While a lot of people simply called this a Final Fantasy 7 ripoff, and they would have some really good points if they suggested that, I found that this RPG was unique enough that it could stand on its own.
It was released in 2000 not long after the wild success of FF7 and it does look very similar to the Squaresoft game, so it is easy to understand how people came to criticize the game so much.
Dart and his crew of 2 helpers travel the land trying to stop some evil force that had wiped out his village at the start of the game. The people in the party change as time goes by but the abilities remain about the same. Some are ranged, some are magic-oriented, and some are warriors. It's pretty much the same as every RPG like this.
Unlike most other turn-based RPG's up to this point, the combat featured a system of where you had to time your strikes as a box would pop up on the screen and you needed to hit X or "circle" at just the right moment in order to do more damage. You could choose to not hit the button at all, but would miss out on a lot of damage if you did so.
While this was a nice feature, the limitations of he PS1 hardware would sometimes make this a really annoying situation because you would experience video lag if there was too much happening on the screen.
Another unique element of battle would be that if you saved up enough bonus points (I don't recall what they were called) you could transform to "Dragoon form", don some wings, and do bonus damage.
This is where the game gets a bit of a thumbs down from me. This is supposed to be a really important part of gameplay and that is why it is in the name of the game. However, the increased damage was rather insignificant, and being in Dragoon form took away the option of choosing "defend" or "item" during your upcoming turns, which is where 90% of the game's healing takes place. Therefore, it was normally a better idea to not even use the Dragoon attack at any point in the game. What a letdown!
The game was extremely massive for the time-period though, so if you did enjoy the gameplay, story, and characters, you were in for a treat totally over 60 hours of play. It was the only PS1 game I recall having that was 4 discs long. It had tons of optional content including 10 bosses that were unnecessary to fight. So yeah, no one is going to complain that TLOD is too short.
All in all, i feel as though The Legend of Dragoon was one of the better RPG's on the PS1, even if it did steal a lot of it's elements from their larger, far more successful competitor.
If you'd like to check this classic gem out you can download the ROM for free here