Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Artoon and Mistwalker

The Xbox systems have typically not been the place to go for your Japanese RPG fix. Things started to change just a little bit last year when From Software’s Enchanted Arms made its debut. Now, almost a year later, things are looking up. With Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, and Lost Odyssey due for release this year, Microsoft is trying in earnest to show that their platforms can be a home to these types of games just as well as the PlayStation. With Blue Dragon being the first of those titles, all eyes are on it to see what next gen platforms will be able to bring to the genre. And with the Father of Final Fantasy, Hironobu Sakaguchi at the helm, those expectations are even higher. Can Shu and his companions shoulder such a load? Let’s find out.

Blue Dragon is the collaborative effort between two of the most respected names in RPG’s, Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy) and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z). The last time these two worked together, they created the cult favorite, Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo. As such, Blue Dragon is your typical, cute, light hearted J-RPG at its core.

The story revolves around a boy named Shu and his friends as they simply get fed up with a monster that’s been periodically terrorizing their village. The story quickly unfolds into an epic tale of youngsters from surrounding lands doing their best to thwart the plans of a madman hell-bent on activating an army of robots to take over the world.

Although it may sound simple at the core, there are many themes running on different levels in Blue Dragon that paint a deeper picture. Shu has an unbreakable spirit that drives him to ever push forward and never give up. Meanwhile certain questions are posed and explored such as do machines and automatons have a soul? Do they feel and hurt as we do? What happens when orders given from a machine’s master conflict with the relationships they’ve built and what they think is right? This mixture of light and heavier themes and the undercurrent they create in tandem with the main storyline add a little bit of definition to separate it from being cliché.

The battle system in Blue Dragon is your standard turn based system. Where things deviate are in the delivery of the attacks, magics and techniques. Earlier in the game, your characters will use weapons, but soon after they’ll acquire their Shadows. These Shadows are manifestations of each character’s inner self. The actions the Shadows can take are based off what class they are. Thus, the Assassin class will have various skills related to stealing, sneaking and other aspects such as that while a White Magic class will specialize in healing spells. Where things get interesting is as you level up these classes, you’ll earn extra skills and abilities to use with that class. If you use the Generalist class, you’ll be able to mix and match different abilities you’ve picked up from other classes to make your own unique molds that fit your ideal playing style with each character. It’s a lot of fun coming up with different combinations and this flexibility is a welcome addition.

The visuals in Blue Dragon are awesome. Even after playing the final build for two months, we’re still shocked at seeing how faithfully Artoon and Mistwalker have recreated Toriyama-san’s artwork into 3D. It’s almost as if Toriyama-san had modeled and textured the characters himself. The stark contrast between the 3D, anime styled characters and the ultra realistic backgrounds is a very nice look. Add to that the heat shimmer, water reflections, depth of field and other environmental effects and you’re looking at an early representation of what Next Gen RPG goodness is all about. There are some areas that seem like they were a little sterile and barren and could’ve used a little bit more object detail. While what’s there does look nice, think about other titles like Bioshock and Gears of War that go to great lengths to create a painstakingly high degree of detail to make each and every single inch of the landscape seem unique and believable. The thing is, Blue Dragon is so realistic that the omission of this kind of detail is obvious.

The sound on Blue Dragon wasn’t left behind either. Another Square-Enix stalwart, Nobuo Uematsu was brought on to helm the soundtrack. The score created is that classic J-RPG type of sound that gamers have become accustomed to from playing Square’s greatest throughout the years. Although very funny at first, gamers will even come to get used to the rock song that plays through boss battles.

Another aspect of the audio that we love is being able to leave the sound in Japanese with English subtitles. This is a trend that seems to be really catching on in RPGs and hopefully it’ll become a mainstay.

The only thing that annoys me a little bit about the sound is the ‘announcer’ that just seems to comment on too much. When an enemy sees you, you’ll hear a dry, robotic ‘Detected’ sound bite. When you open a treasure chest and find an item you’ll hear ‘Item.’ If you find gold in there instead you’ll hear ‘Gold.’ This is all fine and well, but it’s just the fact that you get this audio feedback for everything. When you have six enemies on the map screen with some seeing you ‘Detected,’ some running away because you’re so many levels higher than them ‘Fled,’ some of them chasing after you but losing your trail ‘Lost,’ and more, it’ll make you wonder if some of this was just feedback for testing that got left in the game.

All in all Blue Dragon delivers. Microsoft has established that they can get top Japanese talent to bring experiences to the Xbox 360 that up till now gamers have thought they wouldn’t experience there. While J-RPGs certainly aren’t for everyone, console RPG fans can’t go wrong with Blue Dragon. If the lighter setting isn’t quite what you’re looking for and you want something more serious along the lines of Final Fantasy, your prayers will be answered soon as well. Sakaguchi’s second 360 epic, Lost Odyssey will be arriving on US shores in February ’08. It’s a great time to be an RPG fan.