On a first look at the aesthetics of the game I got a strong desire to launch myself at the nearest laptop to partake in a spot of Dragon Ball Z. Perhaps you felt the same upon admiring the unique character design? If so then I doubt it will have taken you long to realise that the mind behind the character visuals was none other than DBZ artist and creator, Akira Toriyama. When playing through Blue Dragon I realised that one of the main reasons I continued to crawl through the hours of travelling and meaningless conversations with strangers was to fulfil the need to know what new monsters my characters would encounter and from the word go I was pleasantly surprised at the sheer volume of beasties lurking around every corner, from the feeble Apocalypse Moths to the gargantuan Flamboyant Dinoram. It felt like some real effort and thought was put into designing each monster but as the hours of gameplay progressed I couldnt help but realise that some of the creatures I ran into were, to put it bluntly, half arsed copies of previous monsters I had encountered only sporting a different colour or added item on its person. To say the least, encountering 10 species of the same giant rat in different colours only to find that my creature encyclopedia regards them as brand spanking new beasties was slightly off putting. In fact it pissed me off greatly. But I digress...
The gameplay on a whole was average, nothing stood out to me in particular and at times I felt slightly desperate to find a near by Sheep Tribe camp to save and quit as the long distance travelling quite often became tedious and repetitive to a fist clenching degree. However on the other hand I enjoyed the feeling of not being in any rush to get things done in order to make progress as their always seemed to be hidden chests to unlock as well as seemingly hundreds of stones to kick and punch of which unearthed hidden treasure, most of which were money. Seeing as though from this fact we can now establish the inhabitants of the Blue Dragon world did not have banks and lived a very simple life of hiding their spare dollar in rocks scattered around the perilous wastelands I shall now continue the rest of the review in ye olde speakings. Seriously though im not.
On the whole I found Blue Dragon to be an enjoyable and chilled out game. I strongly believe that if it were a person Mr.Blue Dragon would be more than happy laying in the middle of a flower strewn medow in the buff, dooby in hand. Although sporting an extensive land to roam around the lack of side missions makes it rather linear. Monsters are creative and fun to battle when not being replicated with different colours and boss battles range from being so easy that you can almost see them blushing with embarrasment and shame as they enter stage, to so colossal and armour clad that your team commits suicide in order to spare the agony of being pulled apart by a 900ft Poo Snake....Music wasnt too bad either...
It's getting to the point now where my fingers are nothing more than bloodied stumps from the stellar rant about rats and ye olde rocks, so I'll leave you with my final thought scores:
Gameplay: 6.5/10
Storyline: 5.5/10
Aesthetics: 8/10
Music & SFX: 7/10
Overall Rating: 7.5/10
Next Review Coming Soon.
Jess~
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