Lost Odyssey is already screwed I think. It will be called a shameless Final Fantasy ripoff by many sites (some are already saying it). IGN is already complaining about the traditional battle system in interviews.

I pray there is a sequel as well. Sakaguchi definitely wants to do one, I hope Shane Kim greenlights another game because the 360 needs this kind of stuff. I purchased a 360 for this game it would be nice if there were more like it to look forward to on the console. Blue Dragon being Mistwalker's first title and Artoon's first one of this magnitude they're only going to get better as they go along. So I'd be very interested in seeing what direction a sequel in the series would end up taking.

I agree Op. Ever since FF12 had that real time combat system, people then started complaing about the turn based combat and how it's all boring and what not. I, for one, was absolutely disgusted with the combat in FF12 .... it was incredibly boring and had a mostly hands off approach. I think in that respect, Blue Dragon succeds tremendously, it's turn based yes but it gives you the freedom of deciding if you want to go into combat or not plus all those field skills which add a real time combat aspect to the game as well yet reviewers seem to ingnore this too an complain about the lack of innovation.
I actually think the game has added quite a few nice new things to the genre and I'm just loving it. I've put in about 23 hours in now. my only complain as I mentioned is the difficulty, If only I had the option of choosing hard at the beginning, I would have gone for that instead.

Here's hoping Lost Odyssey will do better to warrant a sequel for it too and roll on Cry On Sakagushi! I'm buying :D

Today is the first break I'll have to finally sit down and play Blue Dragon which I'm happy about :)

BD got a 6.0 at GS. I don't care much for their reviews with the new system, but damn...

I can't believe you guys are still crazy about this game.

If you love RPG's.....there would be a big chance that you love this game.

At least...i do.....like the Pet Detective would say...."i like it alot"...

Next to this i don't care about reviews...i will read them....but i will form my own opinion of a game from these pages.

Its got a 7.8 on gamerankings, probably be around an 8 if GS stopped trying to be different and didnt have this shitty rating system (Bioshock a 9.0, rediculous).

the main complaint seem to be that its maybe a little too traditional, especially for most modern gamers. it should have been the game to really evolve and develop the RPG genre, which lets face it, has been stagnating for the past 15 years. but it didnt. its joined the many MANY JRPG's on the market. a lot of which do what blue dragon does...only better.

if your scarily obsessed with RPG's your gonna like it...for the rest i'd maybe wait for something a little better.

Well said, I serious think there is some conspiracy towards Sakaguchi and this game from western reviews, Damn what were they expecting ?

From most of the people who bought this game, it has lived up to what they expected and in some cases more so, so i really don't get why reviewers, who are supposed to have more in depth knowledge of games before they are released had higher expectations than the fans did.

Its very bizarre..

reviewers have to be critical though. people dont typically find fault in things they like. look at halo. to fans its perfect...but no games is perfect. its just blind praise.

end of the day the game isnt doing ANYTHING new, it has technical issues and is..."univentful" for 3 quarters of the time your playing. if that doesnt deserve low scores then i dont know what does. YOU may like it. but with liking something typically comes the inability to see a games flaws. sad but true.

Halo is a sequel but Blue Dragon isnt so I dont see how being fan here is an issue. I played Final Fantasies before, yet I hated FF12 despite me being a fan and I loved Dragon Quest 8 which is the closest I can compare to Blue Dragon and I can tell you that Blue Dragon is just as good (minus the english voice acting but that's not a problem, I've got the Japanease voices). If you look at the final fantasies, they havent evolved much either yet they get very positive reviews every single time a final fantasy comes out. What's not fair here is expecting a brand new attempt to magically turn the genre upside down which isnt the case. Let's wait and see what Final Fantasy 13 is going to do and let's see if it's going to bring the so called "innovation" they keep talking about. If by innovation they mean the boring real time combat system of FF12 then they can count me out. I have my Ninja gaiden, Devil may Cry, god of War and heavenly sword for my real time hack and slash needs and when I go to play a jRPG I expect the kind of stuff I am getting from Blue Dragon right now.

