Blue Dragon



Hello Tempers. Today I went to the dentist and then the orthodontist after that. I didn't know there was chocolate cookie dough toothpaste... After those appointments were over we went to my local mall and I read a flyer that my EB games was closing. In the flyer it said you could get 20% off your next purchase, so I got blue dragon for a grand total of 32.80$. that seemed like a pretty good deal to me.


Blue Dragon's logo

I'm only a few hours in, because I just got it, but I've been playing it non-stop since I got it. There aren't many RPGs for the 360 and I heard this was the best, so I bought it. On top of that I need a variety of games for my white box, it's depressing how many first person shooters there are...
But I think blue dragon is pretty impressive. When I first opened it there were three discs, so I thought the clerk accidentally left in all of his Blue Dragon copies, but once I looked again the discs were numbered. Three discs for a 360 game? :wtf: That must be a lot of space for people who got the rom. The story is a little cheesy, and the characters seem like your stereotypical anime adventurers. The only character that was really interesting was Nene, the main villan of the game.


Nene and that evil smirk of his

I was glad to see that Akira Toriyama was the character designer because I loved his work in Dragon Quest and Dragon Ball Z. What's up with that guy and dragons? The characters look pretty good on screen, and it definitely shows we've come a long way since the cel shaded days of the PS2. I have never seen anime characters represented so smoothly, and I welcome any game to follow in Blue Dragon's foot steps.


From left to right: Kluke, Shu, Jiro, and Marumaro

The story is pretty basic and actually a little lame. Every year the "land shark" comes and destroys Shu's (the main character) town. The land shark has been wrecking it for the past ten years. Shu and Jiro try to kill the land shark, but end up getting dragged by his fin. Kluke, who's family was killed by the land shark, grabbed onto the land shark's fin too. The Land shark eventually dragged the kids to a cave. Shu kicks the fin and the sand breaks off of it and it turns out that the land shark is actually a ship. The ship starts flying into the air and the kids jump on to it's back and fly up to it's docking station, which also happens to be Nene's (main bad guy) layer. In the layer Nene kicks the kid's little asses and then sends them hurtling to the ground. Right before they hit the ground they get sucked up into the fortress and are forced to fight Nene's robots. They eventually swallow some orbs that make their shadows into large beasts, and Shu's is the Blue Dragon you see on the cover and logo. I won't go on much more about the story, but I just thought I'd give you a introduction.


A battle sequence in Blue Dragon

Now where the game really shines is in its combat. It's pretty simple and similar to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest's combat systems, but this just feels a little more polished. When you use a spell you have to hold down A and let go on a certain part of the meter if you want to charge your attack or just cast it. It may sound basic, but it's actually pretty fun. And I'm so stoked that there are no random encounters. I think all RPGs are slowly coming to their senses and getting rid of random battles. Even though this game has a very old school combat system it has no random battles. Which is awesome.


Shu at a save point early in the game

I'm glad that I wasn't dissapointed by Blue Dragon and I will give you guys updates on how far I am in the future. I think I'm going to start doing a monthly give away on my blog, so keep your eyes open for that. Have a good night, and don't forget to post your own blog. I want to see more blogs on here, and I want them to be good!

-Cupajoe38

Comments

Nice pics. :P And dentist and orthodontist in one day? You must be sick of that minty fresh smell.
 
Yeah. My teeth are in a lot of pain right now. But I could never get sick of that minty fresh smell.
 
[quote name='cupajoe38' date='Jan 23 2008, 11:23 AM']Yeah. My teeth are in a lot of pain right now. But I could never get sick of that minty fresh smell.
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Reminds me of the time I got my wisdom teeth pulled.

Also, how does Blue Dragon par with a similar game like Dragon Quest?
 
It's very easy to draw connections to the two. Dragon Quest and Blue Dragon have very similar monster and character designs. Their fighting styles are very close to eachother too. Blue Dragon is basically a more polished Dragon Quest. If you like Dragon Quest you'll love Blue Dragon.
 
I liked the addition of Classes + Skill system, although it was pretty easy at the beginning to shoot yourself in the foot and switch things up too much, on the other side of the coin you could easily end up overpowering almost anything you see.
My only gripe with it is some of the boss battles. Alot of them seem to have relatively weak attacks but like a million hit points, so it's basically coming down to just pinging some of the bosses down.
 
[quote name='neveras' date='Jan 22 2008, 10:44 PM']I liked the addition of Classes + Skill system, although it was pretty easy at the beginning to shoot yourself in the foot and switch things up too much, on the other side of the coin you could easily end up overpowering almost anything you see.
My only gripe with it is some of the boss battles. Alot of them seem to have relatively weak attacks but like a million hit points, so it's basically coming down to just pinging some of the bosses down.
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And that terrible Hair Metal playing in the background doesn't help me enjoy the bosses either.
 
Very nice blog cupa!
I've read some reviews about this game I have to say why it turned to be soooo.. mediocre. I'm sure Mistwalker can do better than this.
 
I think the reason it got mixed reviews was because there was high expectations for it. You have the infamous Akira Toriyama (character design: Dragon quest/ball z/), Hironobu Sakaguchi (Game Producer: Final Fantasy Creator), and Nobuo Uematsu (music composer: Final Fantasy composer)... This game had big shoes to fill.
 

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