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Fun for what it is -- just don't expect mind blowing innovation.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Blue Dragon represents a strong foray into the world of Japanese style RPGs for the XBox 360, and on that front, it was a complete success. It's straightforward in virtually every aspect, offering little new, but doing most everything well.

The graphics are great throughout, and stunning at times. It's a lush and varied world, and the style, although criticized as childish by some, is well executed. Vivid colors and a variety of settings make travel throughout the world a pleasure.

Music is also a highpoint. The score is catchy, fitting, and engaging. My only criticism there is I would like to have seen a few more songs for battles. There are basically two battle themes -- regular and boss -- that are repeated throughout.

The storyline is a cliche one -- stop the overpowered ancient seeking to destroy the world -- but if you go in expecting that, it's well done again. The negative, of course, is that any fan has probably heard this story one or two (or twenty) times.

Gameplay tries to LOOK innovative, but in reality is quite straightforward and follows the path set forth by many games before. The "shadow" system is really just a tried-and-true class system. But there are no glaring flaws, and it remains pretty fun to play throughout.

The real negatives in my mind... The game is a bit on the easy side. None of the (non optional) bosses leave you scratching your head to defeat them. The regular fight, heal, magic formula works on everyone. And the battle sequences get a little repetitive over time as a result. Animations are always the same as you engage in the same strategy battle after battle after battle.

All in all, I would still recommend this game. It's a well executed classic JRPG, with graphics and music that elevate it well. You'll get a solid 80ish hours to do everything in the game, so length is not a problem. The game doesn't reinvent the genre, but makes no real attempts to pretend it is either, so if you know what to expect as you go in, you'll enjoy yourself.

The blue dragon

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this for my 12 yr old daughter. the first couple of hours she said it was a hard game, 3 days later she had defeated the whole game. She said it was a lot of fun though and she really liked it.

Lots of fun, but don't expect to be challenged to much

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Blue Dragon is well worth the price of admission, if not just for the artwork. Its a lot of fun, although it can get repetitive fighting monsters in the Wild. I love the character developement Shu- the hard headed and determined one. Jiro- intelligent and caring. Klute-Voice of Reason and balances the team out. MaruMaru - an innocent child-like creature caught up in this mess. Zola- Mercenary , possibly with her own agenda....and Nene- The evil nemesis that takes enjoyment in others suffering.

Great Job...just remember that Shu is NOT a young Goku!

J-RPG at last

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It's about time that a good RPG comes to the xbox360.
The graphics are great.
The storyline is tangled with drama.
The gameplay is traditional.
If you love Japanese style RPG and Dragon Ball, you love this.
All RPG fans should check it out at this new lower price.

Great Mechanics with Horrid Story

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

One of the first things you'll notice as you begin to play Blue Dragon is that the game's story revolves around a simple good versus evil dichotomy with little variation in character outlook from that. The good characters are sickly good and the evil characters are deviously evil --- there are no characters with real depth. It's for this reason I find it hard to see in any of the characters human characteristics or relate to any of them.

The models as well are childish in nature and make the characters (which the manual states are in their late teens) look like they're all under the age of 10.

The plot from the very beginning is also easy to read and lacks any sort of depth or any form of twist to keep the player engaged. It's like reading a story after reading a summary of the plot --- you just don't find yourself surprised when something happens because you knew it was going to happen. If an RPG doesn't shake your worldview in the slightest I consider it a complete failure.

As for the great mechanics I mentioned in my title --- I found the game design to be wonderful despite it's flaws with an actual story. The usage of the charge bar keeps the user engaged and I found the enemies to level up progressively at a reasonable pace similar to your own growth so it kept things somewhat enjoyable. The idea behind making random encounters random but allowing the user to attack them was also very cool (Secret of Mana style meets Final Fantasy < 12 JRPG battle system sort of thing).

The real problem with the mechanics, however wonderful, is that it's very very very easy to get higher levels simply because the enemies tend to be plentiful but easy to kill in one or two rounds from the start on once you've gained any sort of advantage. Your fighters will have mow down techniques which hit the whole first row for nearly the life of the enemy which could easily allow you to rack up experience points if that was your intention.

