Blue Dragon Demo Impressions

Anyone with an Xbox Live account can find the Blue Dragon demo in Live Marketplace right now. There are 2 available levels, a dungeon and a forest. Both appear to be well into the game: you begin with 5 party members, lots of magic at your disposal, and in the middle of a quest.

Its nearly impossible to judge how good an RPG will be based on a demo because the things that make games like this enjoyable are the story, characters, and the scope of the adventure, none of which you can get a feel for in 2 hours of play. That said, the 2 hours is fun. Battles all take place with not yourself attacking monsters, but your shadow. If your party takes a beating, it raises a tension meter that when filled you can unleash a powerful summon attack. You can also charge your magic and physical attacks for more power (DBZ style!). I’m sure a lot of the nuances of battle were lost on me not having played the 50 levels before the one I was given, but I can see myself having a good time with this.

The battles are not random either, you see an enemy on screen and you can run from it or attack it to initial an encounter. you can also choose to take on large groups at once, which can give you a power up advantage as the battles progress, as well as more experience for inevitable level grinding.

This is a title thats been out in Japan for some time, but will come to the states August 28th. As many have mentioned its the first project since Chrono Trigger on the SNES that Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama have worked together on. I count Chrono Trigger as one of my favorite games, and if Blue Dragon can give me something half as good, I’ll have a worthy addition to the Xbox 360 Library