Blue Dragon has one hell of a pedigree to live up to. The three men at the center of the project, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu and Akira Toriyama are responsible for the creation of the Final Fantasy franchise, some of the most memorable video game music of all time, and one of the most recognizable art styles in the world, respectively. The last time these three maestros were locked in a room together, they emerged with Chrono Trigger, easily one of the best RPGs ever made. Unfortunately for fans of the genre, Mistwalker’s first effort hasn’t lived up to the collective reputation of the company’s dream team. Blue Dragon is charming and competent, and certainly the best Japanese RPG available on Microsoft’s console to date, but it’s a far cry from the masterpiece that fans of the genre were hoping for. That said the game may yet hold some value for Microsoft.

The soul of any great Japanese RPG comes from the story, and Blue Dragon has some glaring weaknesses in this area. The plot is cliché, following the journey of a group of magically-gifted children on their way to save the world from incredible evil, but that’s forgivable given the fact that almost every Japanese RPG these days provides a slightly different take on the same basic script. What’s not forgivable is the complete apathy most players will have towards the central characters thanks to a script that does little to develop any of them over the dozens of hours worth of gameplay. The only character likely to get any emotion out of the player is the weird cat creature Marumaro, who will incite homicidal rage thanks to his high-pitched voice, annoyingly suggestive behavior and propensity to scream. The main villain is boring as well, and no real motivation for his actions is given save that he is a really bad person. The weak characterization is exacerbated by shallow dialogue that feels completely unnatural despite great translation, primarily because everything is spelled out in simple, obvious terms. People do not talk like this outside of children’s television, and it’s incredibly distracting.

The pacing of the story is lopsided towards the last several hours of the game, which leaves the opening of the game feel like a directionless chore. Where am I going? Why am I going there? Who am I fighting? What am I capable of? All of these questions take hours just to be asked, let alone answered. This wouldn’t be so bad if the game offered players some freedom to explore and engage in side quests, or kept them busy with challenging combat, but no luck on that front either. Instead, players are forced down a linear path that feels as though it leads nowhere, and it can last anywhere between 10 to 20 hours. The pace picks up on the second disk, and by the third disk players will be able to explore the world at their leisure via an airship. Long introductions can work if they feel justified by the relative length and final payoff of the following journey (see The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess for a good example), but the payoff in Blue Dragon just isn’t big enough. Having free access to the world doesn’t help when the world feels empty, and there’s really not much to do short of revisiting old areas and a few new ones for some loot and higher-level enemies to challenge.



Ok, so let’s recap: the characters are boring, the storyline is trite and the pacing downright blows. Why the hell should anyone, RPG fan or not, even think about buying this game? Because the bulk of any Japanese RPG is spent in combat, and the combat in Blue Dragon is very well done. It borrows elements from several different turn-based games, but adds enough new mechanics to add a new layer of strategy and keep things feeling fresh. First and foremost, Sakaguchi has finally learned that random battles are incredibly annoying. Every enemy in Blue Dragon can be seen and avoided on the over-world, and players have access to a number of ‘field skills’ that can be used to gain an advantage over enemies before the battle officially begins. Players can also opt to tackle multiple enemies at once instead of hopping in and out of battle by selecting some or all of the enemies in an area. Gamers can play different enemies against each other by selecting different types of creatures that don’t get along for the same battle. Once in battle, players will find that many attacks in the game can be charged in order to increase damage, but doing so will take longer, thereby pushing the character further back into the turn order and making them vulnerable to attack. Judging when to charge and for how long is a key part of battles in Blue Dragon, and while simple, it adds a satisfying bit of strategy.