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Blue Dragon Blues

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Blue Dragon

New to the Japanese RPG genre I was both excited and a little apprehensive about Blue Dragon. I put disk one in and much to my surprise was completed engrossed and enthralled.

The graphics are gorgeous, the environments however are a little bland.

Pros: Good story, great graphics, like playing through an epic Anime cartoon, not a smidgen of adult anything, sweet and a tad saccharine.

Cons: There is nothing new or different to be experienced, peopled with magic folks and anthropomorphic creatures, you fight the baddies, get this item, go here, go there, do this quest etc...

Can you say repetitious? I knew you could. You can not take two steps without having to do battle and it is the same battle over and over again, even the finishing animations repeat. It is tiresome, I want to explore and open the chest I just beat a baddie for, not battle eight more Poo Snakes every three seconds. That is just annoying.

There is not a save spot to be had during a level, you must play the entire level through. Well, maybe I don't want to play for three hours. Put a save some place, that is just poor game design. The in game maps, world or level, are near useless as they give you an ants eye view of where you are without giving you any indication of where you have been or where you need to go. This is frustrating at best when trying to navigate through a level.

If you can stand the repetitiveness, and have the patience give Blue Dragon a go for the story if nothing else.

Overrated and overshadows more deserving titles.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: January 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I know no one's going to agree with me and I'm probably going to end up having something like "1/300 people found this review helpful," but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't even make some attempt at trying to tell you why I think this game is terrible.

Okay, it's not the worst game ever. It could even be good, depending entirely and solely on your personal taste in games. If you like:

Simplistic storyline
Anime style visuals
Anime style voice acting

Then you might like this game. However, the visuals and voice acting isn't cutsie-anime, like Eternal Sonata is, instead it's much more generic. One of the characters is modeled after Gohan, one character is voiced by Garaa of the American anime. How much more generic can you ask for?

The story goes little beyond some kids acting tough around each other and trying to save the world. Come on, Shu, you can do it! And that Gohan guy always seems to have an eternally angry face, rarely if ever having a facial expression change. Kill the landshark, go on a grand adventure... There's very little depth from what I saw.

The only reason I give this game a 2 instead of a 1 is the battle system is decent. It's very slightly like Xenosaga in that you walk on the map and can either head straight on into a fight, or attempt to walk around them and avoid, but you engage them instead by basically getting in range, then opening up a menu and selecting to fight - which is a lot more work I want to ask for.

Another thing that bothered me about this game is that, as mentioned in the title, it overshadows games that are way better. Enchanted Arms is better in almost every conceivably possible way. It has a storyline that goes into great depth that emphasize on the importance of the characters, not because they are legendary chosen stupid generic heroes, but because they each have their own deeply explained backgrounds that tie them into being motivated to wanting to save their kidnapped, lost friends - but being unable to. Blue Dragon, however, has none of that depth in storyline nor character personalities, yet somehow everyone who owns an Xbox 360 loves the Hell out of this game way over EA. I honestly can't understand why.

skip it

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 12
Date: August 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Blue Dragon is not a game that is going to elicit a strong reaction from you. It's not terrible, or particularly great or memorable, so the most remarkable thing about it is how unremarkable it is. It's big: three DVDs big, thanks to loads of cutscenes and voice clips. But it isn't grand and sweeping, and it isn't particularly charming, either. Blue Dragon is simply "there." If you wanted to play a Japanese role-playing game on your Xbox 360, this will get the job done. If you wanted to play something that makes an impact, you'll need to keep waiting.

Unleash the Dragon (3.5 Stars)

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: August 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Blue Dragon is yet another highly anticipated XBOX360 title. Not completely for hype, however, but more because of the men behind the game. Hironobu Sakaguchi, Akira Toriyama and Nobuo Uematsu. Sakaguchi is, of course, the famed created of the never-ending Final Fantasy series, Akira Toriyama is a famous character designer for the Dragon Quest series as well as Dragon Ball and Nobuo Uematsu is the music composer for the Final Fantasy games and a contributor to several other games. The only man missing from this "dream team" is Yuji Horii, the producer for Dragon Quest. The last time these men teamed up we got what is arguably one of the greatest RPGs of all time: Chrono Trigger. So, of course, with a game like Chrono Trigger under your belt, as well as the Final Fantasy series, expectations for Blue Dragon are high. Do they live up? If you lower your expectations they do, but for the most part, this game is more of an introduction for those who aren't familiar with Japanese RPGs.

