Blue Dragon (video game)

The gameplay of Blue Dragon uses turn-based gameplay elements seen in older Japanese role-playing video games. The game world contains two major types of areas: towns, in which the player can rest and purchase items, and dungeon-like areas, with numerous foes to be defeated. In rare cases, two groups of monsters may be of rival species, in which case a "Monster Fight" will occur, with both monster groups appearing at once and focusing on each other before attacking the player. Shadows The core mechanic in Blue Dragon is the use of magical "shadows", with each playable character having a distinct shadow modeled after either a dragon, a phoenix, a bat, a minotaur, or a saber-toothed tiger. Each shadow can be assigned to a single character class (from a number of such classes) at a time, taking on the attributes and abilities of that class. Only the active class may earn Class levels or "ranks", but players are free to change classes at any time except in combat, allowing the group's shadows to be customized in order to achieve the desired combination of skills. This allows mixing or hybridization, with the player able to pick and choose from among the skills learned by a given shadow. Combat Although combat in the game follows a strictly turn-based formula, the turn sequence of the characters you have are calculated based on the speed statistic of the character, and in some cases characters are allowed to strike before enemies can act if they possess sufficient speed. Different attacks can take varied periods of time to execute. Another combat timing mechanic featured in the game is the "Charge Meter", which allows players to increase the power of spells or attacks by spending additional time preparing them. This meter is always used for spell casting, as well as when using the "Charge Attack" skill used by the "Monk" class. Although players can choose to act immediately, an ability will become more powerful the longer that the player charges the attack. However, the greater the amount of time one charges attacks, the longer the charging character must wait before the next turn. As a result of this, players can choose to charge up an ability so that the ability triggers shortly before an enemy acts, or can instead aim for the "sweet spot", a special red area on the charging bar, indicating a charge that allows for less time until the next attack, as well as a smaller mana cost. Overall, deciding on the correct amount of charge and letting go of the button at precisely that time can greatly influence the effectiveness of each character's attacks during combat. ==Plot==

Setting Blue Dragon takes place in a fictional open-world environment where every year for the past ten years, purple clouds have mysteriously appeared in the sky, signaling misfortune and disaster for people across the world. For years, a terrifying beast dubbed the "Land Shark", and other lost technologies, such as the "sea cube" came with the purple clouds, killing thousands of people and destroying a number of villages. The world is split up into climate regions, each containing multiple kingdoms and villages, a few of which are not on the main path, but hold small stories, such as the giants, and the sheep, as well as hidden dungeons. Around the environment are multiple sources of treasure. The Land Shark stops in an ancient ruin that the three friends explore. They discover the Land Shark is really a machine—a "Mechat". Without warning, the mechat comes to life, only this time sailing into the sky, again carrying the three with it. The party arrives at a giant Mechat base in the clouds and are tossed into the throne room of Nene, the apparent leader. Nene explains to them how he enjoys hearing the screams of the dying victims of the Land Shark. The party battles Nene, but are easily defeated. They are thrown out of the base and start to fall to their deaths, but a beam of light from the base catches them, and brings them back to the base. The party find three small floating spheres in the middle of the room; a mysterious voice commands them to swallow the spheres. The party refuses, and instead hold onto the spheres for safekeeping. As they try to reach another Mechat to escape the base, they are forced to fight a large army of Nene's robots. When the battle seems it will never end, and with the unseen voice promising them knowledge of how to pilot the Mechat, the party members eat the spheres. As they consume the spheres, a strange transformation occurs to each, changing the forms of their shadows into powerful beings that are able to destroy the robot army. The party escapes the base and crash in a desert. After becoming familiar with their new shadows, the party travels to Talta village, befriending Marumaro on the way, who also possesses a magical shadow. Finding that the villagers from Talta have started to head towards the capital city of Jibral, the party takes off after them. Just outside Jibral, the party finds the villagers attacked by Steel-Eating Tigers. They are saved by the arrival of King Jibral and his forces, including Zola. Once the villagers are brought to Jibral, the King decides to implement a plan to destroy one of Nene's bases near Jibral using Shu and his friends along with Zola. Together, the party works with the warriors of Talta Village the Jibral Kingdom to besiege Nene's Mechat base. After the base is destroyed, the party heads north in search of Nene. Nene captures Kluke, and places a collar around her neck which Nene alleges will explode. After reaching Nene, Zola separates from the party to buy them time to attack Nene. When the party attempts to remove Kluke's collar, Nene absorbs the party's shadows by placing collars on all of them. After taking their powers and placing them in himself, he removes their collars and attempts to kill them before they recover. Shu, despite being drained of magical ability, unconsciously teleports the party to the distant Devour village. ==Development==

