Blue Dragon Comments by Rob Fahey

I always thought that gamerankings would be of more value if they cut off, say two or three reviews fom the top and bottom of the scale. Shock review like this one, or blatantly silly reviews that look like they were written by the developer shouldn't be used in our [yes, highly unscientific] lists of games.

One less game to worry about then.

So for Japanese market only?

Excellent review.

Like the reader rating the aveage on metacritic is 8/10

if only for historical reasons I must own this title.

I find it hard to play JRPG's of old anymore unless I have Ai controlled or semi auto allies these days DQ8 was what made me feel like the really old JRPG's were dated like playing the original Doom amidst the many modern day FPS or something to that effect.

And if the story is bland enough I'd have to force myself to finish it, like FFXII which I still haven't completed no matter how much I dig the battle system.

Didn't expected that. Lets hope ES rocks.

"No one will ever say that any Final Fantasy that pre-dates FFVI is their favorite and guess what? - FFVI is the first game in which Sakaguchi took a backseat.
"

Pretty dumb statement. Seeing as games history proves that FF1 to 5 had a growth behind them which was needed to even get to 6 and beyond. Super Mario World would never have existed if not for Mario 1. Who would call 1 their favorite Mario ever? Times change, designs change, technology change, budgets change, target audience change, etc.

Oh, and Sakaguchi at least didn't come up with the drivel that was VIII and X. Teen angst crap. That huge beast is my father?????? Ugh.

/picks up sharp object

/starts searching for ilmaestro;-)

Please don't tell me you think V is better than VIII? V was bloody awful!

/runs from impending FF fan war

Oh for Gods sake! People, if you like JRPGs , trust me, the game is better than average, I'm not saying it's a masterpiece but it's not (imo) a 5/10. Do not take this review as gospel, read a few other reviews and make your mind up then, as someone who's played the game I can tell you it certainly floated my boat, in contrast FFXII (which I was almost pissing myself for 3 years in anticipation waiting for ) scored a 10/10 at EG, and I was sorely disappointed by it. So read around before you make your decision, as a previous poster said the general consensus is that BD is an 8+/10 title.

On a lighter note:)

Everybody who read Shinji's early PS3 coverage knows he's a fanboy, although he denies it and claims to be a Ninty fanboy (lol, like that's better!)

"Pretty dumb statement. Seeing as games history proves that FF1 to 5 had a growth behind them which was needed to even get to 6 and beyond. Super Mario World would never have existed if not for Mario 1. Who would call 1 their favorite Mario ever? Times change, designs change, technology change, budgets change, target audience change, etc."

I understand that, but the leap between FFV and FFVI, story and characterization-wise was massive, much bigger than the leap between FFIV and FFIII. That, at least, says something about Sakaguchi's role.

"Oh, and Sakaguchi at least didn't come up with the drivel that was VIII and X. Teen angst crap. That huge beast is my father?????? Ugh."

/sigh

This "teen angst crap" argument is getting so tired.

If you want every character in a story to be stereotypical Hollywood heroes that are so unbelieveably capable of dealing with everything that they are almost inhuman, then go to Hollywood and watch Die Hard or something. If one is in Squall's situation or in Tidus's situation, I'm pretty sure one would be entitled to feel a little down every now and again!

I'm nearly five hours into the game and I think it's really good, certainly better than mediocre. I think I'd give it an 8 so far. I love the combat and how you can clear "dungeons" so you can explore them thoroughly, helped by the fact that you can examine pretty much everything for bonuses. Kind of gives a bit more substance to the game than most other J-RPGs where the world is empty apart from enemies and chests.

"5/10"

So the PS3 doesn't benefit then?

Damn, i bought this as well!!!
Should have read the review first.

Why is everyone assuming they've made a mistake buying the game just because one EG reviewer has given Blue Dragon an average score? Edge gave the game a 6 and that is above average. Personally I think the EG review is overly harsh but then I bought the game and have made my own mind up about it, i.e. that it's actually pretty decent but doesn't excel in any way particularly except for the visuals. That said, it does stand out on the Xbox 360 because the platform doesn't normally get these kinds of games.

People need to make informed choices...reviews are the opinion of someone, and if you disagree so be it.

If people like classic RPGs, or RPGs in general they could potentially fall in love with the game regardless of anything else...

It looks awsome to me - an avid rpg fan and a review with a low score like this wont put my excitement for it down.

Peace

The demo turned me off of this completely. Thank goodness for demos!

I've played it for a couple of hours today, I quite enjoyed it. Harsh score in my opinion.

Who would call 1 their favorite Mario ever?


Uhh... I think you'd be in for a surprise.

I played the demo the other day... I think 5 is a little harsh...

