Blue Dragon (video game)

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Blue Dragon

Box art of Blue Dragon

Developer(s) Mistwalker
Artoon

Publisher(s) Microsoft Game Studios

Director(s) Takuya Matsumoto

Programmer(s) Shinji Iseki

Artist(s) Akira Toriyama

Writer(s) Hironobu Sakaguchi

Composer(s) Nobuo Uematsu

Platform(s) Xbox 360

  JP: December 7, 2006
Release
 EU: August 24, 2007
 NA: August 28, 2007
 AU: August 30, 2007

Genre(s) Role-playing video game

Mode(s) Single-player

Blue Dragon (Japanese: ブルードラゴン Hepburn: Burū Doragon) is a role-playing video

game developed by Mistwalker and Artoonand published by Microsoft Game Studios exclusively
for the Xbox 360. Blue Dragon is based on a design by Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu
Sakaguchi, who also supervised development and wrote the plot.[1] It is both Mistwalker's debut
title and the first title to be helmed by Sakaguchi outside of Square Enix. The game was released
in Japan in December 2006, where it was sold both as a standalone title and as part of a bundle
with the Xbox 360.[2] Other regions received only the game itself, with a release in August 2007.
Taking place in a fictional open-world environment, the story of Blue Dragon focuses on five
friends (Shu, Jiro, Kluke, Zola, and Marumaro) as they travel across the world to confront Nene,
the evil ruler of the Grand Kingdom. The setting inspired separate animeand manga adaptations,
although these follow the story to different degrees and feature a different cast of characters. The
game follows a traditional role-playing design, based around exploration and turn-based combat.
Blue Dragon was the first Xbox 360 title to make use of multiple discs, spanning three discs in
total.[3] Overall, the game received a generally positive reception, being both applauded and
criticized for its adaptation of the traditional elements of role-playing games.[4]

Contents
[hide]

 1Gameplay
o 1.1Exploration
o 1.2Shadows
o 1.3Combat
 2Plot
o 2.1Setting
o 2.2Story
 3Development
o 3.1Music
 4Reception
 5References
 6External links

Gameplay[edit]
The gameplay of Blue Dragon uses turn-based gameplay elements seen in older Japanese role-
playing video games.[5] The game world contains two major types of areas: towns, in which the
player can rest and purchase items, and dungeon-like areas, with numerous foes to be
defeated.[5]
Exploration[edit]
Players are initially able to walk between locations on the overworld, and later gain the ability to
teleport to previously visited locations. The player controls a party of characters, but only one is
shown when exploring the overworld.[6] The player is able to cast magic outside of combat
situations based on each character's respective abilities. When combat begins, the entire party
appears for battle.[6] Enemies are visible to the player while exploring the game world, and can be
avoided. At the same time, players can choose to engage enemies by luring them close and
them activating a circle which will allow players to fight multiple monsters at a time.[6] In some
cases, specific foes will block a path or desired treasure chest and must be defeated to proceed.
Other foes will pursue the player's character once the player is spotted, but players can elude
them if they flee far enough. Frequently, a single enemy or monster displayed on the screen
actually represents a number of different foes of potentially different types.[5]
Combat begins differently depending on how the player avatar makes contact with the monster. If
the avatar strikes an enemy from behind, they take the advantage in battle with a "Back Attack".
Similarly, if the avatar is struck from behind, the enemy takes the advantage in a "Surprise
Attack". Players can also choose to fight several groups of monsters at once, with each combat
taking place immediately after the previous one. A player who successfully employs this tactic is
rewarded with bonuses. Players may use "field skills" to aid in controlling enemy encounters,
such as using bombs to paralyze enemies.[5][7] In rare cases, two groups of monsters may be of
rival species, in which case a "Monster Fight" will occur, with both monster groups appearing at
once and focusing on each other before attacking the player.[6]
Shadows[edit]

Each of the main characters' shadows.

