Blue Dragon - Review

Added October 4th, 2007 by Jason Stafford

Land sharks, a dangerous purple mist, robots, magical shadows and poo. What sounds like the checklist for a child's dream game is actually part of the backdrop for Blue Dragon, the first title developed by Mistwalker in conjunction with Artoon. With high profile names such as Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the legendary Final Fantasy series at the helm, Nobuo Uematsu, renowned composer of Final Fantasy VII's aural masterpiece, and Akira Toriyama, his artistic style easily recognizable from his anime and manga Dragonball, as well as games like Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger, the first impression with all this talent behind Blue Dragon is that it must be a surefire hit. The problem with first impressions, however, is that you only get one.

Blue Dragon begins with the woeful appearance of a violet mist that appears once every decade, scourging the land. Entire villages are ravaged, as the mist also heralds the coming of the dreaded land shark. Enter Shu and Jiro, two whippersnappers who've had it up to here and aren't going to take it any more. Having devised a plan to dispatch the land shark, Shu and Jiro set their idea in motion. Following the foray with the terrestrial fish and the introduction of their friend Kluke, the entire ordeal unsurprisingly goes awry. After progressing through a couple areas, the villain is introduced, as are the magical shadows that will allow your party to duke it out with your foes. Plus robots, and snakes made of poo.

Whatever storyline is present in Blue Dragon is an entirely flaccid affair, never approaching the scope of emotion or tension found in other titles among the genre. While it's not supposed to be a sweeping epic, having to constantly move from town to dungeon to town to a couple more dungeons keeps the game's pace forced and trivial. NPCs breathe little to not life into the game world, which makes the town process a stop-'n'-shop affair before heading to the newest stomping grounds. Dialogue between characters is as contrived and horribly stale as the situations being discussed, in an obvious attempt to the keep the overall tone of the game fairly lighthearted and bemusing. It's a fine line, but Blue Dragon never even begins to cross that divide into being fun, exciting, or particularly engaging. The pacing admittedly picks up a bit following the first disc, but what is essentially a ten to fifteen hour introductory period is a ridiculous trial for the player.

The character designs by Akira Toriyama, though certainly within the rigid confines of his style, lack much of the detail and flair that he is certainly capable of breathing into his creations. Characters are as bland and forgettable visually as they are in every other regard, and it's unfortunate that the game never misses a chance to show them up close and personal. Blue Dragon spans three discs, and the reason is quickly revealed by the staggering amount of cinematic sequences. Whether you're watching dialogue whose poor delivery is overshadowed only by the even worse writing, or witnessing one of the failed attempts at tension or excitement, the overall result is a higher-resolution of a bland and uninspired visual template.

At least Blue Dragon is a role-playing game, theoretically giving it a battle system on which to rely. Maps are free-roam, with enemies appearing and meandering about that will engage the party in battle. Pressing the right trigger on the map will bring up the Encounter Circle, which will allow the player to select which foes to fight within the ring, or to simply engage them all. This can be beneficial in that certain enemies will attack each other once battle begins, as well as granting the party enhanced abilities with each enemy party that is defeated, making subsequent enemy parties easier to handle.

The battle mechanics are strongly rooted in old-school RPG conventions, and longtime fans of the genre will recognize the lack of any real surprises in its combat system. It's a turn-based RPG, and in the strictest sense. Turn order is displayed at the top of the battle screen, allowing the player to adjudicate actions accordingly depending on the turn order. The turn order isn't static, as some actions can prolong the character's turn more than initially determined by their agility stat. Certain skills have a charge meter, requiring the player to hold the A button and release it to determine the ability's power. The drawback, of course, being that the more powerful the attack, the longer it will take to execute. There is a “sweet spot” on the charge meter, which will reduce the overall time to complete the action, in addition to the MP cost of the skill. Being able to freely adjust the casting time and power of spells is at times a nice touch. However, in the majority of fights it becomes a monotonous added step, further making random encounters even more time-consuming.

Each character's shadow will be able to change freely between each one of the nine classes in the camp menu, assuming that the character has leveled up enough to unlock the class. The jobs are fairly unassuming in their design, with Swordmaster, Assassin, Guardian and Monk classes bringing the muscle. Spell casting is rounded out with White, Black, Support, and Barrier Mages. There is also a Generalist class, which focuses on extra skill and accessory slots for its strength. Abilities learned from a class can be assigned to skill slots while another job is equipped, lending a certain level of customization to the system.

Unfortunately, the skills per class aren't very numerous, and what's even worse is that only a handful are especially useful. Taking the fact that many of the game's achievements revolve around shadows reaching their maximum levels, there isn't much incentive to do so. Each class's roster of skills becomes tapped out relatively early in its life-cycle, leaving the achievements themselves or pure stat-mongering as the only incentive to grind each of the five characters' nine classes to level ninety-nine. That's a large amount of pressure to put on the player, given that the battle system is entirely rudimentary and boring, even without having to constantly grind lower level enemies. Battles never become very engaging and often fall flat because of the lack of difficulty, painfully tedious battles, lackluster and drawn out animations, and consistent frame-rate hiccups that mar the already feeble visuals.

If the battles weren't doing enough by themselves to lower the bar of difficulty, the rest of Blue Dragon does an admirable job at it. Throughout the maps, pretty much anything can be searched for money, items, experience points, shadow points (used to level your characters' shadows), and increases to stats. While this is at first an interesting system, constantly searching each and every rock, cabinet, barrel, tree, pipe or whatever else happens to be present quickly deteriorates into being tedious. Many areas also rely on backtracking, giving you ample chances to search the numerous locations for anything you may have missed. Equipment comes in strange intervals, often in dungeons if not procured from the most recent shop. Though shadows alter base stats depending on the level, there are four equipment slots for bracelet, earring, necklace, and ring. These pieces increase attack, magic defense, defense, and magic attack respectively. Individual accessories can also increase other stats or parameters, such as elemental defense.

Behind its town-dungeon-town rhythm and gruelingly deficient battles lies Nobuo Uematsu's score. At times, the score is capable of providing some light in the otherwise dismissible world, and can be a joy to experience. More often than not, however, the score is merely swallowed by the rest of the boring landscape and fails to impress just as often. Blue Dragon also has what is arguably the single most atrociously irritating boss battle music in the entire history of gaming.

All in all, Blue Dragon is the type of game that would have made much more of an impression about a decade ago. Unfortunately, a forgettable story, cast, score, and battle system make for something that feels more akin to the eager ambitions of novices as opposed to the calculated work of seasoned veterans. Players who've yet to tire of ceaseless grind-sessions and don't care at all about the story being told will be appreciate at least a little of what Blue Dragon brings to the table. For everyone else, however, the developers' fascination with poo becomes an almost ominous portent.