"If you want every character in a story to be stereotypical Hollywood heroes that are so unbelieveably capable of dealing with everything that they are almost inhuman, then go to Hollywood and watch Die Hard or something. If one is in Squall's situation or in Tidus's situation, I'm pretty sure one would be entitled to feel a little down every now and again! "

True, maybe it was just the english voices in FFX that really put me off. Teen angst works way better in Japanese.

It's not the feeling down bit I was irritated about. I loved FFVI and games like Colossus. It was the whole, let's have a big family picknick bit I was concerned about. :P. At least Sakaguchi keeps it fun and game, instead of a melodramatic opera. BD is the megaman of RPG's. Won't buy one, but still like it.

not really my bag this one, but it looks nice
Back to Bioshock then :)

I'm enjoying it.

Perhaps if Eurogamer actually concentrated on taking the game for what it is and not just moaning on about how "outdated" its concepts are, they might have given it a fairer review.


"in contrast FFXII (which I was almost pissing myself for 3 years in anticipation waiting for ) scored a 10/10 at EG, and I was sorely disappointed by it"

Ditto. The battle system ruined it for me. All you do is spend 5 minutes every now and again setting your gambits up, then run up to enemies. Obviously Eurogamers idea of fun. Oh well.

Oh dear, EG is getting more reviews to its name I can't trust.

Everything about this game screams DQ, which was itself lambasted for beeing too old-school and yet scored well (even here) and was lapped up by those of us with the JRPG love.

Nothing in this review pointed out for me the reason it recieved such a bashing score. I hope its not just publicity grabbing, i'm still upset about RE4.

Another travesty of a review. What the hell is going on with Eurogamer recently?

They really think that Blue Dragon deserves the same rating as rubbish like Blazing Angels, Fantastic 4 and Harry Potter (all of which got 5/10)? Please tell me this is a joke, or some kind of mistake.

It's just a Rob Fahey review. Don't encourage him by actually giving it some modicum of attention.

The Toriyama characters put me off even though I like(d) Dragon Ball.
The Blue Dragon demo put me off even though I like JRPGs.

I haven't played the whole game, but a 5/10 game is exactly what I was feeling it would turn out to be.

reviewer said "....Blue Dragon is trying to inspire nostalgia for something which we European gamers never experienced. Sakaguchi is trying to recapture the feeling of the early Final Fantasy games, and to a lesser extent, the early Dragon Quest games - which is probably exactly what you want for a rose-tinted retro trip if you're a thirty-something Japanese guy."

this was the paragraph where said reviewer dissapeared up his own ass. what a load of tosh. he sounds like one of those pretentious wafflers from the bbc's newsnight review show, making vacuous claims conjured from the empty void of his own head....just to sound good.

the game is easily a 8/10 title. the visuals are absolutely drop dead gorgeous and give the world a consistency and belivability not seen in many rpgs. the combat system and character development (meat and bones of any rpg) are excellent. and the music score is simply wonderful.

Being lenient I would say. The demo bored me out of my skull and im considering suing for braindamage

"this was the paragraph where said reviewer dissapeared up his own ass. what a load of tosh. he sounds like one of those pretentious wafflers from the bbc's newsnight review show, making vacuous claims conjured from the empty void of his own head....just to sound good."

That's Rob Fahey in a nutshell. I don't see why he isn't beeing confined to GI.biz, where he can be infuriatingly incompetent without anybody bothering to read him.

'The sad fact is that if Blue Dragon had been released on the PS2, it would have sunk beneath the waves without a trace - written off as a strangely traditional game that had no appeal outside Japan. It's weak and primitive compared even to Akira Toriyama's last RPG outing, Dragon Quest VIII, which was already too primitive for European tastes and was a commercial flop in this territory; we can simply see no reason why anyone who wasn't enamoured with Dragon Quest would even want to consider playing Blue Dragon.'

So this game is like Dragon Quest VIII then, but a bit more traditional? I thought that DQVIII was the best JRPG on the PS2, personally. Much better than FFXII, which while decent had a lot of original ideas that weren't necessarily better than the ones preceding them.

I only just started but so far I'm really enjoying it - You can turn off the irritating voice that says 'playable', BTW.

Anyway, stop being so horrible to Rob - It's his opinion and he makes some very good points. Yes, yes, I know I ripped into Simon about WA4 but at least I apologized afterwards...er kind of...I certainly meant to at any rate!

I don't really see eye-to-eye with Rob (and certainly not about this), but some of the comments in this thread about him are more than faintly ridiculous.

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.

The problem is, those weren't the issues with the demo. The issues where that the gameplay sucked, the characters where annoying and the game itself seemed to suck away the lifeforce of the player.

