Yep, I have alot of high hopes for LO as well.  

I am getting Blue Dragon later this week. I won't be touching it until I finish Metroid Prime 3 though. By time I get to Blue Dragon, I'll have to buy Eternal Sonata as well.

My 2 cousins and I have it though I got it through gamefly while they bought it. I just got to the second disk last night and I am enjoying it quite a bit. I am sure some read my previous post about my cousin and I loving old school jrpg and this is no exception. The best part for me so far is the shadows and trying to build the characters the way I want. Was nice to compare with my cousin to see we had leveled our showdows completely different. The only shadow I picked up because of him was the one that grants you extra skills because is so useful eveyone should have it and level it up. The boss fights have been great with plenty of strategy including deaths etc thoguh I gotten the hang of it and haven't had much problems recently.

Though I got it through gamefly I may end up keeping it as I would like to run through it again on hard without searching everywhere and skipping as many battles as possible to see how I do once I know how all the shadows fit together etc.

In terms of the story it has been decent with again the usual jrpg drama though one thing to keep in mind is that the heroes are basically kids. I think the reviews knocked the story though if you play the game it is really nice especially because of the graphics. The game just looks amazing mainly silky smooth.

Again if you enjoy jrpg then give this puppy a try and for those that based their decisions on reviews it has gotten 90+ on a number of sites and publised magazines with most of the negative reviews focusing on the game not being "innovative". Also some reviews had me thinking the kid was going say " I never give up" every 2 sentences but after playing disk one for 17 hours he said 3 times early on but hasn't said since for about a good 10 or so hours. If your able to rent locally or gamefly please give it a try as I would hope it sells well because I want more games like this in the future.

A side note on the demo, it does a horrible job because it gives you EVERYTHING while you actually spend alot of time while playing leveling up and deciding what you want to level up etc. The demo basically removes the choices you would normally make while playing the game. The demo is basically only good to see what a shadow has to offer once it is maxed or lv 36 according to a faq I read.

Again, my impressions of Blue Dragon are somewhat biased, but ANY review of the game will be - BD has gotten scores of 5.0 to 9.5 to prove it.

There is no real way to score it without a bias. On one hand, I can see how some could judge the game "stale" since it's gameplay is almost entirely derived from mid-90s JRPGs.

So on one hand, if your a lover of mid 90s turn based RPGs like Lufia, Final Fantasy (SNES and early PS days), Dragon Quest, and such, your going to give the game a very high score. However, if your opinion is soured on the fact that JRPGs haven't changed much, you won't like the game.

A very simple way to put it would be:

Pros:
+ Graphics are beyond beautiful. Near flawless. Areas are expansive, visually stunning, characters are well-textured and good animations.
+ Battle system is elementary, but much better than older JRPGs. No random battles, the encounter ring adds alot of tactical depth and much-needed quickness to battle resolving.
+ Shadow Classes are very well balanced, and designed to multi-task your character's shadows in very good depth/balance (to your chosing).
+ Really really long (60hrs+), and the Achievements are ungodly hard (I'm at 5/1000 and have played for 10hrs).
+ Game is rather easy on Normal Mode (I'm litterally walking through it beating most enemies in 1-2 turns), but very challenging on hard.
+ Soundtrack is one of Nobou Uematsu's best (if your a fan of his older work).

Cons:
- Some very minor (far less than the demo) screen tearing and frame drops during some animations in battle
- English voice acting is pretty bad for Maru and Shu (but meant to be)
- Story is basic JRPG fare - unknowing hero saves the world. Big whoop.
- Rather linear in the beginning, but I can certainly tell it gets better later on.


Again, in a conclusion: the demo was not indicating of the game very well, aside from graphics, and real basic gameplay. If you are tired of JRPGs being the same, just give it a quick rent. However, if you love JRPGs like I do (I've beaten probably near 50 since the early 90s), you'll rate BD very well, as it ranks up there with Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests.

I'm trying to beat this, and Two Worlds before Eternal Sonata comes out - I'm not doing a good job.

In the end, the major issue I have with the average score (77%) is that it's vastly too low.

Look at the X360 JRPGs thus far on GameRankings:

Eternal Sonata: 78.9%
Blue Dragon: 76.8%
Enchanted Arms: 70.9%
Phantasy Star Universe: 65.4%

The disturbing thing is that ES and BD do not deserve to be anywhere near ES and PSU on rankings. It's like trying to group Pokemon and Tecmo's Secret of the Stars in the same catagory. BD is not a small margin better than EM. It's vastly superior (I gave EM a 7.5 overall on my review. Blue Dragon, to me is around a 8.75).

Don't believe reviews, they are biased against traditional RPGs beyond belief. Every Japanese review of BD has had BD vastly higher than Eternal Sonata, but the US reviewers are buying into higher ES reviews (not that ES doesn't deserve good reviews) is because of the battle system, and not much else.

I just bought it (a week late) but won't be playing it till I am through with Persona 3 some time in the next few days.

Excited to play this thing.

I picked it up because I have never played a JRPG and I heard that this went over well in Japan. So, I thought what the heck...

I have only been impressed so far (@7 measly hours of play)...

It's combat is turn based so it is easy to strategize. I could see people not liking it, but that was the developers choice and we should rate it for what it is. And as a turn based combat system it is fine if not excellent.

Graphics are cartoony, but I prefer to rate graphics on how they fit the story and gameplay. In that sense they are perfect. Graphics aren't sync'd with mouths but thats because it was translated from Japanese.

The sound is perfect. No one can even think about complaining about it. Music and sounds are fitting everywhere.

The story is great and well told. It is easy to follow and sets each situation up perfectly. But, I could see people not liking being guided so much and wanting a more sand box like experience.

It is important to explore everything. So, it keeps you constantly interested. There seems to be something everywhere. The classes and ranks move at a good pace.

Achievements are difficult, I have a measly 5 points (Back Attack) right now, and looked on the 360 Achievements site and feel that it will take a while to if you want to get them all.

Overall I give it an 8.3... Not totally innovative, but a solid game that is well storied, and solid gameplay. It is obvious that the team that worked on it was first class, and the game is very well polished. I can see this selling solidly for a while as people get over some of the reviews and see other people playing it.

Finally, I was really surprised to see it on 3 DVDs. While everyone made a huge stink about PGR4 fighting to stick to one DVD, Blue Dragon got released on 3 and no one batted an eyeball. Personally, I don't really care as way back in the day, I was saving stuff on 5 1/4" and 10" disks that were way slower... And to this pointed I haven't been prompted for the other disks...

Seems like a pretty good game, but i just hope, and pray that Lo will be the groundbreaking rpg the 360 needs

BTW, even with little hype, the US release is just under 109,000 copies, and it actually outsold Warhawk and Lair, which both had a lot more hype.

Of course the larger userbase of the 360 helped, but this is good news so far for RPGs on the 360.

Well the game is interesting, a good class improvement, nice artistic design. Be big flaw for me is the difficulty, the monsters are too easy to kill, but the game seems to be long.

If Blue Dragon is too easy, get the difficulty patch...