Blue Dragon (Xbox 360)

Blue Dragon is Microsoft's effort at appealing to the Japanese audience, a role-playing game from Mistwalker studios which consists of three legendary designers. Hironubu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series. Akira Toriyama, designer of the Dragonball animes and Dragon Quest games. Nobuo Uematsu music composer of the Final Fantasy games, with such a team what could go wrong!

Story:
The story of Blue Dragon begins in ...
...gain the powers of the blue dragon. The rest of the games story revolves around the quest to defeat Nene which has a few interesting plot twists (a good one right at the end!). There is some attempt at a romance subplot between Shu, Jiro and Kluke but the only thing that happens is they make rings for her, friendship rings not wedding rings! It's just the usual good vs. evil struggle but it is decent enough to hold your interest.

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Blue Dragon is Microsoft's effort at appealing to the Japanese audience, a role-playing game from Mistwalker studios which consists of three legendary designers. Hironubu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series. Akira Toriyama, designer of the Dragonball animes and Dragon Quest games. Nobuo Uematsu music composer of the Final Fantasy games, with such a team what could go wrong!

Story:
The story of Blue Dragon begins in Talta village, every year violet clouds appear and the terrible Land Shark appears devastating the place. Our plucky hero Shu wants no more of this and comes up with a plan with his friend Jiro to destroy the Land shark as he bravely attempts to fight it and save his village. The plan backfires and friends Shu Jiro and Kluke decide to follow the Land Shark which takes them to a strange mechanical fortress . Here the games villain Nene is introduced as the owner of the land shark but he defeats Shu with ease. A strange voice prompts them to swallow light spheres if they ever want to defeat Nene, so they do, and gain the powers of the blue dragon. The rest of the games story revolves around the quest to defeat Nene which has a few interesting plot twists (a good one right at the end!). There is some attempt at a romance subplot between Shu, Jiro and Kluke but the only thing that happens is they make rings for her, friendship rings not wedding rings! It's just the usual good vs. evil struggle but it is decent enough to hold your interest.

Characters:
At the start of the game you only have three characters but over the course of the game you meet up with a couple more.

Shu: Shu is a 16 year old boy and the spiky haired hero of the game, like all good heroes he is willing to do whatever it takes to destroy Nene and keep his people safe running into danger headfirst if need be. His (rather annoying) catchphrase is "I won't give up!" and he never does. Shu's shadow is the titular Blue Dragon.

Jiro: Jiro is 17, he is Shus friend who frequently goes exploring with him. Jiro is basically the opposite of Shu, rather than head straight for danger he will formulate a plan and think things through thoroughly much to the annoyance of Shu. He also competes with Shu to win the affections of Kluke Jiros shadow takes the form of a raging minotaur.

Kluke: Kluke is a 16 year old girl, her parents were killed in one of the Land Shark attacks so she joins with her friends Shu and Jiro to try and stop the evil Nene. She is caring and will always help out her friends. She is also the "love interest" of the game but she doesn't choose Shu or Jiro and prefers to remain just friends! Klukes shadow takes the form of the mystical Phoenix.

Marumaro: Marumaro or just Maro is a member of the Devee tribe, a weird cross between a human and a bat, Maro is very loud and often shouts when he speaks, he is willing to do anything he sets his mind to and he does it with incredible childlike enthusiasm. He is also obsessed with Zola who he calls Lady Zola and always tries to impress. His age is not known but due to his character I suppose he is around the age of 14. Maros shadow is the deadly sabre tooth tiger.

Zola: Zola is 20 years old and guard of Jibral city, she joins up with Shu and the gang as they fought to protect their villagers from the deadly onslaught of some giant tigers. She proves to be a valuable ally and guide helping greatly over the course of the game. Zola is usually calm and cool the complete opposite of Maro and it's funny to watch her and Maro talk. Zolas shadow is the ferocious killer bat.

Gameplay
The game takes place in a big world which you can roam, you walk around like any other game but there is one annoying little problem, the camera angle on the world map screen never lines up properly so you get more of a top down view which is not what you like. Cities and towns appear all over the place and are very small on the world map but once you get into them they are big as you would expect. When you are in the world you can explore which will reward you with gold and nothings, you may think why would I want to collect nothings, but there is a place in the game where you can trade your nothings for rare items. In cities and villages you will find shops and inns, in shops you will be able to buy items to equip your characters with to increase their abilities and in an inn you can rest which brings you back to full health. As you explore the world you will come across warp gates which you can activate and then you will be able to come back to that point in the game whenever you want which is quite handy.

Like any good RPG you will get into lots of battles, the way you get into battles is quite innovative as you see your enemies wandering the field which means no random encounters! You can also pull up a circle and attack all enemies in range which is good as you don't need to get into multiple fights to destroy a group of enemies. Another unique feature is if you can group certain enemies that don't like each other they will fight making it easier on you.