You play as Shu, and as the game begins you fight a Land Shark, a monster that's been terrorizing the village of Talta. Shu and his friends Kluke and Jiro have a plan to get rid of the Land Shark by leading him into a trap. Not everything works out as perfectly planned however and before he knows it, Shu is waking up in some ruins alongside his friends. This is where your journey ultimately begins.

The reason it seems as though Blue Dragon is an introduction to Japanese RPGs is simple: Everything about it is simple and basic, and there's really nothing too "deep" here. When I say simple and basic, I'm not kidding. The story is pretty basic. Mostly because you just don't feel like it's going anywhere. The characters don't help either and neither does the writing. However, sometimes simplicity is key. Because of how simple the game is, the learning curve isn't so steep here. And while the story and characters are nothing special, the gameplay elements are.

Akira Toriyama's work here is obvious. The characters look like they were pulled straight out of Dragon Ball, the monsters look like they're pulled straight out of Dragon Quest. The characters are obviously children, and a lot of the game is rather "cute" looking but the game is very beautiful looking. The cutscenes are great, and some of the voice acting is pretty good (albeit at times annoying).

Gameplay wise, Blue Dragon is like most of your traditional RPGs. There are no random battles, just enemies out on the field that you battle upon making contact with them. This means battling is largely optional. There are, of course, times when monsters are in your way and you'll be forced to fight, but for the most part, there are no random encounters and that's a blessing. In battle is rather simplistic. It's a lot like battling in the NES installments of Final Fantasy and the Dragon Quest series. It's entirely turn based. This means that there's some time for strategy, and the game encourages it. You know when your enemies are going to attack and you can plan accordingly. Blue Dragon adds a little something to its field system though. The Attack Circle. Outside of battle you can make a circle to engage multiple groups of enemies at once. This helps to clear out areas faster, but the real gem of this is to get two enemies that hate each other into battle and watch as they attack each other before they attack you. In the long run, this really isn't something you'll do a lot. Blue Dragon is by no means a hard game.

A slight problem with the battle system however is framerate issues. Turn based battles are usually slow as it is, but here you'll find they're even slower and it isn't because you have to spend time watching every action, it's because the framerate dips and the game lags.

The abilities system is quite unique at least. You select a job, learn the abilities in that class and once you learn abilities you can mix and match them all you want. You can change jobs whenever you want as well. It's a great and interesting system that allows for tons of customization. It also a great way to provide some strategy in the long run. This is because certain classes will have a direct effect on your stats. For example, a sword master gets a large boost to his attack and defense. Mages get a boost in magic abilities. The system is very similar to the job system found in Final Fantasy V

Blue Dragon isn't a bad sounding game, but Nobuo Uematsu has certainly done better. For the most part, what you get in terms of music is actually pretty good, though you won't find yourself humming most of it any time soon. As I said earlier, the voice acting isn't so bad, but there are some moments when it can be pretty annoying.

Blue Dragon is by no means a bad game. It's just a game that didn't reach as high as it could. It sticks to simplicity and basics. Basic storyline and basic characters. Certainly that's not always a bad thing, but in this day and age, no RPG can survive on gameplay alone. It needs a good story and good character development. Both of these things, Blue Dragon lacks.

