Blue Dragon reminds me of a mix of Final Fantasy X-2, Dragon Quest 8
and Evolution, maybe with dash of Okage: Shadow King for good measure.
There was a few things that really peeved me about Blue Dragon, sure
the game was extremely easy, sure the blur effects annoyed the crap out
of me, sure the story was perfectly average at best, and sure the
graphics weren't exactly blowing my mind. Outside of that, I really
loved building up my job classes, I loved exploring the world around
me, I loved the music, I loved the art style.
Blue Dragon was far from the most original game ever, but I atleast enjoyed most of the game. What can I say, I like JRPGs.
----------Battle System----------
Blue Dragon is a turn-based RPG. The turns are placed out by the
character or enemy with the best agility. Characters and enemies are
lined up from each other (like say, Evolution for the Dreamcast) and
can be placed in a front or back row. Depending on which row the
character/enemy is standing on, they can get a defense or offensive
bonus. This is typical among early Final Fantasy games, and even the
Evolution games. Another Evolution similarity is the bar that tracks
the order of up-coming attacks by enemies and characters.
You gain experience like any normal rpg after you defeat enemies in a
battle. You also gain SP points, these are skill points. The SP goes
towards your Shadows. Each character has one shadow, but you can change
your job class. You can be a Sword, Guardian, Monk, Black Mage, White
Mage, Assassian, Generalist, Barrier Mage or a Support Mage. This
system kinda reminds me of Final Fantasy X-2 mixed with Dragon Warrior
7. After so many skill points, your Shadow's job class can level up,
after a pre-determined amount of levels your shadow can gain new
abilities. Your Shadows power adds to your power as well, so say Shu is
at level 10 and he has 100 HP, add the Shadow at level 10 and he has
100 HP, so Shu will have about 200 HP (this is just an example). So
you're basically playing as two characters, so when you switch to a
lower level shadow, Shu will probably be a weaker character until he
levels up his shadow.
When you have a shadow equipped, you'll have one Skill unlocked, for
example if you're a Monk, you can Guard, or if you're a White Mage
you'll be able to use White Magic. Over time, you can eventually equip
8 other skills from ANY job class that you've already learned. You can
basically make a lean mean killing machine if you unlock all the good
skills. This actually breaks the game and makes it WAY to easy. You can
learn a skill that will attack two times, learn a skill that will
automatically counter, you can learn a skill that will cast two magic
attacks at once.
You can't equip weapons, but you can equip 4 accessories (and 3 bonus
accessories later in the game). These accessories are basically a
standard substitute for Weapons, Armor, Helmet and whatever. The
Bracelet boosts your strength, the Ring boosts your defense, etc..
Boss fights require no thought or strategy at all. You can pretty much
beat this game without using magic at all if you wanted to. You'll
punch yourself to victory with every boss fight. Dungeons and overall
exploring in the game will make up for the mundane boss fights. I had
the most fun in this game just running around dungeons and fields,
looking for stuff, figuring out the (simplistic) puzzles.
One good feature is the lack of random encounters. All enemies are
visiable on screen before a battle, you can run away from them at
anytime. There are only a few enemies that might block your path or
will guard a treasure though. It's similar to Chrono Trigger, but in
Chrono Trigger it's more of a puzzle to avoid a battle. Blue Dragon's
system is closer to Grandia games where you can just avoid a battle all
together. One cool feature, and maybe the only original thought in the
game is the ability to gather all surrounding enemies into a collection
of fights. Say your are surrounded by 4 enemies, all you have to do is
hit one of the triggers and then you can battle all 4 in a row without
having to waste time exiting and enter battle. You also get battle
bonus' between fights. Sometimes if you group up enemies that hate each
other, like for example an Insect creature and a Plant creature, they
will fight each other rather than your characters.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Shu, Jiro and Kluke. You're all in your late teens
(although they look more like 13 year olds) and live in a small
secluded village that gets attacked by a Land Shark every year. Shu,
Jiro and Kluke are tired of being tormented and having their village
destroyed every year, so they attempted to attack the Land Shark.
During the battle, they find out that the land shark is really a robot,
sent by an evil magician called Nene. Nene has been tormenting every
town with some weird idea for the past 10 years. As Shu, Jiro and Kluke
board Nene's lair, they find magical orbs that give me magical powers
to control their shadows as weapons. Shu, Jiro and Kluke later hook up
with Marumaro and Lady Zora, and go on a quest to stop Nene from
destroying the world.