giving a presentation on Blue Dragon at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show convention. Blue Dragon was first revealed in February 2005, as one of two unnamed role-playing games in development by Hawaii-based studio Mistwalker for the console which later came to be known as the Xbox 360. In an IGN interview following the unveiling, Peter Moore stressed the importance to Microsoft of having Japanese games available on the system, commenting "... It's a main priority for me in the next 12–18 months to ensure Japanese developers are our partners". Contributors to Blue Dragon include Microsoft Game Studios Japan and a number of well known Japanese figures in the gaming industry. The title's original story was written by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the game director of the first five Final Fantasy video games. It also features art from Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball and visual character and monster designer and illustrator of both the Dragon Quest series and Chrono Trigger. In 2014, Sakaguchi recalled that it was initially a challenge to work with Toriyama because he was not in tune with the latest technology. For example, the Photoshop software Toriyama had on his computer was version 1 or 2, making it difficult to convey ideas. Despite the minor setback, Sakaguchi praised his creativity, saying he had great ideas constantly popping in his head. Much of the actual software development work on the game was done at Artoon, with Takuya Matsumoto serving as director and Manabu Kusonoki responsible for the game's world view. Matsumoto previously worked at MGSJ as a designer on Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space, while Kusonoki is known for his work at Sega, including the world of Panzer Dragoon. Near the end of November 2005, roughly a year before the title was released in Japan, Artoon's Naoto Ohshima indicated that the game was around 40% complete. He also pointed out that Artoon had previously been known primarily for action titles, so that responsibility for Blue Dragon was originally somewhat frightening. Following this, a relative lack of media information for most of 2006 resulted in speculation that the title would be delayed until 2007, but Microsoft Japan's Takashi Sensui confirmed in August 2006 that the game would indeed see a year-end 2006 release. Blue Dragon was eventually released on three full DVD discs, making it the first Xbox 360 game to span multiple discs. Later in an issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, Blue Dragon Plus was in the works for the Nintendo DS. It is a real-time simulation RPG, featuring 2D sprite graphics, and was released in September 2008 in Japan and in February 2009 in North America. In 2009, a second Blue Dragon title was released for the DS, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow. The latter is more action oriented, and follows a player-created character, rather than Shu. Music Blue Dragons score was composed and produced by Nobuo Uematsu, who is better known for composing much of the music in the popular Final Fantasy series. One of the boss themes, "Eternity", was composed by Uematsu, with lyrics by Hironobu Sakaguchi himself, and includes vocals by English singer Ian Gillan. Blue Dragon Original Soundtrack was released on December 13, 2006, and was arranged by Satoshi Henmi and Hiroyuki Nakayama. Music from Blue Dragon was performed live at the Play! A Video Game Symphony concerts in 2006. IGN praised the track "Cave" as one of the "Top 10 Nobuo Uematsu Musical Moments". Enter Shikari also made an instrumental song, "Enter Shikari vs. Blue Dragon". Although the song is present in the game's files, it was exclusively used in a few trailers for the game. ==Reception==

Pre-orders of the game bundled with a limited edition Xbox 360 Core system were sold out in Japan well before the December 7, 2006, release date. Famitsu gave the game a score of three nines and one ten. which would break their record for sales of an Xbox 360 game in Japan. The game did manage the goal, with almost exactly 200,000 units sold as of December 2007. Creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was pleased the game sold as well as it did. The game received "generally favorable reviews" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. X-Play said that the game was very visually pleasing, but indicated that it was like any other role-playing game. Though most of the reviewers criticized the game in one way or another, they all complimented it for its excellent graphics and music. Specifically, Game Informer remarked that "the characters look like sculpted figurines wandering around a world built to scale". GameSpy complimented the title's music and graphics saying the game had "phenomenal music and magnificently rendered cutscenes". ==Adaptations==

A manga adaptation loosely based on the game, Ral Grad, ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2006 to July 2007. The artwork was done by Takeshi Obata. A second manga adaptation, Blue Dragon - Secret Trick (a.k.a. Blue Dragon ST), was created by . It was translated into Brazilian Portuguese by Editora JBC. An anime adaptation of the same name was produced by Studio Pierrot and ran on TV Tokyo from April 2007 to July 2008. ==Notes==