The story in Blue Dragon revolves around a set of characters drawn up by famed animator, Akira Toriyama. They live in a fictitious world that is being terrorised by purple clouds that bring disaster to each place they strike. Such disasters include flood, sickness and ‘land sharks’. Sick of the annual attacks, youngsters Shu, Jiro and Kluke stand up to a ‘land shark’ by trying to fight it, only to be taken away by the mechanical beast and find themselves caught in an enemy ship, where they discover the identity of the fiend behind the purple clouds. Along the way, they manage to come across some ‘magic’ that allows them to physically project their shadows into large fighting beasts, including the titular blue dragon.
While this fiend, Nene, is seemingly one of the least the least threatening enemies seen in a JRPG, stopping him is the main driver behind the story, as well as discovering the history behind the world. There are some interesting characters, particularly the loud and jovial Marumaro. While it can be predictable, it’s a reasonably entertaining romp with enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. The overriding themes may seem somewhat juvenile, but they’re at least as sophisticated as a non-dubbed kid’s anime, such as Naruto and One Piece. They don't necessarily justify the M rating, but older gamers are likely to appreciate it more than they would a Saturday morning cartoon.
It's blue. And it's a dragon. What were you expecting.
In truth, the game is not entirely an original work from Mistwalker, as it seems that Japanese developer Artoon has been brought on board to develop the majority of the game. The formula is essentially one that has been played through many times and the influences and pedigree are obvious. At a very basic level, you go from town to town, following the story with the odd diversion here and there. Occasionally, the characters will mingle together and you’ll get some insight into their personalities. The game holds your hand quite a lot, pointing you in directions that are generally quite obvious, particularly for experienced players. Then of course, there are scenarios where you won’t be able to move on until you talk to a specific person. Given the size of some of your locations, this can stilt progress sometimes. As mundane as this may seem, each town that you visit has its own character and flavour, not to mention, there are a few quirky oddballs to meet along the way as well. As formulaic as it may be, it's done really well.
When in the field or overworld, all the monsters are either visible on screen, will crawl out of the ground or drop out of the sky. You can choose to engage them by ‘rushing’ at them or they might just go after you. If you manage to sneak behind them or hit them unaware, you’ll get the first attack. If you fail an attempted escape, your attackers just might get the first attack. You can also project an encounter circle and suck more monsters into a fight. The advantage of this is that you can sometimes trigger a ‘monster encounter’, where the monster and enemies will face off against one another, and then all you have to do is pick them off. While it has been done for some time now, these (essentially) voluntary encounters are unbelievably welcome. But if you avoid too many battles, you’ll be in trouble later on.
At first glance, the battle system looks to be your standard turn-based JRPG set-up. Each character will have their usual options – attack, defend, item and so forth. The difference in this system and the differences between characters will be determined by their shadow and chosen class. There are nine different classes to choose from, each with their strengths and unique abilities. Each class has a set of related skills that can be learned. Individually, the Sword Master and Monk classes can hold their own in a battle of brute force, but having a team of five allows for many different combinations with a lot of potential strategic advantages. Some monsters are susceptible physical attacks and some to magic attacks, so it's really useful when you diversify. Particularly as if there isn't any one class that is much better than another. While a class such as Support or Barrier Magic may seem useless at first, but it can become invaluable later in the game.
She's stolen my heart...
The skills and class system allows for leveling up in multiple classes and skills branching. For example, a black magician can have white magic such as healing spells. So you can have five characters with five different classes but each character can be equiped with skills from several classes. Each of the nine classes has vastly different skills, so there is a lot of choice available to the player. There is some reasonably depth and potential within this system. Whenever a player casts a spell or plays as the Monk class, a gauge will appear at the top of the screen, setting up a mini-game that allows you to charge your spell or attack to make it more powerful. Spell users can aim for the sweet spot to try and make the spell more efficient (or use less MP). However, your charge may also allow others to take a turn before you. Later in the game, you’ll earn Corporeal’s, which are essentially the game’s limit breakers.
Despite being essentially 20 years old, the battle system is robust and quite well paced. Most battles are reasonably quick and your moves are performed quickly. The class and skill system is just what the game needed to pull itself to a reasonable JRPG level, but the primary concern with the game is the difficulty level. On the first disc, the game is an absolute cakewalk, with virtually no monster posing a challenge. This continues through the second and third discs, but about half way through the third disc, the difficulty spikes to a level where some enemies are much faster, stronger and harder then the preceding 20-30 hours worth. Unlike a game such as Dragon Quest, where you're constantly on the edge, regardless of the enemies, going through that many easy battles can have an adverse effect on the game, as it can drag in the latter stages.
There are a few minor additions to what you would consider the standard RPG formula, particularly the ‘poo’ concept, where you dig through the enemy’s poo to collect more items, as well as plenty of side quests. But apart from the difficulty level, the one detractor from the game is likely to be perception. Given the pedigree behind the game, it’s somewhat understandable that some players out there were expecting a mind-blowing experience. So while it does 'tick the boxes' more then it blows the mind, Blue Dragon does it well. It's nothing necessarily new, but at the same time, its far from being bad. Apart from Enchanted Arms, there really aren’t any other JRPG’s for the Xbox 360, so long as you want RPG and are willing to accept that it won’t blow you away, Blue Dragon gets the job done and done reasonably well.
I'm gonna beat the crap out of you... Oh, wait...
In terms of graphics, the game has a bit to answer for. From an artistic perspective, the game is excellent but from a technical perspective, the game is a dud. It stutters, it breaks, it slows and requires a heck of a lot of loading - it's quite unacceptable on a system like the Xbox 360. But the style of the game saves it from embarrassment. There is great distinction between all of the different places that you visit and a number of great aesthetic touches. Everything in the game has been lit up by the Toriyama touch, although the overworld and generic locations (such as forests and caves) could at times have used some sprucing up, and the enemies do get quite repetitive. The CG is excellent, but you’d expect that from a game that spans 3 discs.
The game’s soundtrack is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger fame. The music for each different village and town is excellent, as are the different field themes. However, the default battle theme occurs way too often. You would have thought that after 20 years and on a game that spans 3 discs, you'd get a little more variety. Still, we thought that the boss theme was particularly awesome. You’ve got the option for voicing in English, Japanese and French, and all are done quite astutely. The dialogue is fairly solid in set encounters, but there are a lot of useless and meaningless things said by a lot of the NPCs. Blue Dragon has this weird little sound cue where a voice will tell you something has happened. For example, a sound bit will pipe “defeated” after you beat an enemy. Apart from that, the sound effects aren’t much better than a 16-bit game and are often replaced with text.
So while it’s unlikely to set the world alight, if you have an Xbox 360 and you want a traditional Japanese RPG, Blue Dragon should be up your alley. So while it doesn't really provide anything exceedingly new, most of it is done reasonably well. The class system is nothing new but it's will put together and none of it feels redundant. Furthermore, it does have a few nice touches and has some real character to it. Familiarities aside, the only real downer, is the games skewed difficulty, which leads to it dragging before it's able to get off the ground. Still, it can be quite fun, so long as you can accept that you’re going to see a revolution.
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