Hey everyone! I’m DrewUniverse, unofficial community organizer for Legend of Dragoon. I’m here with surprise #2 for the winter season: a year-end recap! It has been a busy year for our fandom: projects, discoveries, events, and more. Let’s take a look at some of what happened from January to December of 2025.
January
2025 was off to a strong start from day 1. Following special 25th anniversary messages from the original devteam on Christmas 2024, the first day in January was marked with brand new reveals by way of a special livestream bridging New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
A New Translation Mod
Led by André Tavares, this mod is all about translating the game into Portuguese for Legend of Dragoon fans in Brazil. It is a labor of love, featuring both text and audio. Work is ongoing for the version that will be applied via emulation. The team is also planning to adapt the mod for the fan port Severed Chains, once it supports script and voice modding. Click here to visit the project’s website.
Extra Lore Recovered
If you’ve been around the community for a while, you probably know me for my extensive recovery of lost game knowledge – including story content. Every so often I obtain more materials from the past, such as batches of Japanese videogame magazines. I found some incredible information, confirming that Dragoons can fly so fast they break the sound barrier – and that some of them could teleport! Pretty wild stuff. This and other things
Backstory on the North American Commercial
Several commercials were produced for LoD, but only one aired in North America. It’s a 30 second spot focusing on some fast cuts from the game’s Full-Motion Videos, or FMVs. However, at the end it turns into a filming joke. No one knew what the game was really about or why it should be purchased. Was it a game that was more like a movie? A funny game where peoples’ heads get chopped off? We didn’t know, unless we saw a preview in a gaming magazine.
It was likely that we’d never get an answer as to why the commercial was designed like this. However, thanks to my stubborn pursuit of knowledge, I was able to finally give us some closure from not one.. not two.. but three of the people who made the commercial! You can learn more and read the wild story here in three parts.
It’s hard to top all of that, but more good things took place in January! For example, Ruffbot debuted on the Legend of Dragoon Discord server. The idea was to start it off with the ability to answer simple yes/no questions, like a magic 8-ball. Over time it grew to have more features, like a random party chooser and the game Ruff Paper Scissors.
On January 11, Ryukotsuki released a shader mod for LoD. Their goal was to enhance the visuals while keeping the look and feel intact. We expect there will be many new shader mods over time!
In late January, the GOG gaming platform launched the Dreamlist! On their website, users could submit and vote for games they wish to see make a return or otherwise be preserved on the Gog platform. Legend of Dragoon was added to the list, and we did our part to help make fans aware and send in their votes. If you haven’t yet, consider adding your +1 to this page while logged into GOG!
February
In February, André surprised us with a special treat. Members of his team worked together to create their own rendition of the theme song, If You Still Believe, by translating it into Portuguese. The singer is Hagata Fernandes. It’s a beautiful recreation, which you can listen to here. We hope to see more translated versions of the song in the future.
On the 18th, EmeraldDragoon announced a new mod called Altergoon. It re-imagines the playable cast with shuffled element assignments. Dart is now Darkness element (or as I like to say, Dartness). Haschel is Wind, Lavitz is Light, and Shana is Fire to name a few. It started as being visual-only but Emerald hopes to do more with it. More on this in the near future.
March
March signaled another round of beta testing for Severed Chains – a fan-made port for Legend of Dragoon. While the community worked together to check everything a player can do in Legend of Dragoon, the main focus was on the revised graphics engine. What does it do? It allows the game to be rendered at native 4K resolution, and 60FPS everywhere except battle (which will come later). Hundreds of LoDers came by to test the game, helping the SC devteam ensure that the port will work as intended.
Also in March, Icarus published a short demonstration for a mid-battle character swap mod. Unknown if/when this will be published, but it’s so cool to see.
April
In this month – and throughout the year – there were many updates to the in-house wiki. Much work was done on pages about enemy combatants, equipment, game mechanics, locations, and more. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s really shaping up. If you’d like to help us write for the wiki, whether you have experience or not, please join the Legend of Dragoon Discord server. We have a dedicated channel for the wiki, under the Community Projects section.
May
Xibibyte, a new member of the community at the time, came by and shared their ongoing research into sample libraries for audio. They found many samples that were used throughout the game’s soundtrack, which we might have assumed were created in-house.
Whether we’re talking about stuff made decades ago or today, samples are a key part of music and sound design – it’s the same in other fields of work like texture libraries that make up the walls and floors of buildings. These samples will soon be documented as part of our community archives, and shown here on this website.
June
On the 1st of June, Icarus published the Stardust Indicators mod. This simple mod shows small visual hints to help players find Stardust, so they don’t have to spam the input button on every part of every map.
Mid-month we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the game’s release in North America. Most of the fandom is from this area. Hundreds and hundreds of fans came together to share the moment. We didn’t have any specific events this time around, but more good things were on the way!
One week later, we got some new features on Discord. One of them is the Server Tag, which we can assign to ourselves kinda like a clan or guild tag. When we write messages, those tags show up next to our name. Of course, ours is LoD, and many people wear this tag to show their support for the game!
