If Ari_Gold and mrstickball both like this game I think everyone should give this game a chance. IMO most of these sites only play Final Fantasy. Their scores do not seem fair enough on other JRPGs. Even if this game is not classic like Chrono Trigger or Tales of Phantasia, it look at least Lufia 2 quality level.

By the way I beat Bioshock today and is going to be sent back to gamefly in plenty of time to get eternal sonata. It just doesn't get any better than this :)

I'm thinking Eternal Sonata is going to have so much more potential. I'm playing Blue Dragon right now and it's a bit unimpressive.

Finding searching crap (literally) for gold a bit strange.

*sigh*.

The fact is, Blue Dragon has already gone wildly beyond my expectations for the game. It's phenominal.

The reviewers have it wrong with this one, beyond all imagination. The game's quality is absolutely stunning. The locations in the game are superb. They are just upset that the game is a by-the-book turn based JRPG, and nothing more. The story is decent thus far (but since when are Japanese RPGs filled with good stories as of late? Even the last few FFs I've played had mediocre stories).

The graphics, music, and gameplay are near-10s for me. I've never had so much fun just grinding for no reason (and I'm just grinding for no reason, fyi).

Please, if you ever enjoyed a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, you WILL LOVE Blue Dragon. This game is Nobuo Uematsu's masterwork. His soundtrack to this game is up there in his top 3 EASILY. I would put it as the 2nd best soundtrack I've ever heard by him (#1 being Chrono Trigger).

Please....Go rent this game if your not going to buy it. The gameplay is very solid. The Job Class system is one of the best, most well balanced systems I've played. It doesn't do anything to shake up the JRPG genre - which is why reviewers are giving it mediocre scores. What they forget is that despite that issue, it nearly perfects the turn based JRPG genre, and is easily (to me) ranking up there with any 3d JRPG I've played in the past 10-odd years.

GET THIS GAME. NOW!

 lol...

I blame Akira Toriyama for its poor reception. If he'd design some characters that didn't look like goofy rehashes of everything he's ever done the game might actually look appealing.

Just looking at the box art I already know I don't want to play it.

It's a unique gameplay element :)

Oh, on a side note: In the US version, each copy of Blue Dragon is packed with a big avertisment for Eternal Sonata and Naturo: Rise of a Ninja. Interesting cross-promotion. Very cool artwork for both. I'm very tempted to pick up Naturo at some point, since the X360 is showing off it's great artwork.

^^ Are you taling about the cell shaded beatem up version of Naturo ??? I can´t ceep track of all the versions since this series is insanely popular, but the one on one fighting game caught my attention for beeing very beautifull and it looks to have an interesting combat system.

@ ckmlb: Congrats on getting your 360 back, would you describe this experiance as and unnessesary pain in the butt or a minor inconvenience you don´t mind going through ??? Would like to know how this effected your relationship with the 360 ;)

Folklore isn't a JRPG though.  It's gameplay is like "Lost Kingdoms"(Rune in japan) for the Gamecube from what i've seen. 

completely agree.... americans tend to give low scores to jrpgs... and give higher scores to crappy wrpgs like two worlds

 this games is my runner up for RPG of the year after Persona 3