Dragons O Plenty

I've had some time to sink my teeth into Blue Dragon and I have a few observations about it. First off let me say its great, if you are in the market for that classic style J-RPG this is your game. While the first Xbox had 0 turn based RPG's it looks like this round the 360 has hit critical mass in being the market for RPGs, pretty much all the devs are saying PS3 suck our balls.

The game feels like Chrono Trigger. The play style, the music, the overall atmosphere. Considering Hironobu Sakaguchi was co-founder of Square, and had his hand in Chrono Trigger it's easy to see why. While the story isn't as powerful as the ol CT it's solid. The Dragon/combat system is solid, the customizability of your characters via skill sets is impressive. Since Hironobu has left Square and is now developing for the 360, it's likely that future Final Fantasy games simply won't have the same flair they used too (not that the past few have either, though he had less and less to do with them as well). The game feels like classic square because at it's soul it is. Character Design is by the guy that did Chrono and Dragon ball, it almost feels like playing some 3d anime. Combat is nice, you can see your enemies before you attack ala Chrono. If you sneak up behind them you can perform a back dash attack and get the jump on them. The game touts 50 hours of gameplay, and likley more than that if you want to nab all the achievements. Thats ROI on your gaming buck for sheer entertainment value.

The music, while new, again has that midiretropop feel like classic square. Again the music was done by the original music composer of the classic Final Fantasy games. For all intents and purposes this game is Squaresoft reborn.

There is some sort of obsession with poop. First frackin monster you fight is a frackin Poo Monster, and they come in droves after that. Literally a swirling pile of purple poop. There are even achievements dedicated to defeating these pooply mobs. While not the oddest creatures I've seen in a RPG it's still perplexing to say the least. Some sort of subliminal poop is bad message I don't know?

The boss battles feature some un-named 80s big hair style rock. Absolutely does not fit with the game. I don't know if Hironobu Sakaguchi was smoking crack and watching Fast Times or what but defiantly is some of the strangest music I've seen in an RPG.

And that's the rest of the story.