Blue Dragon

Blue Dragon

Rating: 6/10 (plus or minus 1…I’ll explain)

Achievements: 1/10
Why did I spend so much time on a measly 165 gamerpoints? You read that correctly, only 165 G’s were unlocked during my 50+ hours of game play. There is no rhyme or reason for what is considered an achievement in Blue Dragon. There are many bosses that you will encounter on your long journey, but no achievements will be gained by defeating the bosses, including the final boss. I am getting frustrated just thinking about the fact that I didn’t get any G’s for completing the game. However, I did earn 30 G’s for killing the rare Golden Poo Snake…that’s right Poo…I’ll explain. Let’s just move on; if you’re looking for achievements, don’t play this game.

Review:
I always seem to navigate towards RPG’s, whether it’s a turn based title such as Blue Dragon & Lost Odyssey, or what I guess are being called American RPG’s like Fallout 3 & Mass Effect. Blue Dragon was recommended to me (see previous post: Do You Have a Gamestop Story, 03/16/09), so I thought I would give it a shot.

If you are not familiar with the turn based RPG genre you may already be confused by what you are reading. These types of games are very technical and you have to be very diligent in managing your party. Usually there is a group of people who stay with the main character and everybody has a specific role, such as providing white magic for healing, black magic for powerful attacks and others who don’t utilize much magic, but have very powerful melee attacks. Each character needs to be equipped with different accessories that you find throughout the game, which should increase some aspect of their role like attack, magic, defense, etc. The battles may also take a little while to get used to, since each character attacks or heals in a designated order. This is a far departure from a hack & slash title where you just press a button and hope for the best; very numbers oriented.

This quick explanation was given, because if the above description sounds interesting to a person who has never played a turn based RPG then this game may be a good title to get introduced to the genre. Blue Dragon introduced new areas & controls slowly, giving a detailed description. At no point did I ever feel overwhelmed with the controls or menu options. The one item that was not explained very well was the different skill types each character could develop. I realized too late that the ‘generalist’ skill was the most powerful and versatile; suggest having the character Maromaru designated as the Generalist.

I have to believe that the developers created Blue Dragon with the intention of luring a new audience to RPG’s with the detailed tutorials. However, the story was very childish and would appeal to an audience who would be too young to play this type of game. An enemy that is encountered many times throughout the game is a Poo Snake, which is basically a snake that looks like a pile of poo. Besides the fecal matter the majority of the enemies fought throughout the game look like something you would see in a Japanese version of Toy Story, consisting of many windup robots. I guess the maturity of the story & its characters should have been expected as the main character is a young boy accompanied by his friends who are all trying to harness a magical power and in doing so the kids take on Nene, a powerful sorcerer who is trying to rule the world with ancient magical robots. Really...a robot that looks like a tin soldier? Come on…now Mega Maid, that was a real evil machine.

Completing the main story is fairly easy and straightforward, if you are willing to spend the time on it, but there are a few optional side quests, which have bosses of their own. Besides the terrible story the optional bosses frustrated me the most. It’s understood that these bosses are optional, but there is no reason that any enemy in a game should be more powerful than the final boss. In my saved game I beat the final boss with my main character at a level 80 out of a possible 99 levels and I am still not able to beat any of the five optional dragons that are hidden throughout the game. This set of dragons really doesn’t even have a purpose in the game and if they do it’s so insignificant that I have already forgotten. That may seem strange with the name being Blue Dragon.

Anyway, my original rating of this game was a 6, plus or minus 1. If you are a young child who has a desire to get into RPG’s this game & story may be perfect for you. However, if your reading this than you are probably too old for the game. Either way you look at it you should be able to find this game new or used for $10.00 – 20.00, so you will surely get your money worth with the amount of time needed to complete it.