The core mechanic in Blue Dragon is the use of magical "shadows", with each playable
character having a distinct shadow modeled after either a dragon, a phoenix, a bat, a minotaur,
or a saber-toothed tiger. Each shadow can be assigned to a single character class (from a
number of such classes) at a time, taking on the attributes and abilities of that class.[8] Only the
active class may earn Class levels or "ranks", but players are free to change classes at any time
except in combat, allowing the group's shadows to be customized in order to achieve the desired
combination of skills.[5]
As shadows increase in rank in a given class, they learn new skills, which can then be assigned
to a limited number of skill slots to be used in combat. Shadows can be assigned previously
learned skills regardless of their current class.[5] For example, if a shadow is currently set to be an
"Assassin", but has previously learned the ability to cast "Barrier Magic" while acting as a
member of the Barrier Magic class, the Barrier Magic skill can be set as an active skill.[9] This
allows mixing or hybridization, with the player able to pick and choose from among the skills
learned by a given shadow.[5]
Combat[edit]
See also: Role-playing video game § Combat
Although combat in the game follows a strictly turn-based formula, the turn sequence of the
characters you have are calculated based on the speed statistic of the character, and in some
cases characters are allowed to strike before enemies can act if they possess sufficient speed.
Different attacks can take varied periods of time to execute.[5]
Another combat timing mechanic featured in the game is the "Charge Meter", which allows
players to increase the power of spells or attacks by spending additional time preparing them.
This meter is always used for spell casting, as well as when using the "Charge Attack" skill used
by the "Monk" class. Although players can choose to act immediately, an ability will become
more powerful the longer that the player charges the attack. However, the greater the amount of
time one charges attacks, the longer the charging character must wait before the next turn. As a
result of this, players can choose to charge up an ability so that the ability triggers shortly before
an enemy acts, or can instead aim for the "sweet spot", a special red area on the charging bar,
indicating a charge that allows for less time until the next attack, as well as a smaller mana cost.
Overall, deciding on the correct amount of charge and letting go of the button at precisely that
time can greatly influence the effectiveness of each character's attacks during combat.[5]