Once you are in a battle if you have played an RPG recently you will be very familiar with the classic turn based system in Blue Dragon. You can attack , defend, use spells, items and flee. A unique feature is sometimes you will be able to charge your spells and attacks for maximum power but if you do you will have to wait longer for your attack to charge. The longer you charge the more powerful your spell or attack will be. If you are in a multi monster fight you will get more experience and as you defeat a wave of monsters you will get a powerup . Formations are important as depending on where you character is places he will take and give out more damage, if you have a swordsman you will want them to be in the front row as then their melee attacks will do alot of damage, a white magic user should be in the second row to minimize damage as the effect of magic doesn't change due to formation. As you fight battles you will get Experience Points, Shadow Points and Gold. Experience and Shadow points you can use to make your characters stronger and make your shadows learn new skills. Gold you use to buy items from shops in cities and villages.

The Shadow Skill system is pretty cool as you can customize your shadow anyway you want it, in most games you are forced down the path of having one character as a soldier, one as a magic user etc, so this is a nice change. The skills you can choose your Shadows to learn are Sword master, which makes you able to learn magical sword attacks as well as making your physical attacks more powerful, Black magic which offers many powerful offensive spells to use aswell as increasing your characters magical abilities. White magic allows you to heal and revive your allys aswell as greatly damage ghost monsters. Support magic enables you to support your allies with speed increases, shields and raising their attack power. Barrier magic is very useful as you can activate a barrier and instantly defeat enemies without battling them, you don't gain experience for doing this but your shadow skill points increase. Assasin which increases your speed greatly and even allows you to attack twice in one turn. Monk which allows you to charge your physical attacks for extra damage, they also have alot of health so are useful for soaking up damage. Guardian is for increasing a characters defensive abilitys and health. Generalist allows characters to have more skill slots, this is vital if you want to have a well balanced character. You are able to switch your characters Shadow Class whenever you wish and when you have learned the skills you want you can switch to another but you keep the skills learnt while you were the previous class.

Aswell as the turnbased battles you get some minigames to play, the biggest of these is the Mechat shooting sections. There are only three of these in the game which is a shame because they are great fun. When you get into a Mechat the gameplay completely changes to resemble a first person shooter! You don't control the Mechat movement just the gun, the gun does overheat so watch out! The ammo is unlimited however so you don't need to be shy! Aswell as the machine gun you also control missiles and a shield. If this were a standalone game you'd get tired of it rather quickly but as a mini game it's a welcome diversion. There are also a couple of other minigames including a moon blasting one and a wagon protection game.

Graphics and Sound
The graphics are done in a Japanese Manga style by Akira Toriyama, this makes the game look slightly kiddish but I think they look amazing, smooth and well animated to almost Pixar movie standards. In battles the camera is well shown off as it pans around the heroes and enemys zooming in for a close up every now and then allowing you to see the brutal blows. The animation is spectacular and never jerky, however the framerate does suffer sometimes. The game also uses a great depth of field effect which blurs some parts of the screen depending on where you are looking, this usually works well but sometimes it will blur the main character making everything look fuzzy. The monster design is very creative (almost insane!) as you would expect from Toriyama and is probably the only game where you'll find oddities such as Poo snakes! Where the graphics shine most are in the many FMV sequences, here they are really exceptionally detailed, it's a pity there is usually not much action going on in them! Nobuo Uematus music score is good, slightly disappointing as there are no tracks that really stand out and echo with you long after you have played the game, it features the usual grand orchestrated scores you'd expect from an RPG. There is one thing he has done slightly differently which is the boss music which is a rock track which you will either love or hate! The sound effects are all well done and as you would expect, apart from this annoying robotic voice which says detected and defeated which thankfully you can turn off. The voice acting is decent and features good performances from good actors such as Mona Marshall (South Park) and Tara Strong (FFX-Rikku). The only voice that can grate slightly is Maro as he is always shouting!

Price
Blue Dragon wasn't that well received and the price reflects that as it can be had for as little as £15-20. For a three disc epic RPG this is a good price to pay and at present it is one of the two Japanese RPG experiences available for the Xbox 360. While it doesn't do anything that new it refines the classic turn based RPG that Hironobu Sakaguchi is renowned for, it's a pity he played it so safe as it could've been better. The character design you will either love or hate depending on your tastes, I thought they were excellent and it was good to see something new from Akira Toriyama. The music from Nobuo Uematsu was good but nothing as memorable as the Final Fantasy scores. Blue Dragon is a solid title and a good RPG. Heres to hoping that future efforts from Mistwalker(Lost Odyssey, Cry On) will have more innovation. 4/5

Developer: Mistwalker/Bird Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Players: 1 Player
Price: £15-20 

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