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Almost good... almost!

Welcome to another review of an old classic, this time the game is Legacies of Dondoran, a fantasy game from the 2007, and this means 14 ages ago!

Legacies of Dondoran is a classic jrpg game about a party of heroes and their adventures. Make no mistake, when I say classic, I mean that this is a jrpg clearly inspired by Final Fantasy and other similar games, starring the heroic strategist (and a bit of dark/tormented hero) Tyranos and his associates (or party members) in a struggle against an evil empire. As you can probably expect the game will starts as a war against an evil nation, but soon it changes into a quest to save the entire world, but I will stop here and avoid telling more about the story, let's just say I found it... uhm not terrible, but just ok!
Uh ok, the storyline isn't bad, it's just that it's not overly original or new. Also writing is ok, but nothing spectacular, and characters aren't particularly interesting.


I do not fear you, huge woman!!!

For example our protagonist Tyranos is said to be a master strategist and great general, unfortunately during the adventure our hero just prove himself to be a strong warrior and nothing else, since his plans doesn't seem to be really effective at all!
Krysta, the protagonist love interest isn't better: she is a one-dimensional character that just falls in love with Tyranos but the relation between the two does not develops, it just happens!
Gain is a much better character, it's funny and interesting, and he has probably the best and most entertaining dialogues that makes him stand out.

What I really liked, and I think is the best feature of the game is the Skill System: the characters have each a complex skill tree full of useful abilities that they can learn during the course of the adventure, letting the player customize a lot his party members. The only problem is that due to the high difficulty of some encounters (especially the final boss!), it's a good idea spending the point wisely to make an effective build, otherwise you will need to grind a lot (and I mean a LOT!) to buy all the needed abilities.
Just to be precise Tyranos and Krysta are fighters (but he can and will have to learn White Magic, instead she cannot despite having better magical stats, so she will end being an effective but still weaker character), Gain is clearly a black mage with many powerful elemental attacks and Deidre is the typical healer of the team.


Observe the mythic skill trees!

Combat is for the main part classic side view rm2k3 style. Anyway the nice thing is that opponents are organized in groups with different edges and weaknesses, so in most cases it is necessary to develope a clever strategy and not just spam the most powerful attack to destroy the opposition.
Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) Legacies of Dondoran makes used of the old classical random encounters and save points like the olds Final Fantasy games.

Besides combat there are also a couple of puzzles an minigames, from enigmas tht requires fiddling with teleports to a classic (annoying) mine cart ride. Nothing really new, and go from decent to annoying time wasters.

The graphics... uhm these are mediocre and unfortunately some parts are even worse. There is a difference of style and size between some characters, and could have been better. On the contrary battlers and enemy sprites are nice, but in most cases monsters uses picures that you probably already saw in a thousand games, yeah, they are not really original nor they stand out. Also music is very good, and from what I've read in most cases the songs were composed or remixed by the developer himself. Nice, really!


This fight is going to be a hard challenge, trust me!

Verdict
Legacies of Dondoran isn't a bad game, but unfortunately it's not one that I liked a lot playing. That's not because this is a bad game, on the contrary, the problem is that this is a game where most time is spent fighting and grinding to improve and win the next encounter. Otherwise the game could be completed in maybe just 10 hours.
The importance of building the characters studying the tree and maximizing the character’s strengths is also of extreme importance, while you can progress for most of the game just grinding your way to victory, if you don’t have all the exact right abilities (see learning white magic with Tyranos, teaching Gain Plague etc...), you’ll never be able to win the battle with the final boss and complete the game, and that's a questionable design choice in my opinion.

Despite the problems I mentioned, this is still a decent complete classic fantasy jrpg without bugs or great flaws. It just is average and not particularly fun in some parts, but I guess this is a subjective opinion. In the end this game is still pretty fun and enjoyable in some parts, just not that memorable, but I'm pretty sure that some players will be entertained. This gets a 3/5 from me.