Blue Dragon

Platform: Xbox 360.
Verdict: Deep but dated adventure.
Rating: 3½/5
Cracking the Japanese games market has so far been difficult for Microsoft’s console division - with the 360 faring little better in the land of the rising sun than the original and far uglier Xbox, all hope is pinned on the Japanese love of RPGs and releases such as Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey and Eternal Sonata.
Blue Dragon tells the epic, 3 disc long tale of Shu, Kluke and Jiro, on a mission to save the world from evil. Advised to swallow glowing blue orbs (just say no kids!), the hapless trio find their shadows transformed into mighty creatures that fight on their behalf.
Full of turn based battles, levelling-up and light hearted adventuring, Blue Dragon is as traditional as it gets and with a team made up of Japan’s RPG glitterati it’s hardly surprising. Notable Final Fantasy stalwarts Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu accompany Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball Z fame) for an RPG dream team line up, bringing iconic design, music and character art with them.
Beside the traditional gameplay, Blue Dragon attempts to be unique through its distinct CG style graphics and subtle variations on genre mechanics. Shadows are key to these variations and are the gameplay and visual hook to differentiate it from its peers.
Assigned classes such as Black Mage or Assassin, they can swap and change to different ones, learn class specific abilities then change back, cannily retaining the newly gained powers and allowing you to design a team of your own choosing.
Random battles are also thankfully missing, allowing you to pick and choose what you fight but beyond that little is new.
On paper Blue Dragon ticks the right boxes and with such a stellar line up it’s easy to see why so much was expected of it but at its heart lies a game so traditional it’s beyond cliche and, as solid as it is, has been far superseded by its peers - in both Japan and the West.