A couple of months ago, following the purchase of an XBox 360, I got the game Blue Dragon, a promising JRPG recommended to me by a friend. As it was developed under the same director who did the first five Final Fantasy games, the standards were high.
Well, let's start with a brief story synopsis. Blue Dragon starts off in Talta Village, a quaint little town which is brutally wrecked every year by a "Land Shark". A few minutes into the introductory sequence, you take control of a supposedly 16-year-old boy named Shu, whose personal philosophy is "I won't give up" (it's even the first line you hear him say). Anyway, he and his friends, Jiro and Kluke, try to destroy it and end up far away from home with strange magical powers- yes, you can see where this is going.
There are some interesting twists in the plot, though. Every time the Land Shark strikes, violet clouds appear in the sky for no apparent reason, and as you progress, you find out that most towns suffer similar fates- one town is under constant tyranny from a tree which eats the villagers, and another is in danger of serious tsunami-ing every year. There is, of course, a villain at the heart of it- the game makes you aware of this in the first hour or so- but the villain is doing what he does merely because he likes to see people suffer, and that's something I like to see in a villain. It shows more originality than the typical "I want to take over the world" spiel. The final boss is also suitably awesome, though it could've been looked at in greater detail.
The characters themselves are essentially designed to fill in the various cliches which have built up over RPG history. Shu is a determined, slightly stupid young boy to whom subtlety is a foreign language, Jiro is the intellectual spell-caster young boy, Kluke is the girl who constantly keeps up the act of being unaffected by her past, Marumaro is the weird little creature who falls in love with Zola, who is a failed attempt at the cool, nonchalant mercenary with a tough past (see: Kratos from Tales of Symphonia). All of the above have mild to terrible VA, with the exception of Jiro, whose voice is actually quite pleasent. Shu's voice is hard for me to bear at the best of times, so when I have to put up with a monologue from him (inevitably involving the phrase "I won't give up"), my brain starts to slip away and loses focus on reality in self-defence. Zola's is similar, but her dialogue is so bad that, in large doses, it can make me lose sight of why I'm playing this and not Persona 3.
That brings me neatly onto the most important part of Blue Dragon- the gameplay. Blue Dragon is not a game focused on story. If it was, it wouldn't have introduced the main villain right at the beginning of the game (who, I feel the need to say, reverts to an uninteresting taking-over-the-world-I-am-a-God persona around about the second disc). Blue Dragon's gameplay is brilliant, taking turn-based combat and making it much more involving and strategic. From the very start, you are given complete rein over your character's class and abilities. Although the characters all start with about one level more of experience in a certain class, it's easy to get another up to this level and soon you can have Shu the black mage, Jiro the melee fighter and Kluke the healer (a total reversal of roles, actually). You find spells every now and again, which anyone can use provided they have a high enough level in that particular magic class. There are four magic classes- Black Magic, White Magic, Barrier Magic and Support Magic- which are probably the most important classes as far as skills go. There are six other classes, all of which have some serious advantages to them, so it's worth mastering them.
The battles are just as interesting, demanding that you use at least a portion of your brain, and there are various nuances to master. The charge gauge, for example. Charging up your spells (or attacks if you're a Monk) will give you a considerable boost of power even if you only charge for a short amount of time, but it sets your attacks later, meaning that you have to decide between power or speed. The spells are fairly textbook, but again, the interest's in the way you use them.
Okay, since I'm probably losing the interest of any readers by now, I'll wrap it up. Overall, Blue Dragon is a fantastic game. There's the fairly meaty main quest (for people who aren't used to JRPGs, anyways), a bunch of dungeons which all end with pretty interesting bosses, and another five hard-as-nails additional bosses. Also, every boss has some of the most kick-ass boss music ever composed. The fairly linear story can be glossed over, along with the lazy characterisation, but the cliches are so obvious that they're probably put there on purpose, and there are still a few truly epic moments- like the transition from Disc Two to Disc Three. Buy it, play it, shout at the occasional nightmarish boss. Oh, and there's still the option to change the language to French or Japanese in case the English translation is too much to bear- though even having them speak in a different language was not enough to save Zola from slowly melting the will to live from my bones.
