GameSpy Review of Blue Dragon

It has been nearly two years since the debut of our cherished Xbox 360, and yet there is one genre of games that has been noticeably absent from its otherwise stellar library of titles: the Japanese role-playing game. Granted, a vast portion of 360 owners probably couldn't care less about this fact, content to play Gears of War, GRAW and Oblivion. Nobody can deny that those games are indeed awesome; however, for that slice of the 360 populace that craves a classic Final Fantasy-style experience (Final Fantasy XI, decent though it may be, does not count because it's an MMO), your prayers have finally been answered with Blue Dragon.

Chase the Dragon

One of the things that Blue Dragon will undoubtedly receive criticism for is its slow start. While some people may take the 10-to-20-hour ramp-up to the true meat of the game as a negative, we aficionados of JRPGs know that this is par for the classic 60-hour course. Blue Dragon is not particularly engaging right out of the gate, but instead needs time to cultivate the atmosphere and mood that slowly germinate into the kind of meaningful storytelling that grand daddy of console RPGs Hironobu Sakaguchi is known for.

Following from this, your characters also need time to grow in order to fill out their slim repertoire of combat moves before the combat system really starts to rock. At the start of the game, when your little guys are just a bunch of fresh-faced tykes, you don't have many options during the seemingly boring battles. Of course, developing your characters into battle-hardened veterans as you progress through the first third of the game results in a plethora of different and exciting skills they can execute.


Even Blue Dragon's turn-based approach gains depth the longer you play because some of your characters can charge their moves. Spells and certain characters' attacks offer a charge bar with a specific zone marked off as a maximum effect area, so when you use those attacks, the little meter moves back and forth down the bar and you try to hit the sweet spot that results in the best possible effect.

The twist is that charging attacks takes more time than just belting them out at minimal power, which means that charging an attack may reset your position in the initiative list causing you to attack later than you would've if you hadn't taken the time to charge it up. So, you have to decide how necessary that extra damage boost is in relation to when you want that attack (or heal) to happen, and this adds a tremendous amount of tactical thinking to the battles when you get sufficiently deep into the game. Suddenly, around the 20 hour mark, what seemed like a dumbed-down Playskool version of an RPG has become a brain-taxing duel of wits between you and a green mural monster with poison breath.

Speaking of spells and skills, one of the things that makes Blue Dragon great is the ability to change your (or, more accurately, your shadow's) class whenever you're not in combat. This gives you total control of your party make-up at any given time. Each class gains skills that can be transferred to other classes by adding them to your skill roster, so if you spend a brief period of time leveling up your Black Magic class, you can switch to the Sword Master class and still be able to use some Black Magic skills. This is especially awesome since some classes offer unique bonuses that are valuable to almost every class, like the Black Magic ability to regain mana while walking or the Generalist trait of having extra skill slots (essential if you want to be able to use more than one class's skills). Dragon its Feet

Some weird problems exist in Blue Dragon, though, not the least of which is a bizarre slow-down of the framerate when combat becomes a bit too heated. Still, this doesn't happen a bunch, so fans of the JRPG genre probably won't mind all that much. What's a few dropped frames of animation during battles you'll likely end up having over and over again?

Of course, all of the classic issues that plague Japanese role-playing games are in full effect, but, again, fans of the genre shouldn't mind and may even look forward to these kinds of things. Cut-scenes are sometimes obscenely long, making Blue Dragon roughly half game and half movie at times. Though you have some control over whether or not you fight monsters on the field, the game still manages to throw some random encounters at you by putting enemies directly and unavoidably in your path, so the traditional complaint of "too many random encounters" is still a teensy bit valid. Seriously though, if these are things that bother you about JRPGs, why on Earth did you even consider buying Blue Dragon?


Shout at the Dragon

Before we wrap up this review, there is one last brilliantly shining point of utter coolness to Blue Dragon that we simply must mention. While the bulk of the music in the game is what you would expect out of an epic tale of magic and the fight against a cruel despot (read: magnificently sweeping symphonic scores), some of the tunes are so totally non-sequitur that they reach a completely new level of awesome.

Specifically, we're talking about the boss fight music, which is one of the most appealing pieces of audio ever heard. A stunning work that redefines tired hair metal, the boss fight music featured in Blue Dragon is reminiscent of the theme from the original 80s-era Transformers movie. Complete with your standard opening high-pitched screech that could easily have come from Guns 'N Roses' Axel Rose or Skid Row's Sebastian Bach, this track is a triumph of sheer out-of-left-field-ness. In all sincerity (but maybe with just a touch of sarcasm), the boss fight music is one of the best things about the whole game that serves the purpose of instantly and unmistakably alerting you to the fact that you're in for a serious battle. In a word (or maybe two): it rocks.

For most 360 gamers, Blue Dragon is going to be a hard sell, but for that sliver of the community that longs for a return to the days of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, you simply couldn't do any better. Without question, it's one of the longest games available on the 360, clocking in at roughly 60 hours depending on how quickly you blaze through it. For huge anime/JRPG geeks like us, Blue Dragon is a fantastic game as long as you can make it through the first few plodding hours and don't mind the hyper-cute character design. Now, if you'll excuse us, we need to go see if we can pick up a version of the boss fight music without the lyrics for future karaoke parties.

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