Quickly want to mention the shadow system. It allows users to attach a different class to their shadow to gain skills which can be set to other shadow classes they use. To put it simply I level up my black magic class and get the ability to use black magic level 1 spells on my fighter class by assigning it the skill I learned. The classes all have their own stats so it does have variations in terms of attack power in or out of the class but as others have mentioned can also allow you to create 5 distinct clones of each character with little trouble. I didn't, however, and found the system to be fun so it's really whether or not you take advantage of the system which will affect you in that regards. It could have been made better though, I agree, and more class selections would have given a more unique feel to the process as well.

Music was wonderful though and the graphics were pretty despite its cartoon feel. In general it's a good game and had the story been even somewhat decent would have been an unforgettable JRPG.

blue dragon = fun!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I decided to buy this even after all those average reviews on the web or in magazines.
Believing that if you liked jrpg you can't do much wrong.
And i'm glad to say i was right. This is a jrpg in the truest sense.
I really can't understand why this game got so much undiserved critism.
Sure it doesn't do anything new but it does the things it does right, and this is very important.
Don't get me wrong it isn't a perfect game, like all game it has its good and bad sides. But the good far outweighs the bad in my eyes.
The bad points so far i encountered ( i played about 18 hours)is that it doesn't have that epic feel games like FF and recently Lost Odyssey has.
And the story takes a long time to get going and only starts to get interesting after about 10-15 hours into the game.
And there are no mini games to complete or side quests to undertake(at least i have not encountered any so far). There is just the main story which will i guess last for about 40 to 50 hours depending on your addiction to level up your characters of course. Those are the bad points that really comes to mind.
As for the good points i can summon this up really easy, it is fun!
The battlesystem is traditional in every sense of old school jrpg.
Turn based and with all the usual elements included. Magic attacks physical attacks and items usage. Every character can choose from different classes from white and black magic users to warrior, assasin, monk and many more. And each has its strong and weak points. What is also worth noting is that every character can switch between all of the classes which they unlock througout the game.
I think i gave a good impression of what you can expect from this game.
Without revealing anything you can better discover for yourself.
I will sum this up easily.
People who can't get enough of turn based jrpg can't do much wrong with this game. Is it a classic? No not really but it a very enjoyable game that can stand it own in its genre.
People who are searching for something new won't find it here, and it won't change your view or turn you over to the jrpg genre if your not a fan of it.

I hope i have been helpful, and made your desicion a little bit easier.

Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I love RPG's and this one is a good mix of old turn-based play and new graphics. I don't know how I feel about the Dragon Ball Z style characters yet, but they do show off the 3D rendering power of the X Box 360. I bought the game along with the 360. My wife and I spent an entire weekend playing and wanted to continue but when you're over 40 life still gets in the way of the important things. We definately expect more good things out of microsoft...a company that large should be able to afford good gaming engineers.

P.S. Buy from Amazon.com, you'll always know where and when your stuff is. They even e-mailed me of a shipping problem and they took care of it at no cost to me...good to know a company still cares about service.

All Star Lineup

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: February 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The first game by Mistwalker Studios, the new project of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Blue Dragon also features art by Dragonball/Dragon Quest artist Akira Toriyama and music by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. Does this all-star lineup lead for a quality game?

The story's main character is Shu, a young boy from a remote village. Every year, the village is attacked by a massive "land shark". One year, Shu and his friends decide to attack the land shark to avenge those it killed. Catching onto it as it tries to flee, they find a cavern full of ancient machines. The land shark turns out to be the fin of a great airship, which carries them up to a sky fortress. The story's villain, Nene, reveals himself and indicates that he had the land shark attack the village to amuse himself. The heroes are quickly defeated by him and removed from the ship, but an unknown benefactor carries them back up to the ship and grants them each a power hidden in their shadows. The friends work their way through the world, trying to gain strength and find allies to fight against Nene.

