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The blue dragon
I bought this for my 12 yr old daughter. the first couple of hours she said it was a hard game, 3 days later she had defeated the whole game. She said it was a lot of fun though and she really liked it.

Lots of fun, but don't expect to be challenged to much
Blue Dragon is well worth the price of admission, if not just for the artwork. Its a lot of fun, although it can get repetitive fighting monsters in the Wild. I love the character developement Shu- the hard headed and determined one. Jiro- intelligent and caring. Klute-Voice of Reason and balances the team out. MaruMaru - an innocent child-like creature caught up in this mess. Zola- Mercenary , possibly with her own agenda....and Nene- The evil nemesis that takes enjoyment in others suffering.

Great Job...just remember that Shu is NOT a young Goku!

J-RPG at last
It's about time that a good RPG comes to the xbox360.
The graphics are great.
The storyline is tangled with drama.
The gameplay is traditional.
If you love Japanese style RPG and Dragon Ball, you love this.
All RPG fans should check it out at this new lower price.

Great Mechanics with Horrid Story
One of the first things you'll notice as you begin to play Blue Dragon is that the game's story revolves around a simple good versus evil dichotomy with little variation in character outlook from that. The good characters are sickly good and the evil characters are deviously evil --- there are no characters with real depth. It's for this reason I find it hard to see in any of the characters human characteristics or relate to any of them.

The models as well are childish in nature and make the characters (which the manual states are in their late teens) look like they're all under the age of 10.

The plot from the very beginning is also easy to read and lacks any sort of depth or any form of twist to keep the player engaged. It's like reading a story after reading a summary of the plot --- you just don't find yourself surprised when something happens because you knew it was going to happen. If an RPG doesn't shake your worldview in the slightest I consider it a complete failure.

As for the great mechanics I mentioned in my title --- I found the game design to be wonderful despite it's flaws with an actual story. The usage of the charge bar keeps the user engaged and I found the enemies to level up progressively at a reasonable pace similar to your own growth so it kept things somewhat enjoyable. The idea behind making random encounters random but allowing the user to attack them was also very cool (Secret of Mana style meets Final Fantasy < 12 JRPG battle system sort of thing).

The real problem with the mechanics, however wonderful, is that it's very very very easy to get higher levels simply because the enemies tend to be plentiful but easy to kill in one or two rounds from the start on once you've gained any sort of advantage. Your fighters will have mow down techniques which hit the whole first row for nearly the life of the enemy which could easily allow you to rack up experience points if that was your intention.

Quickly want to mention the shadow system. It allows users to attach a different class to their shadow to gain skills which can be set to other shadow classes they use. To put it simply I level up my black magic class and get the ability to use black magic level 1 spells on my fighter class by assigning it the skill I learned. The classes all have their own stats so it does have variations in terms of attack power in or out of the class but as others have mentioned can also allow you to create 5 distinct clones of each character with little trouble. I didn't, however, and found the system to be fun so it's really whether or not you take advantage of the system which will affect you in that regards. It could have been made better though, I agree, and more class selections would have given a more unique feel to the process as well.

Music was wonderful though and the graphics were pretty despite its cartoon feel. In general it's a good game and had the story been even somewhat decent would have been an unforgettable JRPG.

blue dragon = fun!
I decided to buy this even after all those average reviews on the web or in magazines.
Believing that if you liked jrpg you can't do much wrong.
And i'm glad to say i was right. This is a jrpg in the truest sense.
I really can't understand why this game got so much undiserved critism.
Sure it doesn't do anything new but it does the things it does right, and this is very important.
Don't get me wrong it isn't a perfect game, like all game it has its good and bad sides. But the good far outweighs the bad in my eyes.
The bad points so far i encountered ( i played about 18 hours)is that it doesn't have that epic feel games like FF and recently Lost Odyssey has.
And the story takes a long time to get going and only starts to get interesting after about 10-15 hours into the game.
And there are no mini games to complete or side quests to undertake(at least i have not encountered any so far). There is just the main story which will i guess last for about 40 to 50 hours depending on your addiction to level up your characters of course. Those are the bad points that really comes to mind.
As for the good points i can summon this up really easy, it is fun!
The battlesystem is traditional in every sense of old school jrpg.
Turn based and with all the usual elements included. Magic attacks physical attacks and items usage. Every character can choose from different classes from white and black magic users to warrior, assasin, monk and many more. And each has its strong and weak points. What is also worth noting is that every character can switch between all of the classes which they unlock througout the game.
I think i gave a good impression of what you can expect from this game.
Without revealing anything you can better discover for yourself.
I will sum this up easily.
People who can't get enough of turn based jrpg can't do much wrong with this game. Is it a classic? No not really but it a very enjoyable game that can stand it own in its genre.
People who are searching for something new won't find it here, and it won't change your view or turn you over to the jrpg genre if your not a fan of it.

I hope i have been helpful, and made your desicion a little bit easier.