New PlayStation Plus Classic Is Already Disappointing Fans
Earlier this week, Sony revived two beloved PS1 RPG classics for its subscription-based PlayStation Plus service—Wild Arms 2 and The Legend of Dragoon. These 32-bit gems, both released in the year 1999, are arguably some of the best story-driven titles on the original PlayStation. However, back in the day, they couldn’t hold a candle to the likes of Squaresoft behemoths like Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears or Chrono Cross. Not for the masses, anyway.
In other words, if games like Wild Arms and The Legend of Dragoon were considered middling by the gaming press and gamers at large, you have a decent idea of how jam-packed the PlayStation library was with ridiculously nonchalant heavy-hitters. That said, I’m still holding out for a PlayStation Plus release of an additional first-party outing, Legend of Legaia, another somewhat overlooked (and incredibly solid) RPG from that era. Come on, Sony! Bring it!
It’s been great watching the excitement churn on social media for these oldies-but-goodies, especially since Sony actually bothered to add trophy support for both games. Amazing! This makes a certain kind of sense, because in the initial batch of classics released for PS Plus, many of the first-party published titles like Ape Escape, I.Q.:Intelligent Cube, Hot Shots Golf, as well as both of the initial Syphon Filter games, had new trophies added. This didn’t include Jumping Flash! for some sinful reason, a glaring omission which I’m still salty about.
So the pair of aged RPGs hit PlayStation Plus like a fine wine on February 21, and everyone skipped off into the retro sunset together, hand-in-hand, right? Well, not exactly. GamesRadar is now reporting that players have been experiencing a range of annoying glitches and bugs in The Legend of Dragoon specifically, both visual and game-breaking. These include annoyances like audio errors, jittering graphical anomalies, but also devastating malfunctions, like a bug that freezes the entire game when Dragoon magic is used during battle.
Disappointing, to say the least. To release a classic title like The Legend of Dragoon with egregious glitches that aren’t common in the original discs, bugs that even common PS1 emulators patched and fixed ages ago, just feels lazy. I mean, this is one of Sony’s seminal retro games. Where’s the pride? Where’s the effort? Somebody needs to push out an update quickly to ensure that anyone playing this adventure for the first time isn’t immediately turned off. That isn’t to mention those of us who played Dragoon decades ago who are cringing at how this is being handled.
At least there hasn’t been any similar quality control rumblings for Wild Arms 2 yet, but my confidence in Sony and their old-school catalog continues to be eroded with these low-effort ports, so I’m not holding my breath. At least I haven’t started a new playthrough of The Legend of Dragoon just yet. I think I’ll wait until a proper patch becomes available, and I hope that’s very soon. If Sony cares at all, that is.
It’s just so weird to me how these big companies botch their own storied lineage. Perhaps they figure that no one will really care? Okay, but if that’s true, then why release these old games again anyway, when you’re not doing to do it right? Maybe I have too much respect for game preservation and game history. We’re a dying breed, I suppose. A dying breed.