Plot[edit]
Setting[edit]
Blue Dragon takes place in a fictional open-world environment where every year for the past ten
years, purple clouds have mysteriously appeared in the sky, signaling misfortune and disaster for
people across the world. For years, a terrifying beast dubbed the "Land Shark", and other lost
technologies, such as the "sea cube" came with the purple clouds, killing thousands of people
and destroying a number of villages.[10][11] The world is split up into climate regions, each
containing multiple kingdoms and villages, a few of which are not on the main path, but hold
small stories, such as the giants, and the sheep, as well as hidden dungeons.[12] Around the
environment are multiple sources of treasure[10]
Story[edit]
On an unnamed world, the legendary purple clouds arrive in Talta Village which is the home of
Shu, Kluke, and Jiro. While the other villagers seek shelter, Shu and Jiro slow down the Land
Shark. After encountering troubles, Kluke saves them. Together, the three trap the Land Shark in
a net, but the Land Shark breaks free and rushes away, with Shu, Jiro, and Kluke dangling from
its back.[10][13] The Land Shark stops in an ancient ruin that the three friends explore. They
discover the Land Shark is really a machine—a "Mechat". Without warning, the mechat comes to
life, only this time sailing into the sky, again carrying the three with it.
The party arrives at a giant Mechat base in the clouds and are tossed into the throne room of
Nene, the apparent leader. Nene explains to them how he enjoys hearing the screams of the
dying victims of the Land Shark. The party battles Nene, but are easily defeated.[14] They are
thrown out of the base and start to fall to their deaths, but a beam of light from the base catches
them, and brings them back to the base. The party find three small floating spheres in the middle
of the room; a mysterious voice commands them to swallow the spheres. The party refuses, and
instead hold onto the spheres for safekeeping. As they try to reach another Mechat to escape the
base, they are forced to fight a large army of Nene's robots. When the battle seems it will never
end, and with the unseen voice promising them knowledge of how to pilot the Mechat, the party
members eat the spheres. As they consume the spheres, a strange transformation occurs to
each, changing the forms of their shadows into powerful beings that are able to destroy the robot
army. The party escapes the base and crash in a desert.[15]
After becoming familiar with their new shadows, the party travels to Talta village, befriending
Marumaro on the way, who also possesses a magical shadow. Finding that the villagers from
Talta have started to head towards the capital city of Jibral, the party takes off after them. Just
outside Jibral, the party finds the villagers attacked by Steel-Eating Tigers. They are saved by the
arrival of King Jibral and his forces, including Zola. Once the villagers are brought to Jibral, the
King decides to implement a plan to destroy one of Nene's bases near Jibral using Shu and his
friends along with Zola. Together, the party works with the warriors of Talta Village the Jibral
Kingdom to besiege Nene's Mechat base. After the base is destroyed, the party heads north in
search of Nene. Nene captures Kluke, and places a collar around her neck which Nene alleges
will explode. After reaching Nene, Zola separates from the party to buy them time to attack Nene.
When the party attempts to remove Kluke's collar, Nene absorbs the party's shadows by placing
collars on all of them. After taking their powers and placing them in himself, he removes their
collars and attempts to kill them before they recover. Shu, despite being drained of magical
ability, unconsciously teleports the party to the distant Devour village.[12]
In Devour Village, they find themselves unable to escape the village without their magic, because
the community is surrounded by evil trees. Shu has an epiphany and finds himself able to
summon his dragon shadow without his sphere. Shu destroys the Eat Yeet in Devour Village,
and the party is finally able to leave. Eventually all the party are able to summon their shadows
again.
At that point, the party reunites with Zola, who supplies a Mechat for them to pursue Nene.[12] As
the party goes after Nene in the Mechat, Nene initiates an ancient machine that splits the world
into two hemispheres, with thousands of isolated cubes floating between the halves. The party
follows Nene to the Primitive Cube at the core of the transformation. The party journeys through
the cube eventually defeating General Szabo and ultimately engaging Nene. As the party
weakens Nene, it is revealed that Zola was working for Nene all along, and she was the voice
that told the others to swallow the spheres. When Zola was too weak to defend herself, Nene
had given her a shadow and sent her to Jibral as a spy. Zola betrays and kills Nene choosing her
friends over him.
Deathroy, the small creature that has been on Nene's shoulder removes himself from his
masters body and absorbs Nene's remaining life force. Deathroy is revealed to be Destroy, the
biomechanical weapon that destroyed the legendary ancients that once tried to bring peace to
the world. The party defeats Destroy, melting him in lava. The party then quickly escapes from
the melting cube to rejoin their families.[16]

Development[edit]

Hironobu Sakaguchi giving a presentation on Blue Dragon at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show convention.

Blue Dragon was first revealed on February 24, 2005 as one of two unnamed role-playing games
in development by Mistwalker Studios for the console which later came to be known as the Xbox
360.[17] In an IGN interview following the unveiling, Peter Moore stressed the importance to
Microsoft of having Japanese games available on the system, commenting "... It's a main priority
for me in the next 12–18 months to ensure Japanese developers are our
partners."[18] Contributors to Blue Dragon include a number of well known Japanese figures in the
gaming industry. The title's original story was written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the game director
of the first five Final Fantasy video games. It also features art from Akira Toriyama, the creator
of Dragon Ball and visual character and monster designer and illustrator of both the Dragon
Quest series and Chrono Trigger.[19]
Much of the actual software development work on the game was done at Artoon, with Takuya
Matsumoto serving as director and Manabu Kusonoki responsible for the game's world view.
Matsumoto previously worked as a designer on Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, while
Kusonoki is known for his work at Sega, including the world of Panzer Dragoon.[20] Near the end
of November 2005, roughly a year before the title was released in Japan, Artoon's Naoto
Ohshima indicated that the game was around 40% complete. He also pointed out that Artoon
had previously been known primarily for action titles, so that responsibility for Blue Dragon was
originally somewhat frightening.[21] Following this, a relative lack of media information for most of
2006 resulted in speculation that the title would be delayed until 2007, but Microsoft's Takashi
Sensui confirmed in August 2006 that the game would indeed see a year-end 2006
release.[22] Blue Dragon was eventually released on three full DVD discs, making it the first Xbox
360 game to span multiple discs.[3]
In a November 2006 interview with IGN, Sakaguchi confirmed that the sequel, Blue Dragon 2,
was in the planning stages, and would presumably start development shortly thereafter.[23] Later
in an issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, it was announced that Blue Dragon Plus was in the works
for the Nintendo DS.[24] It is a real-time simulation RPG, featuring 2D sprite graphics, and was
released on September 4, 2008 in Japan and on February 19, 2009 in North America.[25] In 2009,
a second Blue Dragon title was released for the DS, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow. The latter
is more action oriented, and follows a player-created character, rather than Shu.
Music[edit]
Blue Dragon's score was composed and produced by Nobuo Uematsu, who is better known for
composing much of the music in the popular Final Fantasy series. One of the boss themes,
"Eternity", was composed by Uematsu, with lyrics by Hironobu Sakaguchi himself, and includes
vocals by English singer Ian Gillan.[26][27] Blue Dragon Original Soundtrackwas released on
December 13, 2006 and was arranged by Satoshi Henmi and Hiroyuki Nakayama.[28] Music
from Blue Dragon was performed live at the Play! A Video Game Symphony concerts in
2006.[29] IGN praised the track "Cave" as one of the "Top 10 Nobuo Uematsu Musical
Moments".[30] Enter Shikari also made an instrumental song, "Enter Shikari vs. Blue Dragon" for
the original soundtrack.[31][32][33]
Blue Dragon Original Soundtrack track listing
[show]Disc
1

