Welcome to our review of Blue Dragon, which is quite possibly the best RPG I have played on my xbox 360!
Famed game producer Hironobu Sakaguchi of Mistwalker and developer Artoon present the highly anticipated Xbox 360 exclusive Blue Dragon. Featuring the character design of Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball Z and music by Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy, Blue Dragon is an epic role-playing game that centers on a young boy named Shu and several of his friends.
These unlikely heroes possess the power to control phantom shadows that mirror the actions of their masters, giving Shu and his comrades miraculous strength and magical powers.
The warriors can create and develop their combat styles by utilizing different types of Shadow Change, including Sword, Assassin, and Power Magic. Shu and his friends must use the shadows as weapons and wield their skills to save their world from impending doom.
Encountering various people on a planet where numerous ancient ruins remain, the characters and their shadows travel through a world full of mysteries and illusions, where the slightest touch can cause reactions of unparalleled magnitude.
Most of all, Blue Dragon is my personal favorite from my short time owning a Xbox 360, I admit and always have that I am a Nintendo fan. As a collector, however, I do own most popular consoles and I never really played a lot on my 360. Most of the time, I was either playing Lumines, a game I simply adore and Blue Dragon. This review is about the Xbox 360 exclusive and my personal number 1 wishlist item to one day make it to Nintendo Switch.
What I really like about Blue Dragon, the fact you can buy it without breaking bank, most copies can be found in Europe under the 10 euro mark even. I still own the original copy that I paid full retail for. Usually, I just pick up games at flea markets all over the place, it’s how I got my hands on other gems like Star Ocean, Eternal Sonata, and Lost Odyssey… I also love the fact that Microsoft is being so cool about supporting backward compatibility for titles like these and slowly but surely, my modest collection can be played on my Xbox One. Blue Dragon needed approximately 19 gigs of hard drive space, which is totally fine by me. It saved me from hooking my Xbox 360 back up to my TV.
After a surprisingly fast download, I recently have been getting rather slow download speeds on all my consoles, I was ready to play the game. I started it up and picked English for my playthrough. I had already finished the game before, at that time, I had the original Japanese audio on.
We start off in the village that is about to get attacked by the landshark, a fearsome enemy that comes around every so often to destroy the lands where the villagers live. Shu and his friend Jiro try to trap the landshark eventually being saved by Kluke, she is their savior for just about 1 minute as the landshark suddenly breaks free and our trio is suddenly dangling behind the landshark while holding tight to the rope that was supposed to capture it.
Being thrown down some ancient ruins, the game really begins. You are thrown in a classic turn-based RPG, at this stage, you have the bare minimum at hand when it comes to weapons and very simplistic battles take way too long, sometimes even 5 turns to take down the smallest fry. Shortly after, they find out the landshark is called a Mechat and before they know it, they are up in the air and inside the ship.
This is where they will meet Nene, their nemesis. A Mysteriously strong being that takes them down in 1 simple swoop. They are thrown out the ship and before they know it, a gust of air pulls them back up and inside the ship again. A voice reaches out to them. Asking them to eat the spheres. Being locked down by their enemies, they decide to eat the spheres, unlocking their true potential and at the same time, giving them the power of their shadows.
During battles, you now have control over your shadow and suddenly your base attacks are a lot better. Instead of simplistic 1 or 2 damages done, you suddenly got 10 to 40 as base damage. It will start causing some small fry to flee when you are near. You can still choose to attack them, but you can also try and make a monster fight happen. You are able to start fights with many of the enemies around you, as long as they are in range. Big enemies end up bullying the small fry, making it so that you do not need to kill all but just the ones that survive the internal battle.
Blue Dragon just does so many things right, which makes the fact that it is an Xbox exclusive such a strange thing. It also never got published on other platforms and a game like this would love so great on Nintendo Switch. Blue Dragon did also get 2 games on Nintendo DS, which I will soon be reviewing as well. Another noteworthy fact, Blue Dragon was the very first game on Xbox 360 to be published on more than 1 disc, namely three of them. Sure there have been many since then, but at the time, this was a premiere in itself.
Another thing I really liked about this game, the designs by Akira Toriyama. We all know him as the creator of Dragon Ball among many, but his typical drawing style really fits a game like this. Our youthful protagonists just look great in his artstyle.
In conclusion, I love Blue Dragon and would give a lot to see this coming again, be it a sequel or port of the original. Blue Dragon should be in anyone’s collection that likes either the art style or the genre and it is a top game! Supported with a very strong storyline and a very low price to buy it right now, this is my personal recommendation for the summer months when releases are slower or if you are looking for a great RPG to be immersed in.
