Mike Bantick
Saturday, 13 October 2007 08:26
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
In Japan it helped give the Xbox 360 a relative boost in sales, but how does this JRPG (Japanese Role Play Game) translate for western audiences?
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Developer
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Mistwalker/Artoon
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Publisher
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Microsoft
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Rating
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M
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Xbox 360
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Though it has recently pushed the 11.5 million in hardware sales world wide, the Microsoft Xbox 360 has struggled to achieve a foothold in the lucrative and important Japanese market (recently hitting 450,000 units).
For what ever reason, the perception around the types of games inhabiting the Xbox 360 library is stereotyped as “Western”. Shooters and Tolkienesque adventures.
Along comes Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of the famed Final Fantasy series on PlayStation) to inject a little Japanese flavour into the Xbox 360.
With Blue Dragon igniting a spike in Xbox 360 sales when it was released in Japan some time ago – now it is available in the rest of the gaming world.
As expected the Blue Dragon flavour is typical Japanese Role Play, though it shies away from recent styles of high drama portrayals with realistic tinges, in favour of a more Anime approach.
Shu, the main protagonist, like his cohorts Kluke and Jiro are rendered as young folk with large heads and eyes. Likewise, the Blue Dragon story is delivered with long cut scenes, given dramatism that belies the situation at times. There are times when you just want them to ‘get on with it’.
Though perhaps this is just impatience on behalf of the reviewer tackling the review of a game containing a grand opera across 3 DVD’s! The tale meanders through from the saving of Shu’s home village from the menace of a powerful old entity, Nene, to confronting and foiling Nene and an even greater evil lurking behind.
