Blue Dragon brought together the talents of three legends of the Japanese game industry – writer and producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, artist Akira Toriyama, known for Dragon Ball, and composer Nobuo Uematsu of the Final Fantasy series – to create a tribute to the classic JRPG genre right on the Xbox 360. The story follows a group of young heroes led by Shu, who, after encountering mysterious shadows, gain the ability to summon powerful beings into battle against a tyrannical ruler controlling the land from his flying fortress. The shadows aren't just a visual effect – in battle they rise up directly behind the characters and attack in their place, so even an ordinary fight looks like a scene out of an animated series.
The combat system built on traditional turn-based battles enriched with a class system, letting players retrain characters into other jobs between battles and combine learned abilities across classes to create custom builds. Enemies were visible on the map beforehand and could be lured into a single circle, triggering a chained battle against several groups at once – a risky move, but one that significantly sped up progress and rewarded courage. Toriyama's distinctive cartoon visual style gave the game an unmistakable identity, different from the more realistic Western RPGs of the time, and made the genre accessible to a younger audience as well. The vast world, with the ability to travel freely between locations on the backs of giant creatures, heightened the sense of adventure.
Critics praised the accessibility, humor, and audiovisual presentation, even though the story felt simpler in places than competing JRPGs, and the game's scope required several discs. Blue Dragon helped establish the Xbox 360 as a platform open to Japanese games at a time when the market was focused primarily on PlayStation, and in Japan it was even sold alongside a special console edition. Today it mainly serves as a pleasant reminder that the great creators of classic JRPGs decided to try their luck on a console where nobody expected them.
Game 27 of 259 for Xbox 360