July
As some of you know, Legend of Dragoon had an official companion minigame released for the PocketStation, a handheld similar to things like Tomagotchi. The minigame is called Mogul Dabas, which is about Dabas exploring underground to find various treasures. It’s a really simple game, yet fun and engaging. In addition to digging for treasure, Dabas also encounters many hostile creatures he must defeat in order to keep exploring. He also encounters Minintos who help him power up and save him when he is defeated.
Normally, all the loot Dabas collects would be returned to the base game Legend of Dragoon, earning the player gold, items, and accessories. However, although the PocketStation’s international release was canceled, the minigame is still present in the North American version of LoD. This means it can be reverse-engineered. Testing began in July, and it’s now in a great state. The minigame will be made available in a future release of Severed Chains so everyone can try it out. We also have a thorough guide for Mogul Dabas here, to whet your appetite. For those wondering: yes, the minigame can be modded.
August
August was an exciting month in the modding scene. Zychronix released a new beta for the tougher Hell Mode portion of Dragoon Modifier – which was previously only available for a legacy version of SC from 2023.
Since SC wasn’t fully ready for his mod’s new features, he created a custom build of Severed Chains that only ran Hell Mode. This build was a landmark experience, allowing players to enjoy newer features of SC alongside the, well, hellacious difficulty of Hell Mode. At the time of this writing, work on Dragoon Modifier continues so that it can see a full release compatible with the SC devbuild and SC 3.0 in the near future.
Also in August, a new feature arrived in Severed Chains. We could now walk around on the world map as any of the nine playable characters. I had a little fun making a screenshot that looked like Kongol was about to smash Lohan.
September
September marked a new wave of events in the community. On the 7th, there was going to be a total lunar eclipse in real life. This means the moon will glow a reddish color. LoD features a red moon, so why not make an occasion of it? Naturally, this event revolved around the red moon and its story. Some lovely fanart came in, along with written prose. I shared the submissions in a livestream that took place right as the Red Moon was active in real life. It felt pretty special!
Just one day later, another round of promotional images were found and preserved. This time it was a collection of still images from LoD’s full-motion videos. These are in much higher quality than the equivalent shot in-game, so they give some key insight into what the FMVs could have looked like. I went over these in another livestream.
October
In October we had another event – this time it was the return of Helloween. This one was a bit of a sprint with only two weeks of advance notice, but we still got some great submissions. We showed them off in a companion livestream the night of Halloween, to end the month with spooky vibes. Two days before the event, I produced what might be one of our best videos to date as a reminder for the event, in the hopes it would inspire everyone.
The Helloween Livestream signaled the return of our pre-stream countdown, featuring spooky LoD fan music and a red-tinted image of the Divine Dragon’s large eye. In addition, between showing off the fan content, I accepted various community challenges for combat. Kongol vs Fruegel, a random party vs Wendigo, and a super-buffed Zackwell were some of the scenarios I was faced with. I ended with 2 wins, 1 undecided, and three losses. All in all a very spooky event.
November
November happened!? (o_0)
December
Coinciding with the 26th anniversary of LoD’s release (which is December 2nd), we launched the Winter Arts event. Shifting gears from the prior Halloween vibes, this cold and snowy event is ongoing. Fans are encouraged to create and submit fanart, music, fiction works, and so on to help celebrate the winter season.
On December 21st I revealed a new channel on the community Discord server. It is simply called “secrets”. In short, a secret is posted with a starting hint. This secret may be general news, an upcoming mod, or something else relating to the LoD community. People may try to guess the secret by name. Every so often new hints are added. If anyone makes a correct guess, the secret is revealed early! The first secret, which just got revealed the other day, is a mod concept called Fruegel’s Adventure Bowling. Check back every so often as new secrets are posted!
On the 22nd, I revealed that there is an upcoming interview with one of the original Legend of Dragoon developers. A list of questions were carefully written, and it includes some questions from the community which were selected in a blind draw during a recent livestream. The questions are being translated into Japanese and will soon be delivered to the mystery developer. Once the answers are sent back, we can publish the interview in early 2026.
A new mod was revealed on December 27th. It was a big secret – even I didn’t get to know about it! All of a sudden, during the totally normal livestream, lead programmer Monoxide started fishing in various places around Endiness. It has some interactive button presses, symbolizing the efforts of catching a fish. There are many kinds of fish – each one does something different. It seems that certain non-fish items can also be caught! Yes, this is a real mod for Legend of Dragoon made by Icarus and others. It will be available for download in January 2026 – keep your eyes open, pino!
Another mod, ArchiDragoon, was announced on the 29th. It’s an Archipelago mod for LoD, which crosses content with other games in the Archipelago network. ArchiDragoon is in development by Psionisus. Learn more about Archipelago here!
Onward to 2026
What a freakin’ year, yall. So many fans have come together for sake of the game and its community! It’s astonishing, and I’m eager to see what we do in 2026. Thank you to everyone who helps make this a wonderful fandom.
We’ll start the new year with Surprise #3 tomorrow! Don’t worry, it’s not in text form..
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