Blue Dragon for the Xbox 360 Review

Blue Dragon is an RPG for the Xbox 360 that did not live up to it’s expectations. If you have a few 40 hours to kill, as well as the patience to defeat wave after wave of unchallenging opponents, then this is the game for you. You start off as Shu, an energetic boy who’s town is plagued by a land shark. This land shark is an ancient machine from a civilization who used magic, and is one of the thousands of machines you will face. The land shark is destroying Shu’s town, so with his pocket knife, a net, and Jiro (another main character), he plans on saving the world from the land shark. Well after a few mishaps, it’s discovered that a powerful being known as Nene is causing havoc all over the world. You acquire the use of shadow magic, but obviously can not beat the powerful Nene, so you get away. You spend the rest of the 3 discs becoming stronger, gaining allies, and trying to figure out what it is Nene is really after.

The visuals on the game look great. The cut scenes are very colorful and detailed. The fighting also looks great, and class selection can be fun. There are several different classes for your shadow to learn such a sword user, black magic, white magic, and my favorite, the assassin class. Mixing and matching classes can be entertaining, and is the best part of the game, yet that’s not saying much. This game has a major flaw. It’s either too easy, or unmerciful. The caves or ancient factories you enter a filled to the brim with monsters. These monsters however, can be destroyed with almost no skill. You almost can’t die, and even if you do die during battle, afterward, you are revived. The sword class provides a skill that heals you as you attack and the white magic class allows you to heal as you walk. With these skills, health is almost never a problem. On the other hand, there are instances which require your team to be in perfect condition. Monsters attacking with instant death attacks, killing your party without even letting you get started.

With it’s colorful design, fun characters, interesting storyline, and monsters such as Poo Snake, it seems almost obvious that this game is geared towards kids. This would be true if it wasn’t for Shu’s dirty mouth. Shu curses all during the first disc, but after that, it appears as if he found a new vocabulary. The game was fairly simple to learn. It has all the elements of an RPG, but it is just boring. On my play through, it took me around 38 hours. This was not even finding all of the treasures. After the game is beaten once you can play a new game with all of your characters buffed up. This may sound like fun, but unless you are in love with lackluster fighting, you will only find it frustrating to beat the simplistic enemies, again. If you want to pick up this game to maybe play a quick game and win some achievements, then run far away from this. On the my play through, I ended with a total of 35 achievement points out of 1000. The game had three and only three good points. The visuals, the classes, and the decent storyline. Playing the game feels like more of a chore then enjoying the game. I simply wanted it to end, so that I could see how it ended. The story was a bit crazy at times, and parts just did not make any sense, such as the entire ending. This game did suck me in and would not let me leave it be so for that it gets 4.5 out of 5 chezwicks.