First of I just need to say SHAME ON YOU ALL!!

No, don't only think I was talking about the crappy reviews,
they are not the only ones to blame, but YOU Destructoider's,
need a good flogging. For not respecting the amount of time,
brilliance, and the most epic music that went into this title.
Just like Bioshock, which was clearly over hyped, and
therefore made alot of people (including our very own BlindsideDork & Tazar) pissed because
the game was not living up to it's hype.

Now hear me out :I'm not trying to brag by any means,
but I have my friends list FULL of Destructoiders, old and new,
and 50 out of 99 people were on last night. No one was playing
Blue Dragon but me. That's right, while you were playing your
precious BioShocks, Betas, Gears, and new downloaded XBLArcade
games, (speaking of, go download Streets of Rage 2. It's awesome.)
I was busting my balls because I couldn't get Shu to power up his
Assasin job class.

What? Oh.. that's right.. the review. Sorry I got
carried away. As many of you know, I tend to do too much lately.
I didn't mean to fail you guys, just don't fail me!



While this game is by no means the next Chrono Trigger,
or even Final Fantasy for that matter, it was still INCREDIBLY
fun. Even the first hour of gameplay, which universaly tends
to be the most boring, especially in Japenese Role Playing Games (JRPG)
as these was very intense. It starts you off as the young
protagonist "Shu" (SH-EW) and his friends Jiro & Kluke, and of
course : A village in distress. Classic JRPG moment, and as
soon as you've explored enough, the cutscenes roll in. It
the first 5 minutes you're pitted against the first boss known
as Land Shark, and it acts as a genious tutorial for newcomers,
but that's not us, is it? After you defeat the Land Shark, you
are flown up to a sick looking air fortress, which you meet the
games main boss! I won't give out any spoilers, so I'll cut to
the first dungeon you, and of course your first offical town.





After the basic tutorials, it tells you about these
convenient things called Warps, which are amazing for
getting around. Every RPG needs these, as well as the
famed Job System, but in reality it's very traditional.
Everything these legends have done before is here
again : Plain level design, standard battle system,
and everything else we've come to love about our JRPG's.
Re-hashed? Maybe, but I think that it had to be to truly
make it right. What's very unique about this one though,
is the field. Random battle are now a thing of the past
since you can actually see the monsters, and you have
field items, which help you on the field before you get
into battles, like invisibility.



The most fun of manipulating the field has to be the
different kind of monsters you can get to fight each
other. You can walk around, and at any point and time
you can click the right trigger to bring up a large circle
around your character, and you can choose to fight one
monster or the other in your radius, but the best thing
to do is fight them all, and see what happens. It seems
not all the monsters in Blue Dragon are out to get you,
as they tend to eat each other. Yum.



That was the first hour, and I was stunned by the
brilliance of this game. It definitely helped having
Akira Toriyama, known for his work with Dragon Ball,
doing alot of the art style, but enough of that, you've
heard that. I'm not writing this to (hopefully) tell
you what you've heard, but rather tell you from my prespective.
In my eyes : I haven't played a single dammed RPG on this
first person shooting console, (Enchanted Arms and Two Worlds don't cut it!)
and I finally get to see a three disc, anime styled oddity
that is Blue Dragon. It may come off as cliche to some,
but to others they've been waiting along, long time.
Even the save menu that was brought up reminded me of
some of my favorite RPGs, and the whole game itself, has
a close resemblance of Dragon Quest VIII, Kingdom Hearts,
and of course, the Final Fantasy's of yester-year on the SNES.



So I ask you, Destructoid, when you're playing your first
person shooters, your arcade games, your beta's, your haloes,
please remember Blue Dragon. If we pass this up, even as a
rental, not only will we be saying our American stereotypical
console doesn't need RPG's, or JRPG's for that matter, but
you will also miss out on an epic adventure.

There's alot more to say, but I'll just leave with this.