BLUE DRAGON

I finally got Blue Dragon today, and that was a story within itself. Lets just say UPS delivered it to a wrong location and I had to interrogate a small mexican boy Jack Bauer style to learn of its location.

I'm only a few hours into the game but I'm really digging it. The visual style is really annoying, but no more so than it was in Dragon Quest VIII and Dragon Ball Z. The graphics themselves look nice though. The music is excellent so far (though I've been told by many the boss tune coming up is the worst ever, though Gredlen swears it is awesome) and harkens back to the 16 bit era of Final Fantasy. The actual gameplay is more in line with what you would expect from Dragon Quest, however.

The class system is pretty sweet and I'm really enjoying the random battles. Running around a map and trying to make different types of random monsters attack each other, then cleaning up the mess (literally) is quite amusing. I've never played a game where you scooped up poo looking for gold before.

I'm not expecting anything majorly innovative in the storyline department as it looks like it'll be a standard generic epic revolving around the rebirth of magic and ancient technology. Some say the characters suck, but they're all actually pretty well refined. I guess it would be better to say the character development sucks, as all of their personalities are already carved into stone by the time the game takes place. The worst thing about the game is the main character, Shu, sounds like he's voiced by a woman trying to sound like a young male kid. It doesn't work at all. The rest of them sound OK though.

So far it's a nice, glossy old school RPG with a few innovative systems to keep things fresh. I would definitely recommend to any (j)RPG fans.

Man, lazy bears will f*ck your sh*t up.

author=brandonabley link=topic=230.msg2967#msg2967 date=1188535860
Have you fought a boss yet? I MUST know what you think about the boss theme.

I got to the first "real" boss late last night while I was half asleep. Literally. I kept dozing off but I didn't want to backtrack to the last save point. Then this festive looking dinosaur came out of nowhere and then the music started playing...

I was so shocked by the song. It has no idea what it wants to be. It starts out as an annoying jpop song, then like, wtf, the lead singer from Deep Purple (one of the pioneers of heavy metal) starts screaming or something. Then it changes back into a particulary annoying jpop song with Ian Gilliam trying to sing in tune (impossible). It's pretty crazy.

I don't think this is a great song by any means but it does gain some coolness points by having Ian Gilliam sing it. After 30 seconds its pretty much just background noise and doesn't try to be your face anymore. I've heard worse, but dear God have I heard so much better.

Judgement: Should have been cool but is instead just annoying. They should have just made a regular rock song and ditched the jrock/jpop.

author=kentona link=topic=230.msg2977#msg2977 date=1188572948
I don't play video games anymore.... atleast new ones.

I have an old PC that can't play anything better than Diablo II, I don't have any of the new consoles or handhelds, the latest machine I have is an Xbox, and the newest game I have for is Burnout 3.

I am really hoping to get a Wii by Christmas.

If you're going to upgrade, you may as well get a real console and not the "new" Wii. You can buy two GameCubes and some duct tape on the cheap if you wanted to go that route. Toss in a universal remote and you're set. Just kidding!

Actually, I may end up getting one for Christmas for the family. My daughter is starting to enjoy playing videogames and my wife likes Wii Sports. Unfortunately the only other games that interest me at all are Twilight Princess, which I could play on my GameCube, or Metroid Prime 3. I never got into the earlier Prime games but it looks like they actually tried to make MP3 a real game and not just a metroid fanservice.