So, I know when I wrote my first review, I might have come off as a bit biased, and I realize that now. In no means did I ever say that this game is a must buy, and BigPopaGamer brought this to my attention. So now it seemed only right to counter my review of Blue Dragon for all the cons that seemingly might draw people away from this beautiful JRPG. So let's begin, shall we?

In case you missed My Epic First Impressions : Blue Dragon, Motivational Poster Edition, you can read up on it here.

Let me start by say this : I love this game, and have no regrets buying it. I have been enthralled with the job system and it's addicting gameplay. Of course it's beautiful and I must say anyone that is a fan of Dragonball will eat this up.

Now there are alot of issues I have that plauge this game. You might have noticed something different about the attack system of this game, and that's timed attacks. The longer you hold the attack button, the more you can charge up your attack, and depending on how long you're CHARGIN YO LAZERZ! you have a chance to get skipped or hit the sweet spot and land in a small orange spot of this attack bar.

Regarding the paragraph above, this game has some MAJOR and minor framerate issues, but thankfully it only happens very few and far between, and only when you're fighting. This didn't bother me, as framerate issues does not make a JRPG a bad game, BUT, like I said regarding the paragraph above, when your charging your attack, 5% of the time the frame rate FUCKS with you. Hardcore. Then you might be stuck with a weak attack, or even making it charge to far and you'll have to wait your turn. It isn't a big issue persay, unless you're in a boss battle. Then it becomes a bitch.

Now the characters, and the plot, are indeed very cliche. I was expecting this, as is the norm for alot of JRPG's. The characters are very thin, and as twinkiebots had commented earlier, there is a certain staleness between sentences, thanks to the poor translation. My advice for this : Switch it to Japenese with English subtitles. Much more enthralling. I also think that the beginning of the story, while epic since it throws you in many boss battles right away, had alot to do with this. The character development in the beginning could've been a little more tweaked, and it would've made all the difference. I have about 10 hours into the game, and I think that's where the character & plot development takes off, and I think they did this on purpose.. and I just now got Maru, the Jar Jar Binks equivilent in this game, and it took about 7 hours to get him. The game now gets alot more intresting.



Another small gripe I have about this game, is it's main enemy Nene, who is an old wrinkled purple goblin. It reminds me alot of the main boss of Dragon Quest 8, whose name escapes me at the moment, only alot less scarier. That said : I am only at the end of the first disc, and without giving spoilers away, I think this may or may not change. There is a conflict and if it goes Nene's way (which this usually happens) then I think shit's going to hit the fan, and there will be a certain redemtion of the character if I am right.


The world map. Now, I have played ALOT of RPG's, western, japanese, sex simulat-... forget that last one. The world map in this is terrible for me. Now granted, as I mentioned before, there are multiple 'warp posts' to access, and once you access these you can be teleported across the map. The problem with this is before you activate a warp post, you have NO IDEA where you're headed. I just wish the map was labeled correctly, but I guess it's more realistic to explore the unexplored.


I've seen the small text with my own eyes. I realize this was made for HD TV, and the only small text you'll get on an SD TV is when you're searching for items in dungeons. When you discover something, it will say it in small text, too small for SD TV's. There is a way to fix this, however. There is a voice option you can activate, and a Steven Hawkings live voice will tell you what you picked up. It may get annoying after a couple hours though, so you've been warned.


There may be alot more here in this game that I am failing to look over, but that is only because of my love for the game. The art, the size, the job system, the addicting field battles, and the awesome animations all really make up for the troubles. Oh my God I forgot the music, I don't care what they say the music is straight out of a crazy Japanese TV show, and hits a soft spot in my ears. This game has been rather good to me, and I can't wait to play it again with all my abilities. For all the skeptics out there, read my first review, as this was just to counter all the postive things about this game.


My bottom line : This game is really, really fun.