result, I can set up an efficient combination of Normal Arts and Hyper Arts that will prevent my AP gauge from dropping at all. Entire lengthy battles played simply by mashing the X button repeatedly. Yawn.
Cooking is a fun addition to the game, as is combining to improve your Weapons, Armor, Items and Accessories. With Cooking, you can bump your stats up (and sometimes down) for several battles, plus get a little conversation going with your characters. The major complaint I have about Cooking is that the game doesn't keep the effects of Cooking a secret: the very first time you cook something, you know what impact it will have on your characters. Combining--particularly for Weapons and Armor--greatly resembles the weapon upgrade system in Final Fantasy 8, but with a lot more options available to you. It would have been nice to find a manual of sorts to tell you what could be upgraded to what, what you would need to make the upgrade, and where you'd be likely to find it. To fill my needs, I simply bought or traded for junk whenever I could, then tried to see what new combinations I could produce. Fun, but a bit aimless and frustrating. Combining Acessories was the most enjoyable to me, because I could always see what new skills I'd get before making the combination, and the skills can make-or-break your combat (for example, you really need anti-berserk to win the fight in the Gambler's Arena mini-game).
The story was...mmm...okay. I kept waiting for it to get started, or to throw a twist or two my way. As it is, the primary story consists of exactly what you expect it to: main character meets some other characters after initial meeting with the main bad guy, then goes and collects some stuff in the process of undermining the main bad guy's plan. No surprises.
The characters are reasonably interesting, and I really liked the firecracker attitude they gave Sharon (though her in-battle quips got seriously annoying after the thousandth battle). There does seem to be a lot of depth about the characters and many side opportunities to discover hidden surprises about them. I especially liked the consistent approach to responding to questions that was employed with Lang: whether you chose to have him agree, disagree, or tell someone off, his responses to questions posed by the NPCs were credible and in character. It was easy to make him a smart-mouth sometimes and have him be understated at other times without feeling like he was suddenly a different character.
Overall, it was an entertaining game, but a little shallow and with combat that looks spectacular but which was ultimately tedious--it was generally more entertaining to set the characters to Auto combat than to watch them perform the same moves over and over and over and over again.
If you liked the first one, you'll enjoy this one, yes. If you didn't like the first one, you'll like this even less. If you haven't played either but are interested, get "Legend of Legaia" instead--it plays well on the PS2 and has a much more engrossing storyline.
The original "Legend of Legaia" was a delightful game. Started out feeling simplistic and child-like, ended up surprisingly stirring and sophisticated. The graphics fit the style of the game, and it was the first game I ever played where the characters' outfits changed drastically in combat as they got new weapons, armor and accessories. It was truly a gem for the PSX. The new game sacrifices most of the charm for "improved" graphics, which are shockingly bland. The colors are very drab, the characters festooned with strange lines that are supposed to delineate muscle tone, and the camera just sits squarely on the floor, with very few dramatic angles used throughout the game. It's a very boring game to look at, honestly. The music... how can I say it? I understand reusing themes in new arrangements, but they've reused the music with no improvement in instrumentation or arrangement. It was a marked disappointment. The only good thing this game kept from the original is the combat system, and the improvements made there are dubious at best: I liked the concept of "charging up" your AP gauge and your arts bar with a "Guard" move... it required me to make decisions about how to fight every single turn. In the new game, the Normal Arts moves add AP, and the Super Arts and Hyper Arts consume it. With special items, the length of your arts bar changes, but is always fixed, otherwise. As a result, I can set up an efficient combination of Normal Arts and Hyper Arts that will prevent my AP gauge from dropping at all. Entire lengthy battles played simply by mashing the X button repeatedly. Yawn. Cooking is a fun addition to the game, as is combining to improve your Weapons, Armor, Items and Accessories. With Cooking, you can bump your stats up (and sometimes down) for several battles, plus get a little conversation going with your characters. The major complaint I have about Cooking is that the game doesn't keep the effects of Cooking a secret: the very first time you cook something, you know what impact it will have on your characters. Combining--particularly for Weapons and Armor--greatly resembles the weapon upgrade system in Final Fantasy 8, but with a lot more options available to you. It would have been nice to find a manual of sorts to tell you what could be upgraded to what, what you would need to make the upgrade, and where you'd be likely to find it. To fill my needs, I simply bought or traded for junk whenever I could, then tried to see what new combinations I could produce. Fun, but a bit aimless and frustrating. Combining Acessories was the most enjoyable to me, because I could always see what new skills I'd get before making the combination, and the skills can make-or-break your combat (for example, you really need anti-berserk to win the fight in the Gambler's Arena mini-game). The story was... mmm... okay. I kept waiting for it to get started, or to throw a twist or two my way. As it is, the primary story consists of exactly what you expect it to: main character meets some other characters after initial meeting with the main bad guy, then goes and collects some stuff in the process of undermining the main bad guy's plan. No surprises. The characters are reasonably interesting, and I really liked the firecracker attitude they gave Sharon (though her in-battle quips got seriously annoying after the thousandth battle). There does seem to be a lot of depth about the characters and many side opportunities to discover hidden surprises about them. I especially liked the consistent approach to responding to questions that was employed with Lang: whether you chose to have him agree, disagree, or tell someone off, his responses to questions posed by the NPCs were credible and in character. It was easy to make him a smart-mouth sometimes and have him be understated at other times without feeling like he was suddenly a different character. Overall, it was an entertaining game, but a little shallow and with combat that looks spectacular but which was ultimately tedious--it was generally more entertaining to set the characters to Auto combat than to watch them perform the same moves over and over and over and over again. If you liked the first one, you'll enjoy this one, yes. If you didn't like the first one, you'll like this even less. If you haven't played either but are interested, get "Legend of Legaia" instead--it plays well on the PS2 and has a much more engrossing storyline.