Pros:

+Some nice visuals
+Simple gameplay elements
+Battles encourage strategy
+No Random Encounters
+Job system allows for a lot of customization
+Great cutscenes with some decent voice acting

Cons:

-The story is not interesting
-The characters are nothing special, either
-The game is far too easy for veterans of the genre
-Dips in frame rate in battle are annoying

A poo-blackened, shining example of "childish" done wrong.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 19 / 33
Date: September 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

"Nene tries to use his power to make others do whatever he wants them to. People like that are no good!" exclaims some character at some point of this story. It's hard to tell which character, because any of them could have said that. Instead of differentiating the characters subtly, Sakaguchi and Toriyama have designed a game with characters whose personalities are differentiated according to nothing but personal quirks: Shu and Maro are overzealous, Zola is sultry, etc. Blue Dragon has somehow managed to achieve a T rating while employing a form of storytelling that would insult the intelligence of players far below the recommended age range for the game. It is often said that in order to appreciate Blue Dragon, one must be familiar with "old-school" JRPGs. I am, but that doesn't make the story or characters any more interesting.

In terms of gameplay conventions, Blue Dragon is anything but old-school, and that is one of the game's huge pluses. Enemies can be avoided on the field screen, your party can fight multi-round battles by challenging several enemies simultaneously, and items are mostly scavenged for rather than being irrationally dropped by defeated monsters. All of the characters can use all of the abilities in battle, once trained properly, and there are several action sequences mixed into the gameplay. None of these elements suggest that Blue Dragon's design is anything other than hyper-modern, and the "old school" pretense seems to be nothing other than an excuse for consistently employing sloppy, dull narrative.

Blue Dragon is quite fun to play. The graphics are consistently excellent, and although there is no noticeable slowdown per se, the entire game seems to run about 20% slower than it would if the motions depicted in the animations were animated fluidly. This seems to suggest that the developers decided to slow down the entire game, to keep the slowdown created by technically-demanding areas from becoming noticeable. The fun gameplay of Blue Dragon would be all the more enjoyable if everything was sped up by 20%, with a proportionate framerate increase, rather than frame-skipping, to preserve the fluidity of the motions. The XBox 360 was clearly designed to be able to polygon-push more than fast enough to achieve this.

Nobuo Uematsu's score for this game is surprisingly good, and the piano track played at ruined Talta Village, for example, exceeds the quality of most of his work for the Final Fantasy series. I don't care much for the musica machina motif that runs throughout this game's score, but it is appropriate for the large number of metal complexes and robot fight scenes. It's hard to recommend a game like this entirely for its soundtrack, when it's so easy to get the music seperately, and when during the play of the game, 10% of the music fills up 90% of the playtime. The vocal tracks are great, especially the epic final battle theme, which subtly pays homage to a similar track from Final Fantasy VII.

This is basically the best-looking JRPG ever, by virtue of the fact that it's the first large-budget JRPG to appear on a current-gen console. But even this honor can seem underwhelming at times, since the degree of graphical improvement this game offers over some of the better-looking PS2 RPGs is nowhere near the degree of graphical improvement historically offered several times by Squaresoft, whenever it bested its previously most graphically-advanced JRPG. The art design for some of Blue Dragon's locations, such as Pachess Town and Wither Village, is incredibly beautiful, while the remainder of the locations appear to be heavily copied and pasted together.

I would give this game 2.5 stars really, but I've rounded up to 3, because of Uematsu's great musical contribution. For an example of a good video game featuring blatantly childish design, check out Lunar: Silver Star Story. That game comes from the Blue Dragon school of design, but adds a lot of flavor to the formula, and would certainly be remake-worthy on a current-gen console.

It's OK

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: September 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am a little upset. I was really hoping that this game would keep me entertained for little while until Mass Effect is released. I agree with some of the reviews already written that this game isn't bad but it isn't great either. Personally, I found the fighting concept of the dragons interesting at first but it quickly became tiresome and quite frankly boring...as every fight seemed to be the same. I even tried changing my dragons' class but that didn't make it any more interesting. This I could have dealt with though if the story would have captured my attention but honestly after about 10 hours of play I gave up realizing the story was just never going to get that interesting. I must be honest, that over the past few years (especially after playing the KOTOR games, Jade Empire, Fable), games like this one where I feel like a by-stander watching a story unfold rather than shaping it just don't hold my attention for long at all. I think if I would have played this game 5 years ago I would've been blown away but things change and now I expect more from a game...especially an RPG. I mean how is it a "Role-Playing" game when I have no control at all over who my character is, where they go or how they react to people and situations. Here you kill some enemies till you get to a cut scene then run around kill some more enemies until you get to a cut scene.....repeat....repeat....repeat. To be fair though, it might have changed some after the first 10 hours though I doubt it. Again, since I feel like I am being a little too hard on such a "cute" game, it really isn't that bad of a game but I would highly recommend renting before committing to purchasing this one. Maybe I missed the point though and it was intended to be for the 13 and under crowd as this game really seems to be rather kiddish without much depth at all to the story or characters.

