To say that the Xbox 360 is lacking with Japanese role-playing games would be an understatement. With only one title – that being Enchanted Arms-- in the genre after two years of being on store shelves, the Xbox 360 desperately needs support. Microsoft is trying to remedy the situation with Blue Dragon. What makes it so special? Let’s start with the fact that it’s the first title in their beautiful partnership with Mistwalker Studios. Don’t mistake Mistwalker Studios as the only developer on board; Mistwalker hired the helping hand of Artoon for the bulk of the load while Mistwalker acted more of an overseer of Blue Dragon.

Blue Dragon comes right out of the gates with a traditional approach to the storyline. The plot begins in the village of Talta where the town is being attacked by a vicious land shark that returns every 10 years. Decimating the buildings and wrecking havoc, the land shark isn’t the only mysterious thing happening; accompanying the land shark is an eerie mist that clouds the area of Talta. With that all in mind, the main character, Shu, decides he has had enough and determines he is going to face off with the land shark. After a boss battle with the land shark, Shu and his friends are taken into an alien spacecraft where they obtain their ‘shadows.’ Thus, the quest begins for Shu and friends to save the world from an evil space alien named Nene.

How does the story match up to other RPGs? I am probably not the first to say it, but the storyline contains a lot of familiarity that will have players scratching their head on what is so special about Blue Dragon. For a deeper look at the storyline, it’s best to split it in halves. The first half of the story is made up of exploration and learning the ways of the battle system. It’s in this time, that it would be wise to grasp the world that surrounds the main characters. Now for the second half of the game; if the first half is labeled as being light-hearted, then the second half is when it takes a serious tone. Towards the end of the game, Shu and company must concentrate on stopping Nene’s villainous plans. Combining both halves together, the story is great in motion. While never ground-breaking, the feat it accomplishes is extraordinary in today’s video-game landscape.

As a quick diversion, I want to speak on Nene. This little bugger doesn’t seem like much of a villain, but don’t misjudge him – he is a baddie that can hang his gloves up to the best. He isn’t the most thought-provoking villain I have encountered in a video game, but he did his job in creating a desire to defeat him. The conclusion of the storyline has a fair amount of twists though it takes awhile for them to formulate. Also, Blue Dragon is a linear RPG with a few side-quests to partake on, it’s does take about 30 hours to complete and the game spans three discs -- this is a rental by no means.

Taking the route of a traditional Japanese role-playing game, Blue Dragon’s contains a turn-based battle system. Going back to what I said earlier, the main characters obtain their shadows early on in the story. Their shadows, called blue dragons, take center stage as they are the ones that actually perform physical attacks. Shu and his buddies can choose to just straight up attack, use magic, use an item, perform a special attack, change formation, or try and flee the battle. The battle system itself comes with a few perks to take advantage of; one being the ability to charge up attacks. With the ability to charge up attacks, players can wail on the enemies with stronger attacks, but there is a catch – the strong the attack, the longer it will take to perform. Charging up attacks will rearrange the order of turns so players will want to strategize on when they want to attack the enemy and how powerful they want the attack to be.

Most of this so far is pretty standard for RPG’s but there is more! There’s a formation system that essentially changes stats and how things play out on the battlefield in Blue Dragon. By changing where a characters stands, players can affect who gets attacked, what their defense level is, and how powerful their own attack is. This feature causes many of the battles with multiple enemies to turn into more of a chess match than a regular video-game fight. The last few things that need mentioning that affect the battle system would be the encounter circle and field skills. Walking around in the cities they travel through, players can take advantage of the encounter circle. The encounter circle enables players to take on several fights at once for stat bonuses and more gold. Even more interesting is the ability to have two monster groups facing off against each other if they are within the circle. Lastly, the field skills help out too with producing various effects before the battle begins. The field skills are attached to the characters - so in effect, enemies could be damaged before the battle even begins.

How does the battle system grade when it’s all put together? It’s praiseworthy and has a quick learning curve. On top of that, Artoon made sure that all boss sequences are intense and enjoyable. If players need tips on how to make the game a little easier, each enemy has a weakness to take benefit from. Based on appearance, players should be able to identify an enemy’s weakness rather easily. An example would be to attack machines with every water attack in their repertoire. Another thing that needs to be brought up is that Artoon deemed it worthy to add in enemies that actually aide Shu with healing spells and will sometimes even commit suicide. Weird!

