Review by: Brandon "Wave Sword" Cackowski-Schnell

The Blue Dragon series has always tried to stand with other big name JRPG franchises, bless its little heart, but has always fallen a bit short. The latest entry in the series won't do anything to raise the series up to the status of something like Dragon Quest but provides a lengthy story complete with multiplayer questing that can be enjoyable provided you an overlook a few warts.

The game takes place after the two previous Blue Dragon games and finds the townspeople of Neo Jibral enjoying their lives, complete with full control over their shadows, the giant, blue beasties that are magically tethered to every person. Before long you arrive on the scene, complete with requisite RPG memory loss and while you still have the ability to summon your shadow, the rest of the world does not setting the stage for a story which has you searching for clues to your past as well as a solution for the rampant un-shadowing. The story is neither weighty nor original and carries absolutely zero sense of urgency. As team members join you they regain their ability to summon shadows and no one else in the kingdom seems to care that they lost their magical powers which results in a lackadaisical attitude that has your team members more worried about what birthday gifts to get Shu than restoring the magical balance of their world. Even the sudden appearance of various magical doors doesn't seem to faze anyone, an oddity given that the doors lead to tussles with giant monsters that enjoy nothing more than eating people. Maybe it's just me, but that seems like a safety hazard.

It doesn't help that the game makes it nigh impossible to know where you're supposed to be going and what you're supposed to be doing. You have a quest log but it's pretty useless in letting you know what to do. Plus, when you've finished a quest and have yet to start a new one you'll spend a fair amount of time just wandering around until you get to the area in the game needed to trigger the next quest. At times you'll see quest markers above someone's head meaning that they have something for you to do, but if you don't remember where the "strange underpass" or "abandoned cave" is, good luck knowing what to do once you've agreed to help them. The result is a lot of aimless, unnecessary wandering.

Once you get to the dungeon du jour the combat system works fairly well. Combat is done in real time with either the stylus or the face buttons however the buttons are significantly more effective. When in combat you can either mash the A button for melee attacks or hold it down until your magical attacks charge up, selecting the needed spell with the d-pad. In a nice touch, the game supports flanking so attacks from behind do more damage to beasties, allowing you to use your team members as effective distractions. Your player can also block moves or dodge out of the way however the dodge move is, well, dodgy and sometimes the enemy's attacks will still land even though you dodged out of the way presumably because their attack animation started before you dodged out of the way. You have no control over your team members and no way to set tactics for them, which is fine for normal enemies however their penchant for wading into battle with no concept of dodging or blocking means they'll be taking a lot of dirt naps. Luckily they will eventually come back provided you can stay alive, however the result is that you'll spend a lot of time healing your party to make up for their disregard for personal safety.

If AI controlled party members aren't doing it for you there's always the ability to hook up with other players through either local wireless or WFC. Doing so requires you to go through the usual friend code shenanigans but the ability to hook up with other real live humans who know not to run face first into a dragon's fire breath is a small price to pay. In fact the light emphasis on story, including the various boss battle doors lends itself well to the ability to jump into random people's games where you don't have to worry about getting the story spoiled for you.

The game drops a tremendous amount of loot on you, all of which can be combined to make new weapons or upgrade existing weapons. It's a great system that not only gives you something to do when you don't feel like crossing the map for the fifth time looking for something to do but it also ensures that you can always use everything that gets dropped. If your inventory gets filled you can access a storage cabinet from any save point or simply travel back to your home base to do some combining. Various recipe books can be found along the way to show you combinations but you can also stumble across combinations as the combination screens will automatically gray out any items not combineable with your current selection. The ability to travel back home at save points has the added ability of letting you try to upgrade weapons or do some grinding before taking on the game's various bosses. Like most JRPG's, you'll quickly come to bosses that are much more powerful than you, requiring you to revisit various dungeons to raise the level of your shadows. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but if you're a veteran of games with spiky haired, doe eye teens with magical powers, you're used to it.

The game sports a fairly robust character editor that offers as much player customization as you'll find in RPG's on bigger consoles, allowing you to create a character you can feel pretty well connected to. It's unfortunate that the story you're controlling the character through is so uninspired and vanilla, but the multiplayer, simple yet effective combat and cool item fusion makes the game worth a look for fans of the genre. Oh, and for the record, Shu gets shoes for his birthday. Spoiler alert!