Game Reviews

Blue Dragon is an action/RPG hybrid with a customizable protagonist, dungeons full of loot drops, and online gameplay that can augment the single-player campaign. In the world of Blue Dragon, people use their "shadow" (sort of like a magical power animal) to assist both in combat and in everyday life. While it's interesting to see a cartoonish rendition of Carl Jung's concept of the shadow self, Blue Dragon is unfortunately marred by wonky combat mechanics, an unsatisfying single-player campaign, and an utterly forgettable cast of characters

I can't quite figure out if Blue Dragon was made with single or multiplayer in mind; while it's more fun to fight boss monsters with human allies, there's also quite a bit to do in the single-player campaign. I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that the developers spent equal time developing both single and multiplayer; sadly, I think that, somehow, both aspects of the game were somehow neglected, if such a thing is possible.

Then again, you are presented with a full cast of characters, and each of them conveys at least a suggestion of a personality during sequences of character interaction. I continually found myself wondering why the story wasn't structured in such a way that your allies are presented as either zombies or victims of mind control - then, at least, it would make sense why they rush into battle, swing away, and then eat some curb. I also found myself wishing that the developers had simply ripped off character ideas from anime, movies, or other games; the AI teammates are so vanilla that they can't even truly be described as cliché. They are nonentities. If I could team up with, say, a faceless knight and a nameless ninja, the experience would have been much more tolerable. As it is, I just can't imagine recruiting warriors from a playground. As far as fantasy goes, it leaves something to be desired