Four years too late: first impressions of "Blue Dragon"

OVERVIEW:

The good: Excellent character and monster design by Akira Toriyama, beautiful musical score by Nobuo Uematsu, involving turn based battle system, great overworld / field gameplay, excellent shopping interface[!]

The not so good: Sub-par character animations, lack of character voiceovers in battle, mediocre writing in the English localization.

There was a long silence between Hironobu Sakaguchi's resignation from Square and the release of Blue Dragon on Xbox 360. At the time, I couldn't afford one, let alone the original Xbox console, so I waited.

Four years later, here I am. I finally convinced myself to pick up a used 360 (two, actually; the first red ringed on me within 5 months of owning it, and was replaced on warranty with my current white clunker). Before purchasing Blue Dragon, I played through Mistwalker, Inc.'s more serious RPG follow up, Lost Odyssey, and decided that I liked it enough to backtrack to the former despite its mixed reviews.

The first thing that grabs your attention in this title is Dragonball and Dr. Slump creator Akira Toriyama's distinct art style. His character designs are charming as always, and the 360 is more than capable of rendering the silken textures inherent of adapting a cartoon aesthetic. Once starting a new game, the title screen is actually a playable scene on a desert outcropping,

sparsely decorated with bare flora, a shallow pond, rickety fences and a windmill. You are able to walk around and get a feel for the movement controls, as well as explore some of the eye candy: real time shadows, rippling water textures, live rim lighting. All nice, even by today's graphical standards. The second treat was the music. Nobuo Uematsu delivers a wonderful, lulling piano composition in this scene, reminiscent of the piano arrangement of Final Fantasy VII's "Overworld" theme. Juxtaposed with the Toriyama's familiar art style, this little gaming excerpt just gushed nostalgia.

However, this short presentation of the game's aesthetics was just enough time to hit me with two annoying qualities. The first thing I noticed was the awkward character animations. While running, the protagonist (who we later learn is named "Shu") sporadically bobs and shimmies with each step, and the walking cycles look like a weird highspeed tiptoe out of a Charlie Chaplin movie. However, this is easy to overlook as the stylized character designs warrant a generous suspension of the player's disbelief.

I was just getting used to Shu's peculiar gait when my exploring was interrupted by an out of place, impish computer voice. It was quick, high pitched, and made sure to declare that there was "Nothing!" to be found in the places where I curiously tapped the "Confirm" button for hidden items. As a matter of fact, the voice would chime in to announce every on-screen alert that popped up on the map. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to find that you can disable this feature once you have access to the game "Settings" from the player menu.

Once past the title screen, the story begins as the well-worn yet classic coming of age tale of hopeful youngsters who are determined to prevail in a hostile fantasy world. The three starting characters are archetypical, fun and quirky, and their voiceacting is a treat if you decided on the original Japanese voiceovers. My reception of the character development so far are what I would expect while enjoying typical anime fare: you develop a soft spot for the heroes and their loved

ones, and you would really hate the main antagonist, Nene, if he weren't so sinisterly cool (he has a somewhat bumbling robot butler, and a miniature pet dragon that echoes his one-liners like a parrot. Aside from being a sadistic evil genius, what's not to love?).

In terms of game play, the overworld areas are expansive, especially compared to other modern JRPGs. You have 360 degrees of camera rotation, and can freely explore the environments Shu and his gang journey through. No condescending, linear paths ala Final Fantasy XIII. Like Nintendo-era Squaresoft games, any object on the map has the potential to hide items, gold, or even experience points. I was surprised to find that nearly anything I approached -- be it rock, tree or poo (we'll talk about that another time) -- was a treasure candidate.

Like some JRPGs, (including Chrono Trigger, to which this game bears some superficial similarities) the enemies appear on the map, so trudging through annoying random encounters isn't necessary. In fact, in addition to avoiding enemies, the way you engage an enemy on the map can change conditions in the battle itself. Initiating combat by dashing into an enemy, rather than casually bumping into them, will increase your chances of acting first; initiating combat with a single enemy from behind will trigger a "back attack" in your party's favor; and initiating

combat with multiple enemy avatars on the map allows you to clean up the area more efficiently, and cause certain groups of enemies to interact in a special "Monster's Fight."

The combat is turn based. I like turn based battle systems. They're low maintenance. But it's easy to design a turn based battle system that turns the player into a "Confirm button" jockey while he or she grinds through easy enemies. Blue Dragon avoids this by employing a few nice touches to keep the player involved, including some attacks that require the player to time button presses to increase efficacy. Some of these attacks have a charge meter, which indicates a sweet spot for (I assume) dealing more damage, and shows where the attack or spell will take place in relation to other combatants' turns. There is a "finishing" animation for each character who deals the final blow to an enemy, which is a nice touch, although I wish there was character voice acting during combat. I think Mistwalker noted the impact of this feature later, as they decided to add some excellent finisher quips and battle cries when they developed Lost Odyssey.

Character management is also very familiar for those who played early JRPGs. There is a class system attached to the character's "Shadow" -- an avatar which essentially fights and performs magic attacks in their stead -- and as you accumulate skill points (SP) in that class, you are able to unlock new skills that can be placed in the Shadow's skill slots. As I said, the Shadows fight for your character, so there are no weapons to be equipped. Diversity of battle techniques and spells are achieved by the skills you choose for your Shadow. There are, however, four slots for accessories that affect your characters' various attributes.

[Edit] I would be doing this game a disservice not to mention the shopping interface. I know, it seems to be a minor detail, but the way you navigate the in-game stores is great. Like an internet shopping cart, you are able to simply adjust the quantity of items you wish to buy and purchase everything all at once. I really can't stand shopping interfaces that only allow you to purchase one type of item at a time, or god forbid, one item at a time period! Blue Dragon's intuitive and commonsensical shopping interface makes buying items less of a chore.

So far, the game has been fairly solid. It is rather lighthearted in its narrative thus far, so the fun is really in exploring the map, obtaining new skills, and enjoying the relatively involving battle mechanics. The plot hasn't let on to epic details, however, and while this is okay at this point in the game, I feel that the player's attention would be more sustainable if Microsoft's North American localization spent more time with the copywriting. Blue Dragon's ingame English dialog (excluding storyline cutscenes) is very bland so far. I have been introduced to a very visually appealing cast of side characters, yet the English writers didn't seem to invest much of their efforts into creating a distinct voice for these characters. As a comparison, the writing inDragonQuest IX for the Nintendo DS brought to life an already colorful cast with dialog. The dialog is so rich in character voice that when recounting my gaming experience with a friend, I literally remembered the game as having voice acting (it doesn't).

I'm only maybe two hours into Blue Dragon, but I have a feeling it will turn out to be a rewarding game experience as the main characters have more time to develop. Meanwhile, I will hope that the game dialog mysteriously improves in the same fashion, as it would be a welcome addition to the enjoyable game mechanics.

More to come?