Now for the class system that is being used – there’s sufficient depth here to satisfy RPG fans. Though, I must admit, I worry players will end up making their characters casters or warriors instead of experimenting with all of the classes. There are nine classes found in Blue Dragon including: Sword Master, Black Magic, White Magic, Support Magic, Barrier Magic, Assassin, Monk, Guardian, and Generalist. Players will learn new skills for each class when they become available when leveling up. Character customization is nice with being able to mix and match skills from separate classes.

For players that avoid RPGs like the plague due to random encounters, they’ll be pleased to hear that Blue Dragon has none. With random encounters being gone Artoon instead took more of an approach that is being used in games such as Tales of Symphonia.  Instead of the enemies striking players, the players are actually able to pick and choose which enemies they want to fight on the battlefield. Seeing all the enemies prior to battle is a nice addition to be prepared before battle. Be warned, the enemies will chase you down on the map – so be on a watchful lookout at all times.

Taking a glance at the graphics, it is no wonder why many won’t find Blue Dragon appealing, but be assured, this is not just for the kiddies. The graphics resembles that of a Japanese anime – which is ironic since Akira Toriyama is one of the designers that were on the project. The art style of Blue Dragon is ultimately going to be the selling point of the game. If gamers don’t like the style of Dragon Quest, Dragon Ball Z and many more of Toriyama’s designs, they won’t find Blue Dragon appealing. So potentially, this could turn off a lot of gamers. For myself, I appreciate the graphics compared to more bald space marines on the Xbox 360. It’s cute, it’s colorful, and so far, it’s one of the most vibrant games on the Xbox 360. On a technical level, the graphics are great. Artoon, with the help of Ensemble Studios, put together marvelous water in the game.

Nobuo Uematsu has lent his craftiness for the soundtrack. His work is quite good throughout the entire game, but it does become repetitive. The voice-acting is great and both Japanese and English voices are found in Blue Dragon. The only real negative in the sound department is the text-to-speech announcer of sorts. The voice often announces what happens on the field map such as defeating an enemy, which becomes annoying moderately fast.

The last thing I want to speak about is there is promise of downloadable content to come via the Marketplace. If Mistwalker and Artoon can deliver content such as new quests, items, or even classes, then the depth of this game advances even more. There wasn’t a date placed on the content, but after falling in love with Blue Dragon, I can only pray its sooner rather than later.

Gameplay: 8.8
There’s enough involved in the battle system to deem it worthy of the title of a next-generation video game. With random battles removed, first time RPG players may end up loving Blue Dragon.

Graphics: 9.0
With not much to compare to on the Xbox 360 in terms of Japanese RPGs, Blue Dragon is hands down the prettiest game on the 360 so far. Though, Eternal Sonata releases in a week’s time and will give it some stiff competition.

Sound: 8.6
Blue Dragon needed more work done on it from Uematsu since there’s not enough in the soundtrack to last the length of the journey without becoming repetitive. But, the voice-acting and the themes that are in Blue Dragon justify turning up the surround sound and enjoying what has been delivered for the audio.

Difficulty: Easy
This may be either a detractor or a sponsor to buy Blue Dragon, but the game falls on the easy side. I never had too much trouble throughout my entire play time.

Concept: 8.2
Nothing too original in terms of storyline is found in the game. It has all been done before but what I do find great is the collaborating of video game “gods” such as Sakaguchi and Uemastsu, along with the art work of Toriyama. I hope these three come back together for other projects, whether it is a sequel for Blue Dragon or not, it doesn’t matter - I just want more!

Overall: 8.8
I highly advise judging a book by its cover; Blue Dragon contains a lot of thrills for role-playing game enthusiasts to come upon. I hope this sells like hotcakes because I would love to see Mistwalker and Artoon deliver a sequel and continue on the series. In the end, it may not be for everyone, but for RPG fans, you can finally exhale, Hironobu Sakaguchi is still the genius that he was 10 years ago.