- Title: Blue Dragon
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Developer: Mistwalker
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: RPG
- Pros: Straightforward JRPG-style gameplay; mindless fun; decent graphics
- Cons: Characters and story are bland and boring; boss battle music is horrible
Story
The story in Blue Dragon follows anime and RPG clichés to a T. I don’t want to spoil too many specifics in the story, but the basics are that bad things are happening to towns all across the land, and it is up to you to find who is responsible for the trouble and stop them. And it really is as simple as that. Bland and predictable and full of clichés. The main character is Shu, a loud, proud, absolutely obnoxious kid that just yells about how strong he is and how he’ll never give up. His friends, Jiro and Kluke, are both wise beyond their years and clearly much better suited for the tasks at hand than Shu, yet they follow him anyway. You meet annoying little Marumaro, a little critter of a species that expresses themselves by yelling and dancing, fairly early on. And then there is the female mercenary Zola who is calm, cool, distant, and the only adult in sight. A nice touch is that you can pick any of these characters to be your onscreen avatar, so rather than watching Shu run around you can watch Zola bounce around instead.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Blue Dragon is pure JRPG. But rather than picking up weapons and armor and things like that, you do battle with magical shadow creatures. Each character has a different shadow (dragon, bat, etc.) and while each character starts out differently, the skill system allows you to customize them to play however you want. You can use a straightforward team of a fighter, white mage, black mage, monk, etc., but you can also switch their classes to make any combination of skills that you want. Interestingly, when you switch classes, your skills from the previous class carry over to the new class, and by the end of the game you have a team of extremely powerful and surprisingly varied characters.