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.

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.

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.

Suprisingly good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: October 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

OK, I am not an anime fan. Not even a little. I tried Blue Dragon simply because I was jonesing for an RPG, and this was about all there was after Oblivion for the 360.

Well, much to my suprise, I ended-up thoroughly engrossed in the darn thing.

Since I have limited time, I'll do a short and sweet Pro/Con summary:

PROS:

Absolutely stellar graphics. It really seems like you are playing a Pixar movie at times. Colorful and inventive, Blue Dragon is a pleasure to look-at, and lets face it, that matters.

Very simple and intuitive interface. Almost everything you need to access for your inventory, stats, spells, etc are logically located in one, succinct menu, with the map in another. Very quick and easy. Makes you wonder why after 10+ years the otherwise excellent Resident Evil series can't figure this out.

The storyline is predictable silly, even juvenile, but it's done with enough charm and originality to more-or-less make up for it. Somehow, I still wanted to see what would happen next, and I am one cynical sod ;)

Tons of content. Lets face it, 60 bucks is a lot of dough, and I would usually shy away from buying a plotted game. Normally I rent them, as the replay value, at least for me is low. But this thing is so darn huge, that it will keep you playing for a month probably. At least as long as Oblivion from what I can tell.

Technically, the game seems nearly flawless. I have experienced no graphic gitches or frame-rate slowdowns at all.

Soundtrack. The score and incedental music is excellent, if not slightly incongruous. There's a main leitmotif that sounds almost exactly the same as the one from Godfather II. There's also a very cool uptempo original metal track from Deep Purple's Ian Gillan that plays during the boss fights. Cool track, except that I wish they had more than one in the game :/ I noticed a couple of teen reviewers noted the "cheese metal" boss-music. I found this pretty hilarious. They are playing a game that looks like a carebears cartoon, what do they want, Slayer? The song that's there is heavy and fast enough to fit the action, without being out-of-place.

Cons: (These are largely subjective)

Frustrating content decisions. Although I haven't quite finished the game yet, (I'm on disc 3) so far this has been an almost entirely innocent and innocuous game, that I would highly recommend for any child. The gameworld is whimsical and charming, without the slightest hint of "adult content", with the bizarre addition of the occasional use of the word "b*stard". Now stop me if this doesn't seem weird to you, but why on earth would they have these cuddly, carebear-like charcters suddenly feel the need to yell that? It's not only unintentionly funny to an adult, (picture a lady smurf suddenly flipping-up their shirt for no reason)but it's keeping me from letting my 9-year old play a game that ordinarily would be fine. Like the game would be less fun if they didn't say "b*stard" a few times per disc. Just seems like a stupid business decision. "Hey! Let's limit millions of potential little-kid buyers from spending their 60 bucks so we can cuss a few times! They make a good, cute, kiddie game, then make it off-limits for much of their target audience. Weird. Glad they aren't handling my mutual fund.

Repetiton. Any long-time fan of Japanese console RPG's is used to the somewhat repetitive combat, so it won't be news to you, but to any people more used-to western-style combat, fighting essentially the same battle 10,000 times can stretch your patience. After 20 hours or so of play, I found myself running past most of the mobs just so I wouldn't have to battle anymore. Although to be fair, they did add more depth and strategy to the fighting than normal, otherwise, i would have started avoiding the fights much sooner :)

Overall, highly recommended.

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