Blue Dragon

So yeah, honestly, what? I was hoping this game would be good but sadly it wasn't. A lot of the same complaints I made in my DQVIII review can also be applied here, but worse because this is a worse game than DQVIII. Now I played this game a while ago, so I don't remember every nook and cranny of it, but basically: WHERE'S THE STORY?

I'm serious, WHERE IS IT?

WHO'S THE FREAKING CHIPMUNK IN MY PARTY? Why is the main character a pathetic farce of a copy of Goku. No he's probably more like a copy of Gohan or Goten. Man he sucks ass. He's always saying I WON'T GIVE UP to which I always answered SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE JESUS! And the other characters are very forgettable, except the small chipmunk dude who's just ridiculous. And here I thought DQVIII was meant for a younger audience. This game isn't mean for a young audience, it's made for freaking babies in diapers. The boss of the game is basically an old and weak version of Freeza.

So, if we recap, the story of this game is about a group of kids trying to beat up an old man. There, you have it.

Graphically, the game looks good. It's colorful, shiny, and will please any 3 year old who looks at it. The music...heck I can't remember the music. I know the title screen music is good though. Oh yeah, I remember the boss music. I actually like it, I mean it's not the best boss music I've ever heard, and it's not a particularly good metal song, but at least it's original. The voice acting however, hahahah. Oh lord. Too be honest, you can't really have good voice acting when the script sucks ass. On top of that, all of the characters are kids, so what do you expect? You don't see kids delivering heartmoving speeches in real life, and you won't see any here.

And the gameplay? Repetition is the name of the game. This is a grinder, pure and simple. Now, like I've stated in the past, I don't necessarily hate grinders, I love old school JRPG's in which all there was to do was grind, but those RPG's were also only 20 hours long tops. This game will last you for a while, I'm not sure how long since I stopped at 30 hours.  The battles can take a while sometimes, which I dislike. Also, I don't like the equipment portion of the game. I hate modern RPG's where all of your equipment is composed of bracers and rings, basically all made up of accessories. Whatever happened to armor, shields and weapons? You know the reason why a lot of JRPG's are going that route is because it gives them an excuse to not model armor and weapons. In a western RPG, you SEE your equipment. But noooo, not in a JRPG. In a JRPG you see the same character model all day long. Now 15 years that was excusable, but in today's market, if you equip a full plate mail on your character and he's still running around the field in his diapers it looks ridiculous. The solution? Replace all equipment with accessories! Hurray!

The supposedly strong point of the game is the class system. Once again, I have the same gripe with it than with the equipment. I get no visual cue when I change class except my character's posture. I go from a monk to a defender and my character still looks the same. It's annoying, I like for my fighters to look like fighters and my mages to look like mages. This might seem like minor gripes for some people, but for me it's a big deal. if you're going to make me grind, at least make me love my characters. Make my love my badass looking fighter, my frail but dangerous monk or my mysterious looking mages. It all boils down to how obsessed the Japanese can be with their character designs. It's like they don't want to screw up their design of Shu by putting some armor on him. I repeat it, but I like strong visual cues. I remember when I first played Final Fantasy I, I went into battle with no weapons equipped and my characters were fighting with their fists. Then I bought some equipment, and guess what? I COULD SEE MY CHARACTERS WEAPONS DURING THE BATTLE! I just went nuts, it was the coolest thing I ever saw. On top of that, the thief didn't look like the fighter and the fighter didn't look like the black belt. man it was awesome. This game, on the other hand, is not awesome. It's lazy, boring, and obsessed with it's own design.

Oh and, there's actually items in pretty much everything. Like if you go in a house, there are items in every nook of the damn place. It's like they actually want you to constantly run around pressing A like a madman on every object or wall or whatever that you see in case there's something there. And since there's ALWAYS something everywhere, you spend half your time with your nose on the wall pressing A. It fucking disgusts me. Sure you can tell me "Well you don't have to do it", well SCREW YOU IF YOU TELL THAT TO ME. I just can't ignore them, I'd feel like I'm missing a big part of the game. Especially since you often find stat boosts in there, STAT BOOSTS. How can you afford to miss those. And there's a dude who gives you some sweet loot when you read a certain amount of 'nothings'. Because when you look in places where there's nothing, it actually tells you there's nothing there. Back in my days, it would simply just not tell you anything, but now it takes the time to tell you "Sorry there's nothing there". So now I have to waste precious seconds seeing a message pop and hear something tell me NOTHING, like if that was an achievement of some sort. CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'VE FOUND NOTHING THERE SIR.

What? Wait, what? I've found nothing? THANKS FOR STATING THE OBVIOUS DUMBASS. Man, really an horrible game. I'm giving it a sweet score of 2 out of 5. It might be worth more, but nothing makes me think it might. Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.


Time played: 30-35 hours.