11. Blue Dragon (Xbox 360, Microsoft, 2007)
From a sequel to the fourth Final Fantasy, to a sequel to the fifth. Technically Blue Dragon may not be a sequel to Final Fantasy V, but with its class system, not to mention some of the staff that worked on the game, it can be hard to tell.
Of course, as far as I'm concerned, FF5 is a pretty good game to model yourself after, if you're an RPG. Blue Dragon is able to deliver just as its spiritual predecessor did, with a fun class system which encourages mixing and matching abilities from multiple classes. The system is also quite transparent, with the game's manual clearly outlying which skills are learned by which class at which class level, and what they do. (See? Manuals still have a use!) And it's not content to merely mimic FF5, instead throwing in a clear improvement: multiple skill slots for secondary abilities, and the ability to gain more as the game goes on by investing in a certain class. It all comes together for a particularly enjoyable character-building experience.
The game's battle system is also quite good. It's a CTB affair, which is a good place to start as far as I'm concerned, but the spice is added in the form of the game's system of charging up attacks, which allows them to gain power or area-of-effect radius (depending on the attack) in exchange for taking longer to resolve. This feature combines a timed hit-like mechanic with an interesting CTB quirk that gives the player plenty of choice and it's a lot of fun.
Musically the game is great, and serves as a reminder to why Nobuo Uematsu is regarded as one best in the business. Whatever your stance on the love/hate that surrounds the boss music, Eternity, (mine is love), there's a lot to like here, both in more pastoral background tracks that are mellow yet catchy, and in the high-strung, metal-inspired pieces that are used for mechanical dungeons and most of the game's (excellent) battle themes. For the rest of its aesthetics, the game has Toriyama character design
The game has two serious flaws that keep up from being the great game it should be, though. The first issue lies, somewhat predictably perhaps, with the writing. Shu is simply one of the worst talking main characters to grace an RPG, combining many of the worst tropes associated with that sort of character: annoying, incredibly stupid, yet nevertheless seems to exist in a world that proves him right. The supporting cast doesn't really recover from this, with a second (Marumaro) also managing to be annoying, and the rest being fairly bland. The only really bright spot is Nene, the trollish main villain whose zany schemes to make people suffer for no other reason than his amusement must at worst coax a smile out of the player. Yet, even he's nowhere near enough to offset the worst writing that surrounds the PCs, including one particular incident on disc 3.
Still, I could forgive the game, as I did Grandia 3, if the gameplay was consistently great. Unfortunately, it's not. While the final dungeon and endgame bosses are a joy, up until that point, there's a long stretch midgame which is just incredibly easy, putting to waste all the good things I said above about the gameplay. It's not even a game that manages to be fun while it's easy, because things like animations are a bit too slow for mindlessly destroying things with black magic to be enjoyable. It's a real shame because the game gets so good when it's even modestly challenging, but too often it isn't.
Overall, Blue Dragon is, simply, the most disappointing game I played this year. Not because it's bad... it isn't. But because I saw a game that truly had potential to be great... it could have had great gameplay, great aesthetics, and writing which was at least inoffensive. Unfortunately it fell short of that and instead is merely an above average RPG experience.
The good: Great class system, solid gameplay, music
The bad: Midgame challenge, Shu, much of the writing in general
The ugly: The suicide counseller Shu scene. Ugh.
