Blue Dragon (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Steve McHugh on 09.11.2007
Vitals
Genre
RPG
System
Xbox 360
Release Date
Q0 0000
The great blue hope.
Nil, Nada, Zilch, Zero. No that’s not the end score for this game, that’s how many JRPG’s were available for the original Xbox that I can think of. It was one of the many reasons why the original didn’t perform very well in Japan. Well, the 360 already has one decent JRPG in the shape of Enchanted Arm, but that wasn’t an exclusive and so now it’s time for the big exclusive JRPG release. The one Microsoft is pinning its hopes on. So, no pressure there then.
To be fair, the people making the game are hardly new to the industry. Hironobu Sakaguchi was behind Final Fantasy, so his Mistwalker studio certainly had pedigree and with Akira Toriyama on the artistic stylings of the game and Nobuo Uemastu composing the music, there are certainly some heavy hitters working on the project. Now none of those names may mean a thing to you, but trust me when I say that all of them are a very big deal.
Graphics.
Akira Toriyama’s influence certainly shines through in the art style of the game and his work on Dragon Ball has had an effect on the characters here. The Anime style of the graphics suits the game very well and keeps everything very colorful and interesting to watch.
This is especially true of the cut-scenes which are situated throughout the game, and look very impressive indeed. The real test comes when switching from cut-scene to playable and there really is very little difference in the quality of the graphics when switching from one to the other. In fact a little voice will pop up to say ‘playable’ when a cut-scene has finished. Yes most of the time you’ll be able to tell that it’s playable because the camera will change with it but it still shows just how little the quality dips.
The character animations are also excellent, especially in the battles, with both enemies and allies all having unique attacks and the winning poses of your characters manage to show the sense of humor that runs through the game.
However all is not perfect. Some of the areas you go into are not all that exciting to look at, and some of those you’ll be in for a while. But the main problem you’ll come across is the occasional bizarre animation that will happen during battle. You’ll go to use a power of one of the characters and instead of the usual nice attacking animation you’ll end up getting stuck looking at another characters’ shadow. It’s a very odd experience and happens more than it should, especially when you use the Magic Sword ability.
However, for the most part everything looks very nice and whilst the art style may not appeal to everyone it’s still a welcome change to the usual 360 game.
There are plenty of mini games that help break up the action.
Gameplay
As is traditional with JRPG’s, Blue Dragon uses a turn-based battle system. Now at the mention of that, some of you will go running to the hills vowing to never touch the game but Blue Dragon has a few nice touches that update it without having it lose the traditional feel. Firstly whilst battles are turn-based, there are no random encounters, something JRPG’s should have gotten rid of years ago. Every enemy can be seen on screen and a useful message of ‘detected’ will flash up when one of them has you in its sights. By a simple press of the right trigger you will also bring up an area that will allow you to battle all the enemies inside it at once. It’s a fantastic idea and one that works very well, allowing you to fight more enemies at once. This has a number of incentives. Firstly, fighting more then one type of enemy can lead to the two different types having a battle between them, allowing you to just deal with the winners in a much easier battle than it would have otherwise been.
The second aspect to this is that if the monsters don’t battle themselves they will come in waves. Defeat the first wave and the second will appear, and so on. But after each wave is defeated, a scrolling bar will appear on screen allowing you to select a power up. These range from an increase in health or magic or the ability to strike first. It’s a very good idea and does work very well but after 2 or 3 waves, your character will get very powerful indeed, meaning that the later fights are much easier than they should be.
However, you certainly don’t have to fight; in fact you can run away from enemies on screen or use an ability that destroys the weaker ones. This won’t allow you to get experience or gold but does give you SP like you would have gotten if you’d fought, although much less of it.
SP is what you accrue to level up your various shadows. You see in Blue Dragon, none of the characters themselves actually fight, they all have a shadow depicting a variety of monsters (Shu is the aforementioned Blue Dragon, Kluke is a Phoenix) that do the battling for you. Each of the characters also have a variety of classes that they can belong to, ranging from Monk to Black Magic or Assassin and each of these uses SP to level up. After so many levels you’ll unlock a new selection of spells or another ability all of which are unique to each class. You can switch classes for each character at any time providing you’ve unlocked the class you want to switch to (they unlock one every 10 levels your main character goes up give or take). It’s a bit like the job system in Final Fantasy V and works very well indeed for the most part. Unfortunately there isn’t the variety on offer that FFV had, and after a while you’ll start to see that several of your characters all have the same abilities and spells meaning there’s very little to pick between them.
Also some of the abilities are unbelievably powerful when you first get them. “Mow Down Level 2” is a big culprit of this as it allows you to hit everything in one row but by the time I’d got this I’d basically destroyed the whole row in one hit, making fights even easier.
