Blue Dragon [import] review

Microsoft's role-playing flame has set 360 alight in Japan

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There’s something quite bizarre on offer, too - you can search nearly any item or object scattered around the game world. The prompts for them are invisible, but you just go up to things and press A to be rewarded with some gold, an item, nothing at all, or even some good bonuses, like extra stats and spells. Trouble is, there are some places where you expect it to work and it just doesn’t, nor can you tell where you’ve searched before, so anyone looking to collect everything this way could be in for a fair bit of backtracking. But if that has put any kind of cramp on your enthusiasm, there are still other welcoming touches to ease it: the game gives you an auto-checkpoint just before boss fights, so you’ve no worry of being caught out cold by some unfair beast.

You can open up multiple warp points around the world - accessible anytime that you’re not in a fight - to help you whizz your way around with minimal fuss. That last feature is very useful for chests protected by magical barriers; you’ll come across them everywhere, and you can only open them once you’ve progressed far enough through the game. A load of trudging back over old ground would be misery-making.

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GenreRole Playing
DescriptionWe'll gladly check out any new RPG from the father of Final Fantasy, and this is his first since leaving Square.
Platform"Xbox 360"
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