Paradise Blue

At a glance: A charming, whimsical NES style adventure strangely reminiscent of Final Fantasy V emphasising gameplay over plot.

Introduction

There are tons of RPG Maker games out there that attempt to mimic the J-RPGs we all know and love from our childhoods. Many RPG Maker users toil for weeks to create their own Final Fantasy or Breath Of Fire inspired adventures, trying so much to emulate the style and charm of these beloved games. Paradise Blue, the new game by Ocean, is yet another of these games, but the difference is that this game emulates the old school style of those NES/SNES era games fantastically, providing a nostalgic experience for die hard RPG fans, but also presenting itself as a fun, original game in its own right.

Storyline/Characters

In Paradise Blue, you control a group of four mute, unnamed mercenaries (reminiscent of Final Fantasy's Light Warriors) who are hired to help a royal knighthood try to re-establish political order in the kingdom and solve all sorts of other nasty problems. There is a plot to Paradise Blue, but much like in the classic games it tries to emulate, this plot isn't really important. Sure enough, there are twists, turns, villains and crises to behold, but generally it serves as a backdrop for all the questing and fighting your characters are running around doing. Your characters don't talk in cutscenes, nor do they have any relevance to the story; they are simply following the orders of others much more embroiled in a story of political turmoil than they are. This creates a great retro style storyline, where your actions and behaviours are not limited by the personality and goals of your characters.

Gameplay

Much like games such as Final Fantasy V, Paradise Blue/i] places a lot of emphasis on making your otherwise one dimensional characters into your own creations. You get to pick their names, assign them classes, level up their skills, equip them with whatever you wish and choose which auto abilities they use. Paradise Blue uses a class system very similar to Final Fantasy V; your assigned class levels up by gaining ability points and as it levels up, you learn more skills and equippable auto abilities such as auto regen and the like. Don't like the direction your class is taking? Simply open the class menu and re-assign it, choosing from all the classes you've unlocked thus far. Any auto abilities you've mastered get to be carried over to your new class, making it highly possible to specialize your characters by creating an Assassin who uses Black Magic or something similar.

It's good that Paradise Blue allows you so much freedom of expression in the definition of your playing style, as the many quests and battles in the game are varied, challenging and can be completed in many different ways. The enemies you fight are very varied and can be challenging if you do not know which techniques to use against them, so building a party of many varied and experienced classes is a must, as you'll want to have many different strategies to use. Meanwhile, the dungeons you visit are well crafted, being fun to explore, challenging to solve and never too long that they are tedious. There's even some class specific advantages in dungeon exploration; thieves can see hidden routes that otherwise could not be accessed, and there are other little gimmicks that will make the quests play slightly different for each party combination. Overall, however, the difficulty of the game resembles a retro RPG such as FFV; if you're keeping up to scratch with levels and experience, you'll blast through relatively easy, however fall behind or fail to learn just the right skills and you'll pretty much be doomed to fall to every boss you encounter.

Graphics/Audio

Visually and vocally, Paradise Blue is a very charming game too. The graphics used in the game are designed to achieve and emulate the look of a NES era game, and are comprised of rips and edits from commercial games of this era, and some custom graphics which match the look of these games surprisingly well. The mapping is beautiful, and the characters are colorful, and this game looks great considering the quality of the graphics being used. It doesn't stop at the mapping however, as even the window skins, menus, skill/item names and fonts are designed to look like they are out of a retro game. If you are playing the game in windowed mode, you'll swear that you're playing it on an emulator. Furthermore, this reviewer didn't find any graphical inconsistencies or tile errors while playing through; a top notch effort on the graphical presentation of the game. Also, the sound tracks used in the game are completely custom (and very well made) lending an air of originality to a game that otherwise borrows heavily from the RPGs of yesteryear. People didn't play retro RPGs for their sounds, but you will appreciate the effort that's gone into Paradise Blue on the audio front.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Paradise Blue is an RPG Maker rarity; it "rips off" it's own inspirations so well, that it achieves such a quality of gameplay and presentation that it raises itself immediately to their level. If you have a love for old style role playing games and don't mind experiencing a few elements very similar to games you might have played before, I strongly recommend you play this.