Sakagushi was quite clear about this when he mentioned in several interviews that Blue Dragon is indeed a very traditional rpg.

I think with a lot of western players of WOW saw similarities in FF12's combat and liked it. I for one found the combat far more accessible and enjoyable than previous FF games. There is such a large learning curve in these games unless you have been playing JRPG's since you were a tad poll, and that makes it difficult for people to get into them. This is why I can't bring myself to go near BD.

exactly, what you expected was a traditional, "same old same old" JRPG from 15 years ago, and thats what you got. clearly you like the game, but with that you seem to be unable to find fault. thats what i was getting at with mentioning halo.

if you ask those who own the game if the games good of course they will say yes. thats doesnt mean it is as good as they say tho, becasue as i said before, if you like a game you become impervious to any issues the game has.

i've done it, hell, everyone does it. i just dont fall into a blind fanboy stuper everytime a half decent game comes out.

Try the demo ... The game really takes away the annoying stuff about JRPGs, no random battles and you can choose to enter the fight yourself and you can even try and drag different enemies in groups and fight them as a group (some will end up fighting each other as well, adding another dimension to the combat). Also when you're walking around, you will learn a set of skills within the field magic class and you can kill weak enemies in real time avoiding boring fights. It really does have a lot of these little touches that truly make it the best receipe for a jrpg combat system.

Gamefly needs to hurry up and send me this already. That's right, I rented it. Betrayal confirmed!

My thoughts on Blue Dragon... First, as I assumed, the review scores have been quite a bit lower than they should be. I do love traditional RPG's, and this game offers some pretty creative strategy elements before fights and during them I think. The thing that has taken away from this is the fact it's so easy you don't need any strategy at all. I wonder if they just made it really easy because they think western gamers don't like hard games? But this is too much (so far, I'm not far in at all).

One thing that I really wish wasn't in this game is that fact that EVERY rock/tree/stump you name it can be searched for items or gold. This is the death of me. I already ran around games hitting A as often as I could to find hidden stuff, but now I find myself circling all the areas in every tiny detail trying to find items. This is very annoying for me :(

I LOVE the graphics though. Even in the opening sequence I am just astonished at how clean this game looks. Awesomely rendered for sure. Still too much depth of field though!

The Japanese voices are also really good, I'm glad they included them.

Again I think this game has scored lower than it should be from what I've seen so far, but each complaint does seem to have it's merit. I think true RPG lovers will still like this game though.

What doesn't make sense to me is just how Blue Dragon receives the same exact score enchanted arms got from 1up/egm and gets a 6 from gamespot meanwhile Enchanted Arms gets a 7.1 from Gamespot. Enchanted Arms gets a 70 from Eurogamer then they give Blue Dragon a 50. Honestly whats up? Is this the result of Bioshock fever or are a number of reviewers simply intent on seeing this thing fail? Did they simply all raise their expectations?

Do they just hate the game's artistic design THAT much? Enchanted Arms I suppose didn't look nearly as cute as Blue Dragon did and probably struck people as a more "mature" looking game. Is that it? I don't know, but I'm definitely puzzled.

Well Freniger we are still just as excited about it as we were before because despite what all these reviewers say we fall into the category that actually likes a number of the things they complain about so some of the things they list as faults we welcome. So many reviewers calling Marumaro annoying is just simply off the mark in my opinion. If they think Marumaro is annoying and I just love everything about that character then what are the chances that I'll also disagree with their take on the story or the rest of the games faults? Very high. A number of the things I've seen Blue Dragon get dogged for are the very same things that are present or even more prevelant in games such as Dragon Quest VIII and yet that game practically universal praise for those things.. Whats the deal?