[show]Disc
2

Reception[edit]
Reception

Aggregate scores

Aggregator Score

GameRankings 77%[34]

Metacritic 79/100[35]

Review scores

Publication Score

1UP.com C+[36]

Eurogamer 5 out of 10[37]

Famitsu 37 out of 40[38]

Game Informer 9 out of 10[39]

 GamePro 4.5 out of 5[40]

GameSpot 6 out of 10[41]

GameSpy 4 out of 5[42]

IGN 7.9 out of 10[5]

X-Play [4]

Pre-orders of Blue Dragon bundled with a limited edition Xbox 360 Core system were sold out in
Japan well before the December 7, 2006 release date.[43] Microsoft and Mistwalker initially hoped
to sell over 200,000 copies,[44] which would break their record for sales of an Xbox 360 game in
Japan. The game did manage the goal, with almost exactly 200,000 copies sold as of December
27, 2007.[45] Creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was pleased the game sold as well as it did.[46]
Reviews for Blue Dragon were somewhat mixed, though generally favorable. On the review
aggregator GameRankings, the game had an average score of 77% based on 62
reviews.[34] While many reviewers praised the game for its traditional approach, a few reviewers
criticized it for that very reason, with one reviewer remarking, "In fact, there is very little you can
point to in Blue Dragon that hasn't been done multiple times over before". The story also came
under scrutiny from some reviewers for being too generic and too similar to existing Japanese
RPGs, with slow pacing during the beginning of the game.[5] Eurogamer stated that the apparent
lack of effort put into the facial animations for each character resulted in a limited ability to
express emotion. They also noted that the mouth movements are well timed, but that the rest of
the characters' facial movements are "static".[37]
Game Informer commented that Blue Dragon lacked "jaw dropping" moments and was missing a
nebulous "key element" to make it perfect.[39] 1UP.com also picked up on this, adding that Blue
Dragon was missing "strong characters, gripping storytelling, and excellent pacing".[36] X-
Play said that the game was very visually pleasing, but indicated that it was like any other role-
playing game.[4] Though most of the reviewers criticized the game in one way or another, they all
complimented it for its excellent graphics and music. Specifically, Game Informer remarked that
"the characters look like sculpted figurines wandering around a world built to
scale".[39] GameSpy complimented the title's music and graphics saying the game had
"phenomenal music; and magnificently rendered cutscenes".[42]

References[edit]
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IGN. December 7, 2006. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
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External links[edit]
 Official website

[show]

Blue Dragon series

[show]

Mistwalker

[show]

Akira Toriyama

Categories:

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