The story was typical, but it gave you enough reason to play the game.
It's really no better or worse than Skies of Arcadia, but Shu, Jiro and
Kluke were kinda forgettable main characters. Other than that, the
story was good enough.
----------Graphics----------
I loved the style of the graphics, but at the same time hated a few
aspects of them too. I loved the character models. They're animated
nicely, and looked great. Some characters looked straight out of Dragon
Quest 8 and others looked straight out of Chrono Trigger. On the other
hand, the monsters were kinda generic looking and totally forgettable.
I really really hated the blur effects. Blue Dragon has this stupid
feature where they blur out the backgrounds to make draw-distance look
further than it really is. While it's nice in theory, it gets annoying
when you run faster than the blur effects disappear, so you can
actually run into the blur and the whole screen gets messed up. It
makes me think my eyes are getting worse than they actually are. I hate
it.
I don't like the battle system animations though. The shadows look
really choppy, I hate how the camera flashes around all the time (this
annoyed me about Wild Arms 3 and most Dragonball games). I like how
fast the loading is, and how big the areas are. Besides that, any of
the areas within this game could of been in a PS2 game without a
problem. Besides the character models and maybe some of the cleaned up
cutscenes, there really isn't much in this game that wowed my visually.
The scope of the game is huge though, there's alot of enemies to fight,
nearly 300 or so. Although most of them are repeats with different
color or higher level. There are ton of sidequests, a ton of
characters, alot of cutscenes and overall a ton of stuff do to and see.
----------Sound----------
All the main characters and any character that is involved in the
storyline have voice overs. Not all dialog is voiced out though. The
main character Shu has a very high energy voice and can be a little
annoying, I'm pretty sure he is voiced out by the same person that did
Musashi in Brave Fencer Musashi. Just like Brave Fencer, his voice is
really annoying at first, but you do eventually warm up to it. Another
voice that can be a little annoying is Marumaro, who is a little
bat-humaniod character with a shrill over excited loud voice. The voice
fits his personality, but it is a bit over the top and loud. Other than
that, I had no problems with the voice cast with the other characters.
Kluke and Jiro's voices were a little dull but it fit their
personalities.
The music is freaking amazing. The battle music is rememerable, victory
music is rememberable, the town music is rememberable, the boss battle
music is rememberable. I loved the music. This is some of the best new
music I've heard since Baten Kaitos, and like Baten Kaitos there are
songs with vocals. There's atleast 3 or 4 songs within the game with
voices and I love it. The boss battle music is even sung by Deep Purple
/ Black Sabbath alumni Ian Gillan. The boss music really threw me off
at first but after hearing it a bunch of times I couldn't get the song
out of my head. I love the huge variety of music too. There's weird
techno songs, slow acoustic tracks, speed metal, gothic drone, etc.
----------World Map----------
The world map is an overview of connecting fields, dungeons and towns.
This is not much different than Dragon Quest 8, actually it's almost
exactly the same thing as Dragon Quest 8, not that this is a bad thing.
I loved Dragon Quest 8's world map design, while I think Blue Dragon's
world is a little less detailed and more forgettable in a sense
compared to Dragon Quest 8 with less explorable areas. Blue Dragon
loads alot quicker between world map / town or world map / plane.
There's a warp function you get fairly early in the game (kinda like
Dragon Quest 8, hey). You can't warp to any town or dungeon that
includes a warp device, you have to first find this device and when you
unlock it, you can warp back and forth at anytime. I like that you can
backtrack, but there are a couple times in the game where you're
trapped within a town. Even if you can backtrack there isn't really any
reason to until later in the game when you get more sidequest items.
Near the end of the game you'll get your flying plane (like Dragon
Quest 7 and 8). There's only one more dungeon beyond this point in the
game, but when you get your flying ship you do unlock a bunch of
sidequest dungeons and bonus bosses, so there's quite a bit to do if
you don't want to rush the end of the game.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
53:35:53
The final boss is quite possibly the easiest final boss I ever fought
in my entire life. You can save before the final form of the final
boss, but this you can't backtrack from this point, so if you missed
anything, then save with a different file. After you beat the game, you
get a pretty lengethy ending, which was pretty sweet. No reward for
beating the game, but you can download a free patch that will unlock
New Game+ and Insane mode if you want a higher difficulty.