Its no different than when I saw all the Kingdom Hearts 2 reviews and I tried my best to see things from their side to understand why exactly some reviewers hated it and even from IGN's review where they gave it a 7.6.. I watched the videos and I just couldn't see the game as the same disappointing thing they were trying to portray it is. I bought it and not to my surprise I ended up loving it and its like my favorite ps2 title.

In Blue Dragon's case its even harder for reviewers to convince me it isn't a great game. I've played the Japanese version a lot I think its easily one of the best titles to show up on the 360 to date and I just can't understand how some of these reviews can not instantly notice that. They are suppose to be the "pros" on this stuff. I'm shocked by all the extremely bad reviews they may not be affecting my opinion of the game, but my jaw was literally hanging at some of the bad reviews I saw. Even the IGN 79 shocked me.

There have been quite a number of games that have been overrated quite a bit in terms of review scores and its as if all these reviewers have suddenly decided to make up for that fact and have Blue Dragon will be the game they'll make an example out of to show how harsh a reviewer they can be. At this point it really does feel as if other reviewers have seen what its been rated elsewhere and are just "going with the flow" or maybe they legitimately just hate it, but I'm proud to say not one of these reviews have altered my perception of it in the slightest. Sure it disappoints me to see it get such reviews, but I know I don't agree with them so its like they never happened I suppose. If anything the bad reviews only strengthened my resolve to get it :D

Thats another thing rook I figured reviewers would welcome the fact that they can just search anywhere. It isn't like one is forced to do so afterall they have a choice not to. From the demo alone I've seen enough evidence to know that I don't necessarily need to check everything to beat the game. Yea the game is definitely easy, just like Kingdom Hearts 2 was for me, but its fun :D

Even more bizarre is the number of reviewers that have already given Blue Dragon a score of 9 from playing the import and are now changing their reviews to lower scores to be more inline with what other sites are saying. Why the sudden and drastic change of heart? I'll never know.

I notice also that a lot of reviewers appear to be playing with the english voice acting and judging it farely harshly based on that fact.

lol nice av I saw on neogaf =P

Indeed Marumaro is the best charcter in the game, there are some real amusing bits with him in, very few games have this kind of humour, which is very typical of Japanese cartoons, obviously some people won't like this, but then the West can be a bit odd when it comes to grasping other forms of humour.

I would also agree that EM isn't as good as BD, however i really liked EM, graphically it was nothing special, but story line and gameplay was pretty good.

If i had to score them, I would give BD 8.5 and EM 7.5.

I also agree with you that LO looks like it is totally screwed already, but I won't care I will be getting it and will no doubt enjoy it.

I will be interested to see what Eternal Sonata gets because if they give that game higher scoring than BD, then they shouldn't be reviewing games.

haha I was going to say that too jolli lol.

Eternal Sonata is going to receive a higher score than BD solely based on battle system I'm sure lol. I can already see that one coming a mile away. To me it honestly doesn't get much worse than a 6. Everything below a 6 I treat as no worse than that 6. Eternal Sonata wont be getting those 6 scores from most sites like egm, ign, gamespot simply because they'll likely the combat system more. Eurogamer will give Eternal Sonata an 8.

Marumaro needs to die in a fire. Yeah, that's right, I said it. Bring it fellas!

*gets Knights of The Round ready*

The reviews aren't at all hard to argue. Its very easy as a matter of fact =P The ones labeling it a 5 or 6 or even a 7.9 are just wrong its as simple as that really.

I enjoyed Gears just as much as the next guy, but I know full well it got certain scores it didn't deserve. 1up gave it a 10, which I didn't mind then and don't mind now, but I think we can all agree that the game probably got much higher than it deserved. I think it puts into perspective very nicely why something like Blue Dragon didn't stand much of a chance. It's obvious what these people seem to like. Had Sakaguchi given Blue Dragon more gray environments and marumaro and shu a mac-10 and uzi respectively it would've received better reviews.

Blue Dragon would work just as well on a mobile phone? Don't think so.

