Blue Dragon Comments by Rob Fahey

OUCH! That's painful :p

Let the manslaughter commence!

Fire in the disco!

Hang the DJ!

yeah that game sucks

I was expecting a 6! I lose!

that's gotta smart

Oh dear. Didn't this get good reviews in Japan?

Hmmm, well I quite like it :P

I like it too.

Bugger...

I've got some Blue Dragon coconut milk. Very nice in a curry.

6 implies that it's still enjoyable in some small sense. Raw Danger is a 6. Classic example.

Even Rob's monumental tolerance of JRPG quirks was tested by this, which tells you everything you need to know.

If I compare the demo's: Sonata kicks BD ass.

Do Blue Dragon do miso?

So...

Don't buy it?

oooft

Win Blue Dragon and a black wireless pad!

6 implies that it's still enjoyable in some small sense. Raw Danger is a 6. Classic example.

Even Rob's monumental tolerance of JRPG quirks was tested by this, which tells you everything you need to know.

Hmm. So games that score 5 aren't enjoyable? That sounds kinda wrong somehow.

hurry up with the space giraffe review please

Personally would give this a 6 (still might) - about 20 hours in and finding it pretty enjoyable, but nothing like as addictive/life-consuming as my favourites from the genre.

Had better point out that I've had it for a week :-) - not racked up twenty hours in a few days!

that score embiggens my bank account

This will be the first time I completely ignore an EG review. I still really like the look of it and as I can basically get it free with an Elite... Win!

Hmm, a 5 from EG.... means I'll have to try it, it might be awesome. ;D

As good as... Folklore. \o/

Better than Mafia then...

Worse than Suikoden IV :-O

I'll stick with the awesome Persona 3, ta.

I quite liked the look of this up until I saw actual game play videos and played the demo. Really tedious cookie cutter RPG crap to be honest, not my cup of tea.

The Eternal Sonata demo on the other hand turned a 'meh' game into a definite purchase, oh and Lost Odyessy is shaping up really nicely as well.

No wonder you can barely avoid getting it in the Elite deals...

Sure I'll manage to.

Space Giraffe review was done yesterday, but there's this little thing called the Leipzig Games Convention, and that has taken priority. You'll probably have to wait until Tuesday for the review, thanks to the bank holiday...

Going by the demo, this review is spot on.
You're waiting for something new or innovative to happen and it never does.
A massively missed opportunity.

I'm not saying you can't possibly enjoy a 5, but you'd generally have to be the most forgiving of fans of a specific sub-genre to overlook some of the flaws.

Game Convention? What? Where?

Poor Microsoft, this is the game that they hoped would be a big hit in Japan for them.
They may aswell pack up and go home now.

EG need to balance out the 10 score from BioShock, and the Blue Dragon one would do it nicely!

Tough score, I agree its not a great title and deserve to be marked lower but 5 out of 10 is lower than even Edge reputed-tough-to-please which gave it 6 out of 10. Metacritic at present have it at 80 out of 100 but expect to go down to 70ish.

EG review clearly show frustraton at missed opportunity and where great masters have just been slapdash with supposedly opus of JRPG. I agree with that but would say it can be fun, for those keen on this kind of game.

I was looking forward to Lost Odyssey more myself so hoping will get better deal there!

I never expected Westerners to welcome Blue dragon, it's aimed at a different audience. Play has it in 20th place in the 360 charts, showing that Japan can keep games like this. 360 gamers know why they bought this system, FPS, racers, action. That's it.

I couldn't care less about Blue Dragons score, 10/10, 1/10 all the same to me. The characters put me off when I first layed eyes on it.

THE DEMO is NOT representative of the actual game. The controls for some reason are very clunky in the demo and unresponsive, the game doesn't have this issue. And although it does contain tearing and slowdown, it's no way near that of the demo.

/that is all

Any more talk of the demo shall be met with narrowed eyes by those with the retail edition.

Personally I loved Breath of Fire, and this feels similar.

