Overall: Blue Dragon is a Japanese-styled RPG made by the writer and members of the original team from Chrono Trigger, who are now the developer Mistwalker. That would normally be the good part. And, depending on who you asked, the fact that the characters were designed by the designer of the Dragonball Z characters would be the bad part. However, after almost seventy hours in the game, I can tell you that in this particular instance, they're BOTH the bad part.
I want to do the briefest of story summaries so as not to ruin the plot (*snicker - like THAT could happen*). The story starts off with a villiage being terrorized by an unstoppable machine. Three kids have had it with this monster and rig a trap to snag the beast when it drags them out of the village and into their adventure.
In the early part of their travels, they acquire the ability to perform magic, which is revealed in the form of dragons that emerge from their shadows. Yeah, they're blue. They also meet their opponant who promptly wipes the floor with them, learning that the road they have to travel to best him will be a long one.
That, my friends, is the understatement of 2007.
Blue Dragon takes three full, dual layered DVDs to hold all the content. I spend about 25 hours on Disc One amd at the end of it, had yet to be emotionally moved at all by the story or give a @!%#*! about the characters. Where "Eternal Sonata" was a work of p@!%#*!ion (see my review), Blue Dragon seemed very much like it was just going through the motions. In fact, I didn't feel ANY sense of urgency at all until the end of the second disc, or around 50 hours into the game. Only then did I feel like there was a character in peril, or that I CARED that there was a character in peril and I was inclined to want to save said character. That's a lot of game under your belt with nothing to grab you.
I also got a whopping 50 gamerscore or something by playing the game. The achievements are so strangely obscure that one, you'll never get the majority of them through normal gameplay, and two, the ones that are open to you require revisiting the entire map. After having spent more than plenty of time in these areas, returning just for a few points was NOT an appealing option.
I should point out that I spent over 200 hours in Oblivion and did NOT feel the same way, nor am I a hater of JRPG's.
I also want to point out that towards the end of the game, you get @!%#*!istance in your abillity to traverse this large world, and you can visit any location in the game. This leades me to the conclusion that most of the space on the discs are cutscenes and boss battle info, since the entire geography of the game is included completely on the last disc.
At the end of a game, you ask yourself to grade it. My grade usually consists of: What do I feel about the time I gave up to play this game? What do I feel about the characters I just spent all that time with? In most cases, I consider it time well spent and I liked the characters (Eternal Sonata, Halo, Oblivion). In some cases, The time was well spent but the characters didn't really do anything for me (Crackdown, Viva Pinata).
In the case of Blue Dragon, do I regret spending ALL that time in the game? Well, no. But neither would I feel like I was missing anything had I not played it. The characters were out of my head and heart the second I turned the game off.
Lastly, a cartoon has been launched in Japan, there are two sets of figures/keychains available, and there was a faceplate you could only get in Japan along with the game and the five figures in a LE set. Searches on eBay turn up mousepads and the like.
So on to gameplay... Gameplay: There are some combination of five party members depending on the place in the story. There's a cutscene where a quest is revealed, and your party members go forth. They run into randomly generated monsters in the wilderness between the actual game locations.
Now, before we get into battle aspecs, let's talk about pre-battle preparation.
There are a number of things you can do to prepare for battle. You can equip your characters with accessories that affect their stats and other things, like the ability to attack twice, resurrect, regenrate, sneak, steal items, go first in battle, etc. You can also decide the order of the line-up of your characters, and their placement in a front row/back row presentation. Finally, you can decide how you want to allocate their power up points to make them stronger in the areas you intend to use in battle. This is a very superficial description of all the things you can do. It's very detailed in the amount of flexibility offered to you.
Now, you're in battle. If you initiate the attack, you generally get to go first. If you attack from the rear, you get extra attack opportunities. If you do a surprise attack, their formation is reversed, and the same goes for your party if they surprise attack you. YOur front row is now the back and your support people are now "the front row."
The characters involved in the battle are laid out in a line at the top of your HUD. As the first person in the line makes its move, it moves to somewhere in the line depending on his stats. He doesn't necessarily go to the end of the line.
You have the option of a physical attack, a magic-@!%#*!isted physical attack, a magical attack, or an item attack. You can also use magic as a healing took or as a support tool (for things like double plays, or increased speed which drops you back into the combat queue closer to the front of the line.)
Boss battles consist of you, them, an arena, and usually pointers like "go for his head!" Duh. Graphics: The characters aren't particularly attractive. They have limited facial expressions. The environments are spartan and unspectacular. There are nice water effects and that's about it. The magical lighting effects during battle aren't impressive anymore, two years into this gen. I don't recall a single point in the game that looked so cool that I'd like to go back and show it to someone. I guess I should say something good about it. OK, round things look round. Not jagged. Faces. And Zola's boobs, which are totally out of place in the game. And the kids are adorable. They're totally cute. Sound: Things that annoy:
First offender: The horrible metal screaming music - the SAME SONG - during every extended boss battle, in an excruciatingly short looped 80's flashback. When I heard it in the SECOND boss battle, I could have died, because it sunk in that I'd be hearing it a LOT in the next 60-75 hours.
Second offender: Maromaru's yelling. ALL. THE. TIME.
Third offender: Birds. Birds, performed by one key on a Casio keyboard, on a loop.
Fourth offender: Nene's voice and his sidekick's voice.
Basically, the only thing that I enjoyed that was sound related was the music during the time you could traverse the whole map towards the end of the game. Suggestions: Don't do a sequel. If you want to port this to the PS3, go with my blessing. Get a new audio guy. Get a new character designer. Hire a writer. Don't do a Chrono game until you get this whole equation fixed. Never offer a bad guy who doesn't give you a chance to at least get in a shot before wiping out your whole team. Don't put a max on your hero's hit points if you're going to have baddies who can generate 50% more damage. I have more but I consider them spoilers, so I'll just be vague and say that you should NOT do stuff that has happened in every other JRPG ever made.
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