It doesn't need to have a next gen style of gameplay to be considered a great game. Considering how wildly celebrated such game mechanics have been for god knows how long and for the likes of final fantasy and dragon quest its absolute rubbish to suggest now since Blue Dragon is employing those very same mechanics that its a major drawback to the game and one example for why it deserves the scores its getting. If Blue Dragon were called Dragon Quest people wouldn't have torn it apart nearly as much for its game mechanics. Whats worse Dragon Quest even had the oh so "dreaded" random battles that everyone seems to hate nowadays. Walk a couple steps see no enemy in site "BATTLE TIME BITCH =P" I don't mind that stuff at all infact I welcome it, but the double standard from "professional game reviewers" is sickening.

Drastic changes to the biggest jrpg series around can also mean it was a change for the worse (which is what I believe the case to be with Final Fantasy 12) There is nothing more next gen about the gameplay at all.

Never heard anyone suggest Dead or Alive revolutionized anything. It just I like its style a lot more than I do Virtua Fighter's. I like the way the combat looks it may not be nearly as technical as Virtua Fighter, but I like it cause I think it looks cool and its fun to play.

Nobody wants it to be reviewed as the best thing since sliced bread, but I do belive its a great rpg that deserves to be reviewed FAIRLY (without bias or alterior motives, that it be treated the same as every other game out there). The game doesn't deserve a 6 and pardon my french, but the "reviewers" are idiots, gamespot included, because they set themselves up to look like morons that have no idea what they're talking about when they rate enchant arms better than Blue Dragon. That isn't just sad its downright embarassing. 1up is even worse for giving both games the same score. And hey! Guess what? Enchanted Arms has the random battles people hate so much as well :)

Seems to me most reviewers didn't give a damn the japanese voices were on there as they mostly seemed to want to play and show off the horrible english voice acting. Love the way Gamespot really did their best to make the game look horrible with the way they started out their video review. Blue Dragon may be the type of game only fans of the genre/subject matter will like, but that has never stopped reviewers before from giving such games a fair review with the consideration that this may be just what the doctor ordered for such fans.

But I know Blue Dragon is an Xbox 360 JRPG and we know jrpg's like this don't belong on a Microsoft console. If only it were called Dragon Quest =P

Meanwhile according to gamespot Dead Rising gets an 8.4 and Lost Planet gets an 8.1, enchant arm gets a 7.1 and the highest quality japanese title to touch the console since its release gets a 6. Nope nothing wrong with that at all I'm just being my fanboy self :)

One of my favorite quotes "If you're waiting for a good jrpg on the 360 then you'll still be waiting" Its not remotely a good jrpg? Whereas those other games are more shining examples of being good at their genre?

I agree Optimus & Loving your avatar Op. NICE WORK! :D Marumaru RULEZ!

Just complement your post Optimus. just check these quotes out from the eurogamer reviewhoneslty, is this the way you review a game ?

and anotherYou expect a freaking political dilema from a dragon quest like game ? Does naybody here think the dragon quest story was something special ? Hell I dont, saving a princess and a king from a curse as fart as I know is just as cliche as chasing an evil guy who seaks world domination ...

Usually I am not that defensive about the games I like but in all fairness. thew reviewers are really being TOTALLY unfair here.

Yep they seem to be expecting a twist on the level of Aeris getting ran through and killed by sephiroth's sword or something. They called maru a yellow squeaking idiot... if that right there alone doesn't tell you they are hating on this game for reasons it shouldn't be hated on then I don't know what to say. Seems like these guys just aren't the type that can like something like Blue Dragon they prefer a Marcus Fenix or something. Is anyone surprised they like the older, more serious and battle hardened Zola?

Paper skin backstory they are regular kids for goodness sake. They were just regular kids who were the victim of a terrible catastrophe that plagued their village constantly hurting innocent people and they finally decided to do something about it knowing how dangerous it could be.

Are they suppose to have a long history or reputation of being incredible warriors or something? Are they suppose to be proficient with deadly weapons or something?

They are definitely being unfair it's fairly obvious.