Boo, that's a big slice of bum. I was looking forward to some decent 360+JRPG entertainment. Enchanted Arms has no strategy when you can't see the icons on an SD telly, and the "characters" make me want to sob blood.

Poor Microsoft, this is the game that they hoped would be a big hit in Japan for them.
They may aswell back up and go home now.

Err...why? Its been out in Japan for ages, so why does an EG review for a European release not bode well for Japan?

The Japanese quite liked it, but 360 is still doing shite in Japan. Probably because of the lack of games like this released there and partly because of the way the Japanese are so fond of homegrown companies like Sony and Nintendo.

I think it's a myth that we're any easier to please than Edge - and when you consider that about six of our freelancers also write reviews for them, it's a bit of a silly discussion, really.

Tis very, very similar to DQ, which got a 9 here...in fact i've never tried something so damn close to DQ, the enemies even jiggle and dance about the same way between moves....Tench review was similar, it whupps wrath of heavan's ass which got 8 and earned itself a big fat 2 (Seriously - Tench woz robbed blind)

can you give RPG reviews to the same people or something otherwise it's really really inconsistent....one review is by someone who loves X genre, the next by someone who feels the same genre is outdated/hates em

Frickin heck, 2k make another barely interactive rollercoaster ride quick, teh review community loves em...darkness 2, six hours..bringiton

That's really rough. The game seems to be polarizing opinions a lot, although I'm more inclined to believe these newer reviews than old import reviews which might have been influenced by hype and everyone's high expectations.

I'm still buying it eventually, though, if for nothing else, then for the visuals which I absolutely adore, but certainly not at the full price.

I have to disagree with this review. The story and characters are uninteresting indeed (like in most JRPGs except Vagrant Story and Shadow hearts 2 IMO), but the combat system is enjoyable and reasonably deep, definitely better than the last shin megami I played (digital devil saga). JRPGs live or die by their combat and leveling systems IMO, and Blue Dragon doesn't fail in that regard.

I don't give a fuck about Microsoft's ambitions for this title, and I don't care about the track record of the guys who made this game either. Take the game for what it is: a good JRPG that doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. It's a 7, maybe even a 8 if you're in a very good mood. By giving it a 5, you make it look like the game is broken or suffers from some unforgivable flaw, but it clearly doesn't.

... Sorry for the pretentious, long winded rant, but i'm kinda pissed. I bought this game before reading the reviews, and I hate it when a game I like gets destroyed like this.

"Oh dear. Didn't this get good reviews in Japan?"

Yes it did, but so did "My Housekeeping Diary" and "Cooking Mama", I don't jump on the "ooooh Japaneses are so da cool" train any more.
Anyway I bought the game, just because.

@ squarejawhero
[i]THE DEMO is NOT representative of the actual game.[/i]

Here we go again... why don't they simply release a demo that actually DEMOs what the game is really about *LOL*

I like JRPGs, but I just couldn't care about Blue Dragon. Now Eternal Sonata? If that's region free it's getting imported immediately.

Review scores are useless, as this discussion proves again. Go with the text.

mossychops001: have you been under a rock or something, this game debuted in Japan 3 months ago and made 360 sales rise 150%, it managed to sell 30K in one month (just that month though, but it did". Blue Dragon is very old news in Japan.

Famitsu scored the game 37/40, so they did like it.

edit: ok, ok I read some older posts of yours, understood now ;)

@ParanoidZombie

You probably have god reason to live up to that name - I read this ...

"I bought this game before reading the reviews, and I hate it when a game I like gets destroyed like this."

As ...

"I bought this game before reading the reviews, and I'm now trying to justify my impatience ..."

:). There are some nice review of this out there. I hated the demo though the battles were too long for simple fights.

"They may aswell pack up and go home now."

Or they could hire Takeshi Obata (character design, art of Hikaru no Go, Death Note, Blue Dragon Ral Grad manga) and get Sakaguchi to make a game which lives up to the new japanese standards - just remember, they liked the way Final Fantasy XII wanted to bring new standards to the JRPG genre.

Blue Dragon does not even try to do so. It just wants to be another FFV (and it does pretty well to be like that.. : )