In fact that’s a problem that surrounds the game, it’s not very hard. It does get harder as it goes on, but by that time you’ll have leveled up so much that very little will cause any major problems. Even bosses can be brushed aside making for an unbalanced battle.
This never gets in the way of actually enjoying the game, but it also means you’ll cut through enemies quickly and still level up fast making you even more powerful. The battles though are still strategic and can be very exciting. Instead of just selecting an action and having it performed, you get a bar at the top of the screen showing the cue of those to attack. At some part on the bar there is an orange zone and it’s your job to hold A and try to get the bar in the orange zone. If you succeed then your attack will be stronger and use less magic (if you’re using magic) but at the same time you need to be aware when the enemy will attack. It works very well and being able to string together attacks before the enemy does really will keep you on your toes during the longer boss fights.
The major problem with Blue Dragon is the first disk. The first 10-12 hours of the game (of about 17 hours) are not that interesting. The story is pretty much the same as many other RPG’s in its ‘kids save the world whilst also growing up at the same time’ theme and it takes a while to get going. Eventually it does and you’ll be grateful you stuck around, but for some of those hours you will really start to have a few doubts.
There are also almost no side-quests in the first disk and of the two I found neither was anything interesting. I understand the need to set the scene and guide people into this world but I quite like to be given a bit more freedom to do what I like as opposed to being forced to follow a very linear path.
The whole gang. Marumaru is 2nd from the left with a pot on his head, you will come to hate him.
Sound
The musical score is mostly excellent and is mostly traditional in nature, and the voice work for the English translation is superb. Marumaru is the world’s most annoying character but I suspect he’s meant to be so I’ll let that one drop.
However the boss fights are where Nobuo Uemastu has done something different. The former musical composer for some of the Final Fantasy games has done something special here and every boss fight is accompanied by a rock song. And by rock song I mean a 80s hair rock and it’s fantastic the first few times you hear it. In fact it’s pretty good after that too, but it would have been nice if a few of these songs had been done so you don’t have to hear the same one over and over again.
It’ll get in your head and depending on whether you like the song depends on whether that’s something you’ll be happy about or not. But at least it’s something different but seriously next time more variety please.
The battles are definitely one of the high points of the game.
Lasting Appeal.
Well roughly 60 hours, give or take a few, makes this a very long game which is something you’d expect for a JPRG spread over 3 disks. Unfortunately there are too few side quests, especially early on and you’re unlikely to want to replay the game twice to get all the achievements.
Speaking of achievements, if you want to get many then expect to work for it. A lot of them are to do with getting your characters up to level 99 and getting all of their skills up to level 99 and this will take a long time. Let’s put it this way, after 25 hours I was at level 27-30. So expect to be playing for a good long time after that to get everything. Most people won’t bother though, which makes them seem somewhat redundant. Achievements shouldn’t be given too easily but they should be attainable without having to spend hour after hour running in circles to level up.
The design of the enemies is mostly very impressive.
Fun Factor
For the most part this is a fun game. The level up system is excellent, if not overly complex, and battles are a lot of fun. The sense of humor is also pretty odd, especially the poo fetish (seriously what the hell is that about?) but in a good way. Unfortunately the first disk doesn’t really show the game off in a great light and it’ll take you a good few hours before the story starts to get interesting. If you can make it past the less interesting first 12 or so hours you’ll have a great time though.
The 411
Blue Dragon is not the killer app that it was meant to be. It certainly won’t be dethroning Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest but it’s a good start in the right direction. If the first disk was more interesting and the story was more engaging then this would get a much better score. I would certainly be excited about a sequel and if you own a 360 and like RPG’s you should certainly give it a shot. Hopefully the battle system and lovely graphics will be enough to take you though the first few hours of the first disk. Still it is a good game and deserves to do well.
Graphics
8.9
Whilst it won’t be to everyone’s taste it looks excellent for the most part and the cut-scenes are amazing, but some of the battle animations don’t look right and the areas you go to aren’t always that interesting.
Gameplay
8.3
Traditional for the most part with a few interesting and worthwhile tweaks. Some more variety in the class system would have been nice and the first disk isn’t very exciting and betrays how good the game gets.
Sound
9.2
Excellent throughout and the voice work is of a very high standard. The boss fight music needs to be more varied though despite that one song being hair-rock tastic.
Lasting Appeal
9.0
This is a very long game and if you want those achievements you’re going to be here for an even longer time
Fun Factor
8.7
After about 12 – 15 hours the story really picks up but before then it can become a bit of a drag. The characters are not entirely interesting either. The battle system is excellent thought and really helps to pull the game through the more dull aspects.