The game plays like almost any other RPG, with the same hit points, magic points, and turn-based system found in so many other games. There's a couple things that set Blue Dragon apart, though. Firstly, there are no "random" battles - like a few other games, Blue Dragon has enemies that appear on the map and can be avoided or pre-emptively attacked (or you can get attacked, too). Blue Dragon's main innovation in this part is that you can corral your enemies together in a radius around you before you start a battle, or specifically choose only one enemy when you are surrounded by a multitude. The main purpose of this is that sometimes enemies will fight each other - usually the strong preying on the weak - which means that you can level the playing field by finding monsters that dislike each other and grouping them together so that they fight amongst themselves.

In the battles themselves, Blue Dragon's main feature is the charge system - certain spells and attacks have a bar that, if stopped when they're full or close to full, do more damage but take longer to cast (whereas if it is empty or close to empty it takes less time but does less damage). There is also a class system, but rather than the characters the classes are assigned to the characters' shadows - the giant creatures that fight for them. These classes are nothing special - the usual mix of fighters and mages. There are different spells that can be bought at stores throughout the game.

The graphics in the game are really nice - they're in a smooth, non-gritty style appropriate for Toriyama's artwork. Everything feels "right" - the effects, characters, and environments all seem appropriate, and none of them have the problem that some games have where they feel too artificial. The designs in the game are definitely Akira Toriyama's style, the characters and airships especially are reminiscent of his designs in the original Dragonball.

The sound is nice - as expected of Nobuo Uematsu - but not really exceptional in any way. There were no songs that made me really take notice of them. During some boss fights, there are rock-and-roll type songs with actual singers and lyrics, which was pretty neat. There is voice acting in English, French, and Japanese, which is a pretty wide choice for such an expansive game. Each seemed to be pretty decent in quality, though none of it really stood out as being particularly well-acted.

As a whole, this game is "more of the same" for RPGs. It's good, but it's not different. If you like traditional RPG gameplay, then that's great, but it doesn't bring enough to the table to really distinguish itself. By itself, though, it's a pretty solid package.

8/10.

above average.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm not an avid gamer anymore, but i do know a good game when i play one. This one in particular is above average, as far as fun factor goes.
Graphics are good,( there are some slowdown issues at times, and skipping in some scenes) sound ranges from ok to really good,( if your not under 16 you will find some of the voice work to be really annoying), gameplay is as easy and traditional as a japanese rpg can be. Story is nothing special, same ol good kids versus a terribly evil villain, there are some small twists here and there for good measure. For me the most enjoying part is character upgrades. everything else was above average.

A journey down the middle of the road

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

[...]When Blue Dragon was released in Japan and I saw some actual game footage, I was a little taken aback. Rather than an ambitious next-gen RPG, it seemed like a typical Miyazaki-inspired bright-eyed youthful "We'll NEVER give up!" romp/quest that I've played seemingly hundreds of times over the last 15 years or so. Then the demo came out a few months ago, and after playing it a couple of times I had completely lost all interest in Blue Dragon. And that was that... or so I thought.

[...]For the most part, all of my fears were confirmed. The story and characters are as dull, banal and insipid as I thought they'd be. The characters are a half step away from being literally blank slates. The story is incredibly dull... even when it predictably picks up a bit of steam in the final act. The battle and abiliity systems aren't exactly old school or old fashioned, but they're certainly not cutting edge, unless you still consider ideas from 2001 to be cutting edge. I must admit, the battles are much more fun in the full game than they were in the demo. (Giving you access to pretty much every single ability in the game in the demo was a huge mistake.)

The two things I find myself truly enjoying are exploring the dungeons, and the graphics. The dungeons are very well designed and laid out, and the the whole affair is very easy on the eyes. We've finally reached the point where an in-game engine looks as nice and solid as FMV cutscenes... from 1997.

EDIT: I apologize for the bracketed sections and bizarre disjointedness of this review. I try to provide some background to give my opinions context, but Amazon's editorial dept. found them to be objectional in this case for some reason... and apparently decided butchering my review was the solution.

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