Xerxes, they were complained about factual technical issues which affected its quality. The response time of the buttons screwed with the gameplay, the tearing and slowdown rubbished the crisp graphics up and you were thrown into dungeon areas with little idea as to why. Whether you personally thought the gameplay was rubbish or you didn't like the designs is an entirely different thing. The demo itself wasn't indictive of the game, which is what my point was as someone who's played both. If you personally don't like something, that's your call - I'm not trying to change your mind about Blue Dragon other than offer balance as to how poor the demo actually was in relation to retail.

Gosh, LeD is on full charming form in this thread.

Now, I don't really want to get stuck in an argument over the unpleasant bile he's spewing, so I'd just like to draw everyone's attention to one thing. We've got a new system on Eurogamer for viewing people's Xbox Live info in their profiles.

Which conveniently reveals that despite being prepared to viciously attack my professional reputation over this review, LeD has never actually played Blue Dragon.

Ah, platform fanboys eh? :)

"Ah, platform fanboys eh? :)"

Takes one to know one! ...Please don't ban me :P

/Runs

Ouch. That sent cosmic ripples of pwnage through space and time.

As for BD...
Being a heterosexual male in the 16-30 demographic I say down with this sort of thing!
Never darken my manbox360 with cutesy doe-eyed characters again.

Their chicken-chili noodles are however excellent .

I think it's quite good. Reminds me of Chrono Trigger...in spirit if not in terms of storyline. To be fair mind, I'm only a few hours in.

Pffft, just realised how there are tons of ads for this 'sub-par' game over the site, and a competition. Slightly mixed messages perchance?

Shinji: Good that you mention that: First note how your system is buggered. It Doesn't show his name. Second, while it is an idication, it is in no way a fullproof to see something. Most people, myself included, have multiple accounts and some of us play for convenience reasons (i.e. if i want to use my account on every machine i want to play on, it takes about 30 minutes to copy every time i switch) with multiple accounts.

I have 3 accounts of which only one is a gold account and the other has games list I played elsewhere.

Just saying...

EDIT: The bug is most likely a space thing as xbl uses a + sign for spaces instead of %20. Quite odd.

So it's a kids game then.

I thought that until the main character said "bastard" twice.

Then I got all confused.

Xerx3s - I accept that. However, in light of the fact that LeD has spent this entire thread attacking me personally rather than actually making any solid points or criticisms about the review, I figured it was worth pointing out what the *reason* for that is. His invective has nothing to do with Blue Dragon, and everything to do with his personal dislike of me.

Now, he's welcome to dislike me all he wants - I won't be losing any sleep over it - but his one-man crusade to prove how biased I am is getting a bit dull.

HAHAHA shaaaame. The demo was just plain horrendous; this score shouldn't come as a surprise. Let's hope Lost Odysee doesn't suck as much.

Demo. Nothing. Like. Retail.

Read comments sections before commenting! GAH!

Shinji: Yep, I know. Was just pointing that out as I made the same mistake already (pointing that out and then finding out that the guy has more than one account). ;)

Now, he's welcome to dislike me all he wants - I won't be losing any sleep over it - but his one-man crusade to prove how biased I am is getting a bit dull.

And so you shouldn't. Seriously it's your opinion, if you feel that the critique on your opinion is without base, just ignore that (yay at my shitty grammar). It will be the fastest way for it to go away. There is always the ignore button (not saying that dil is a bad guy or anything but it can help sometimes to settle down).

Led: Why not just post that you think the reviewer is wrong and leave it at that? It's the most civilised thing to do. Yes, they make mistakes. Yes, they can't cater for everybody's opinions. Just find another reviewer that has more similar tastes. Or better yet, just write your own reader review.
There is a word for hammering a person in discussions. It's just not nice.

Bad reviews don't mean the end of the world. In fact, they don't mean anything. If the game is as good as you claim it to be, it won't really matter.
There are plenty of reviews that I disagree with (shadowrun to mention one), sure I mentioned my displeasure about it but it will just take down my trust in the reviewer's tastes down a notch.

Didn't Blue Dragon get like Mixed reviews in the UK.

Gamemaster Mag gave this a 85%. Meh, I ain't gonna pay attention to EG's reviews. My past games on their score have been a disagreement for me.

I always assumed that Blue Dragon would be an attempt to return to an older, more Dragon Quest/early Final Fantasy style of RPG anyway so although taking steps backwards in a genre is technically a bad move I don't really mind too much.

And after all, it's only a review; one guy's opinion, and for every person who hates it there'll be another who loves it.

I don't actually own a 360, but this was one of the main games I wanted for it if I ever got one. And I still do want it.

5 is about right, yet another overhyped let down.