Well, let's start with a brief story synopsis. Blue Dragon starts off in Talta Village, a quaint little town which is brutally wrecked every year by a "Land Shark". A few minutes into the introductory sequence, you take control of a supposedly 16-year-old boy named Shu, whose personal philosophy is "I won't give up" (it's even the first line you hear him say). Anyway, he and his friends, Jiro and Kluke, try to destroy it and end up far away from home with strange magical powers- yes, you can see where this is going.
There are some interesting twists in the plot, though. Every time the Land Shark strikes, violet clouds appear in the sky for no apparent reason, and as you progress, you find out that most towns suffer similar fates- one town is under constant tyranny from a tree which eats the villagers, and another is in danger of serious tsunami-ing every year. There is, of course, a villain at the heart of it- the game makes you aware of this in the first hour or so- but the villain is doing what he does merely because he likes to see people suffer, and that's something I like to see in a villain. It shows more originality than the typical "I want to take over the world" spiel. The final boss is also suitably awesome, though it could've been looked at in greater detail.
The characters themselves are essentially designed to fill in the various cliches which have built up over RPG history. Shu is a determined, slightly stupid young boy to whom subtlety is a foreign language, Jiro is the intellectual spell-caster young boy, Kluke is the girl who constantly keeps up the act of being unaffected by her past, Marumaro is the weird little creature who falls in love with Zola, who is a failed attempt at the cool, nonchalant mercenary with a tough past (see: Kratos from Tales of Symphonia). All of the above have mild to terrible VA, with the exception of Jiro, whose voice is actually quite pleasent. Shu's voice is hard for me to bear at the best of times, so when I have to put up with a monologue from him (inevitably involving the phrase "I won't give up"), my brain starts to slip away and loses focus on reality in self-defence. Zola's is similar, but her dialogue is so bad that, in large doses, it can make me lose sight of why I'm playing this and not Persona 3.
That brings me neatly onto the most important part of Blue Dragon- the gameplay. Blue Dragon is not a game focused on story. If it was, it wouldn't have introduced the main villain right at the beginning of the game (who, I feel the need to say, reverts to an uninteresting taking-over-the-world-I-am-a-God persona around about the second disc). Blue Dragon's gameplay is brilliant, taking turn-based combat and making it much more involving and strategic. From the very start, you are given complete rein over your character's class and abilities. Although the characters all start with about one level more of experience in a certain class, it's easy to get another up to this level and soon you can have Shu the black mage, Jiro the melee fighter and Kluke the healer (a total reversal of roles, actually). You find spells every now and again, which anyone can use provided they have a high enough level in that particular magic class. There are four magic classes- Black Magic, White Magic, Barrier Magic and Support Magic- which are probably the most important classes as far as skills go. There are six other classes, all of which have some serious advantages to them, so it's worth mastering them.
The battles are just as interesting, demanding that you use at least a portion of your brain, and there are various nuances to master. The charge gauge, for example. Charging up your spells (or attacks if you're a Monk) will give you a considerable boost of power even if you only charge for a short amount of time, but it sets your attacks later, meaning that you have to decide between power or speed. The spells are fairly textbook, but again, the interest's in the way you use them.
Okay, since I'm probably losing the interest of any readers by now, I'll wrap it up. Overall, Blue Dragon is a fantastic game. There's the fairly meaty main quest (for people who aren't used to JRPGs, anyways), a bunch of dungeons which all end with pretty interesting bosses, and another five hard-as-nails additional bosses. Also, every boss has some of the most kick-ass boss music ever composed. The fairly linear story can be glossed over, along with the lazy characterisation, but the cliches are so obvious that they're probably put there on purpose, and there are still a few truly epic moments- like the transition from Disc Two to Disc Three. Buy it, play it, shout at the occasional nightmarish boss. Oh, and there's still the option to change the language to French or Japanese in case the English translation is too much to bear- though even having them speak in a different language was not enough to save Zola from slowly melting the will to live from my bones.
