Aramation Games

Blue Dragon, produced by the creators of Final Fantasy series, is a typical JRPG featuring a diverse cast of lovable tykes in a plot to save the world through turn-based combat. Spanning 3 DVDs, this game is lengthy - marching through the game will easily take over 30 hours, close to 60 hours if you stop and do all the side quests - with plenty of battles and cut scenes. Beginning of the game suffers from the frequency of cut scenes as you move a few steps and trigger new cinematic: what’s the point of giving you control if you’ll take it away just a few seconds later?

The story starts with Shu, Kluke and Jiro who battle monsters they call Land Sharks that have been terrorizing their village for years. Then they discover this super-villain Nene who uses powerful magic and ancient machines in order to take over the world. Shu, Kluke and Jiro are soon joined by Marumaro and Zola as they follow Nene to prevent him from destroying the world. The plot is pretty simplistic and typical of the JRPG, but where this game shines is in the game mechanics.

It still features turn-based combat, but there is no random encounters. Instead, in the overworld map, you choose which enemies to fight. Fighting is done by your shadows and they can be of certain class. There’s the typical magic class and melee class. You can even mix and match skills by leveling up different shadows and combining their skill set. For example, you may wish to obtain black mage’s regenerate MP while walking skill for your white mage. There are also accessories to equip in order to give you beneficial stat boosts, or prevent status changing attacks.

Visuals are pretty good as long as you can stand all the overty cutesy characters. Playing through the game, you can’t help but notice how similar they are to Dragon Ball Z anime characters as they were designed by the same person. On a technical standpoint, the game does slow down in some battle sequences with many effects and enemies, but since this is a turn-based combat game, it doesn’t affect the game too much.

Sound effects and music are superb, especially the soundtrack contains many catchy tunes. The boss battle music which sounds very much like a 80’s heavy metal hair band song will grow on you but hearing the same song over and over did get annoying after a few hours in. If you’re looking for a traditional JRPG experience on your Xbox 360, you can’t go wrong with Blue Dragon even if it doesn’t do anything revolutionary.

Rating: 75%

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