Legacies of Dondoran

Legacies of Dondoran is a complete rm2k3 game that saw its release in 2006.

Legacies of Donoroan tells a very traditional story that, despite a few unconventional plot twists, feels the part of an oldschool RPG to the end. The game follows the adventures of Tyranos and his crew as they invariably try to save the world, but more attention is put into the plot progression than character development. Harmonic can tell a story alright, but the dry dialogue could use improvement.

A lengthy game, Dondoran will take you roughly 30-40 hours to complete. Most of the basic gameplay is fairly standard stuff: large dungeons with a simple puzzle or two, leveling, finding treasure and preparing for the next boss.

However, a fair bit of your time will be spent looking at your skill learning menus, which is where you are able to learn new spells/skills and improve your fighting capabilities, and the game's most interesting feature. What you choose in these menus will almost always determine the outcome of a battle. While these offer quite a bit of customization, it is typically best to focus your attention in a few areas. Maxing one of the basic attack spells or skills, for example, will make your life in the early game much easier. If you play your cards right, the game will only get challenging later into the game, but bad use of skill points can also make it impossible to advance. The skill learning menu is entertaining and clever, but a caveat is that it penalizes experimentation for much of the game. This is a little dissapointing given the vastness of the skill learning menus.

Graphics in Dondoran are mostly utilitarian, though some maps rise to the level of being attractive. The battle sprites are original and animate well despite rm2k3's limitations, and serve as a nice touch since you'll have to look at them for 40 hours.

Much of the music in this game is original, and most of these tracks are of good/great quality. They are also used well, and always fit the feel of the current cutscene, battle or dungeon.

There were various bugs with the skill learning menu, but my version of the game was released before a major patch, so I imagine most of these bugs have been ironed out. I never encountered any game-ending bugs, however.

Legacies of Dondoran is a game well worth a download. It's complete and has a neat skill learning system that synergizes well with rm2k3 DBS. And while it's not exactly a classic in terms of storytelling, it is compelling enough to play till the end...as long as you have the attention span for a 40-hour game.

Score - ****