Legend of Dragoon/Headscratchers

This is more along the lines of something that bothers me regarding reaction to the game rather than the game itself, but anyway: why do people keep claiming this game is like Final Fantasy VII? It just makes no sense to me. The only similarity I can see worth mentioning is that Aeris/Lavitz dies. That's one similarity. One. Outside of that, what similarity is there that people see that causes them to make those comments? The settings are highly different, with Final Fantasy having motorcycles, factories, and a rocket ship, whereas Dragoon is firmly in the medieval fantasy setting. The combat systems and magic systems are almost completely different. Outside of that one plot point I didn't see much else there plot wise that could be considered similar. Is it the graphical style? Polygons weren't exactly uncommon for the Playstation. The main characters' weapons? Swordsmen as RPG heroes are a dime a dozen, even before Final Fantasy VII. So just where are the similarities I'm missing? Where?!
- It isn't that the games themselves are that similar besides the superficial similarities that most JRPGs share, it is because they came out within a couple years of each other and were among the first JRPGs to actually sell well outside of Japan, even Final Fantasy VI posted vastly lower sales than either of those games.
- I think most people just look at Dart and immediately make assumptions. And can you blame them? Dart is a semi-overconfident swordsman with blonde, spikey hair. Shana is somewhat guilty as well; with just a couple of inches in the front, she could pass for Tifa in a second.
  - Oddly enough, Dart strikes me as either Cloud Char Custom or the Raiden to Cloud's Solid Snake. The latter is one of many things I'm throwing around for a Let's Play or Live Bloggination of Legend of Dragoon. (All I need is a halfway decent Colonel stand-in and some jokes at Meru's expense. Everyone else just seems to write themselves.)
    - I would do it, too, but its an 80 HOUR GAME! That's a little too long to make a Let's Play out of. Plot Synopsis, yes, but that would probably take 30 minutes per disc if you want to get into the meat.
      - Not every Let's Play is a video Lets Play, you know. Ever heard of Boatmurdered?
- I've always felt so much similarity in the feel of the graphics, that for a long time I was convinced Legend of Dragoon ran on some kind of massively upgraded version of Final Fantasy VII's engine. Oh I'm sure it's just coincidence nowadays, but even so, there's something uncanny about how the two feel. They don't feel the same, Legend of Dragoon's feels like FF VII, but better. .. Which is a bit funny because I think FF VII had higher resolution environments.
- Because people don't know what to compare it to. What became popular beforehand? Obviously everyone's gonna compare it to the nearest thing that people would recognize.
  - Actually i have read somewhere (i believe it was a walkthrough on gamefaqs or something) where for some reason the writer tried to connect both games as if they were in the same universe/continuity.
    - That makes no sense at all, considering they were made by two different companies and weren't related in the slightest. Either you read wrong, or whoever wrote it was ridiculously misinformed. Plus there's the little issue that there's nothing in the game that even refers to FFVII in any way.
  - Exactly, this is one of the reasons In Famous and Prototype fans had to deal with people constantly comparing the two when they came out.
  - Same reason every third-person shooter is "Like Gears of War but..." or "Like Grand Theft Auto but..."
Okay, so now here's one thing...since Dragoon spirits don't discriminate between races, (Lloyd, Kongol, Meru, Lenus all show whis) did they originally only pick humans?
- First, a minor nitpick: Lloyd isn't actually a Dragoon; he himself says as much after killing the Divine Dragon. Now, to answer the above question, not all of the original Dragoons were human, or more precisely not entirely human; Damia, Meru's predecessor as Dragoon of Water, was half mermaid. It wouldn't be too surprising if the first Earth Dragoon, Belzac, wasn't entirely human either, since he was comparable to Kongol in size.
- Near as we can tell from Rose's part in the Moon, it was the soon-to-be Dragoons that killed the Dragons and took their spirit to fight the Winglies. Species had nothing to do with it but given that human's were the largest of the slave races and the main source of the rebellion, it makes sense that most of the Dragoons would be human.

The fact that the Divine Dragon's soul is in Mayfil. Feyrbrand and Regole I can understand, as if to say "the jade and blue dragoon spirits are not the souls of these particular dragons, yet after Lloyd removes the divine dragon's dragoon spirit he flat out tells the hero that it's the dragon's soul (or at least part of it).
- Lloyd may not be the be-all end-all authority on Dragons. It's likely he was wrong, being poetic, or there was a translation mishap between soul/spirit.
Why, oh why is Kongol holding Meru in his arms in the ending video? She has her own set of not one, but two sets of perfectly working wings. Instead of utilizing her natural wings, or her magically granted ones she hops in the arms of the residential big guy and has him carry her around. Is this supposed to be a hint towards something? If so that's even weirder (to me) considering she's 16 (obsurdly young in Wingly years) and he's 37.
- Kongol's a tank, Meru's the squishiest of wizards. Probably it was for simple protection.
Why does Kongol use You No Take Candle when he was raised by Doel in Kazas for what? Thirty years?
- Its confirmed, in game, that gigantos are less intelligent than winglies or humans.
In the cutscene, we see Belzac killed by a normal-looking Virage, like the one you fight in the Valley of the Lost Gravity. However while exploring the Forbidden Land Kadessa, you can stumble into a Super Virage, which is identified by Rose as the "Virage who killed Belzac". How come? Is that a mistake?
- It was a translation error it was supposed to say this is the Virage that killed Kanzas