Review: Blue Dragon

Blue Dragon is a quality role-play game that any fan of the genre will enjoy. 

Pros: Simple mechanics; no random battles; great music; 

Cons: Obsessive item hunting; difficulty spikes; tough bosses; unbalanced achievements; occasional framerate issues. 

Along with Mistwalker's other Xbox 360 game -Lost Odyssey-, Blue Dragon gives the role-play game fan another interesting and fun adventure to experience. Filled with the usual assortment of dysfunctional teenagers, Blue Dragon looks like a clichéd title. However, there are enough

innovations to make it accessible to everyone. 

One of Blue Dragon's best features is the inclusion of field enemies rather than random encounters. As your characters gain skills, you can actually avoid endless battles with weak enemies by beating them on touch - at the expense of some experience and energy. This saves a lot of time and tedious level grinding later in the game.

The presentation is consistently attractive with some sophisticated graphical effects and wonderful music. The colourful palette and cartoon characters help to make the game enjoyable for a western gamer. The robots enemies, in particular, are well designed and somewhat reminiscent of characters from Ratchet and Clank.

Blue Dragon is recommended for any role-play game fans. Gamers more orientated toward action games, may enjoy Blue Dragon because of the lack of random encounters too.

4/5