Pros: a solid RPG that has some good customization to it
Cons: story is a bit slow, charecters are shallow, and the boss music
The bottom line: This is the begining whoa yeah (me with gun to my head) BANG
I got Blue Dragon a couple of weeks ago for the Xbox 360, it was on my list of games I wanted to get for the system. While I heard mix reviews when you have Hironobu Sakaguchi the creator of Final Fantasy, and Nobuo Uematsu creator of several classic Final Fantasy themes, along with Akira Toriyama who hasn’t worked on a final fantasy but works include several games including Chorno Trigger, Dragon Quest 8, and of course the Dragon Ball anime; it’s going to perk any fan of JRPG’s interest. And after playing it I have to say Blue Dragon is a solid RPG but if you’re expecting it to be a final fantasy killer your going to be disappointed. While it has it’s strong suits it doesn’t live up to it’s creators past works.

Story
The last 10 years in Talta village a creature known has the land shark has plagued the village destroying it each time it passed through. One day 3 children Shu, Kluke, and Jiro decide to ban together and fight it, they discover the shark isn’t a monster but a machine, after a few misadventures they find themselves confronting the machines operator Nene who seems to be for no apparent reason except to be a jerk of a villain plaguing other cities in the world with similar disastrous. In order to escape from Nene a mysterious voice tells them to swallow some orbs of light causing there shadows to turn into monsters, Shu’s turns into the blue dragon of course. With there shadows and magic powers in tow the 3 set out to explore the world and destroy the evil Nene. Along the way they find a young Devee named Marumaro, and Zola a young mercenary woman each one able to control there own shadow.

The story is the biggest problem with the game. It takes a whole disc and a half before it really starts moving and it goes at a ridiculous slow pace, while there are a few pay offs at the end the journey there is a tedious one. The characters are pretty bland of the 3 main ones you have Jiro the smart one, Kluke the girl, and Shu who keeps pounding his hands together and yelling I won’t give up. I would like to say there is more depth to the characters but not really. And oh yeah if your watching the Blue Dragon anime on CN there is not much in common with the story in the anime and the story in the video game.

Graphics.
Despite having character designer that worked on DQ8, Blue Dragon characters aren’t really that special. The character designs Toriyama gave them are ok but the models used in the game don’t really use them well, compare to the cell shaded glory that was done in DQ 8 the character models are 3d hard model characters and they look extremely generic. The only thing that sticks out about the main heroes is Zola’s large chest.

The areas are only a little bit better while some area like Devour village which is creepy, and some of the futuristic robot factories stick out a little bit, the rest have a seen this in another generic RPG feel. Add in the game suffers from a bit of slow down and frame rate problems in some of the more open areas and the graphics just aren’t what they should be.

Sound
Uematsu puts together some interesting sound track and while a few ranging from peaceful village music, to futuristic techno music is all quite good. However the most memorable piece of music in the game is memorable for the wrong reasons, and that is the boss music. Japanese punk rock badly dubbed into English and used in 90% of the boss fights and is replayed several time per boss encounter. Basically to sum up how annoying the boss music is let me warn people, the next person who comes up and starts singing loudly “this is the beginning” is going to wind up getting there throat ripped out. Fournatley the Xbox does allow you to rip CD’s and then play them in your games so don’t hesitate using that option whenever a boss enters the scene.

Has for the voice actors most of them fall fairly flat when it comes to there deliveries, especially Jiro’s who seems almost monotone at times. Then there are the annoying ones like Marumaro who’s voice is about has soothing has cat claws on a black board. The only good ones are Kluke and Zola’s. Luckily again the game has a Japanese voice track in there to.

Gameplay
Can I accuse one of the people behind Final Fantasy for ripping off his own job system. The whole battle system of Blue Dragon is a turn based rip off of Final Fantasy 5 job system. Like FF5 you get to choose the job your shadows are going to take, they include things like monks, guardians, white magic, black magic, support magic etc. A shadow will have all the abilities of the class you have selected, for instance a shadow with the black magic class will be able to cast Flarus magic regardless of his job level at that class. Has you fight not only will Shu and the gang level up but so will there shadow job classes and new techniques will be earned by that.

You can then equip up to 3 skills you learn to another class, so basically you can have a monk that can cast white magic, or a black mage that can stand in the front row and deal out powerful damage depending on how well you mix classes. This is pretty much like FF5 but the job classes have been simplified and stream lined a lot. For instance the abilities that alchemist got in FF5 are now given to the white mage, and a lot of mages like time mages for example were thrown in for the support mage class. The most handy one to level up is the most useless in combat generalist class, no special skill but leveling it up allows you to unlock 8 skill slots which opens up your characters to a lot more customization.

While a rip off of FF5, it’s not a bad rip off, and it does make customizing your party for any strategy want and you can make your characters great for whatever skill you will need for them in battle.

Since this is turn base they did throw a few things to make battles a little less tedious. First off if you use magic, or have a monk charge attack equip to a person a charge meter will be displayed before you attack, not charging gives you basic damage but charging allows you to do more damage. The more you charge though the longer it is going to take to get the attack off the ground. The meter will show whose turn it will be after and if it’s an enemy you might want to take in consideration a half way charge spell to a hurt character still standing, is better then a fully charge heal spell to a person who has been knocked down. To add one more twist each attack has a red sweet spot that stopping the meter in will reduce the amount of MP the spell costs. While this definitely won’t win over those who enjoy more action in there RPG experience, it’s a welcome addition to a game with an old school turn base design.

The 2nd thing they threw in that doesn’t appear in till later in the game is the tension bars that allow you to use corporeal attacks. Corporeal attacks are a lot like summons and limit breaks if they mated. When you fill your tension meter to the max you are able to select corporeal in your menu, when that happens a long animation that shows your character shadow coming to live and attacking enemies on the battle field. Not only does it do a lot of damage but all damage recovers your MP so it’s handy to use on some of the harder bosses that spring up in disc 3.

Outside of battle while wondering in the over world you will be able to see enemies that you come across if they see you they will attack or run away from you. You can use different field spells like a barrier or a bomb to stun or shield yourself from attack. If you can sneak up on an enemy from behind the battles will start with a back attack were you get to attack the back row of that monsters party and always attack first. But if an enemy manages a successful blow they will be able to attack your party first with the weaker ones that you place in the back in the front for a mow down, it adds a little more fun playing cat in mice game with monsters to get the best field position and the ability to skip fights by putting up a barrier was a nice feature.

Xbox live downloads.
The game has a few extra dungeons and items you can download but the most interesting one is the hard mod that is free to download. This lets you access a new game plus option that is always handy in RPG’s. Especially in this one because some of the achievements are going to take you a while, they include maxing out your characters and your dragons abilities to 99, for achievement enthusiasts and RPG lovers this will take a couple hundred hours, for the rest of us the main story mode will take you about 50 hours the first time through.

Final Recommendation.
Blue Dragons biggest crime is that despite having several of the designers that made Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, it’s not Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. It’s a solid RPG that deserves to be played once but don’t expect it to be has memorable has most of the Final Fantasies.