The other day, Prole and I were trying to figure out why we both loved Blue Dragon so much, but were kind of overall lukewarm over Dragon Quest 8.
The games share many similarities. Both are old school to a fault, and feature gorgeous graphics (no idea if DQ8 holds up on the new giant TV. I wouldn't be surprised if it held up better than most PS2 games due to its flat-shaded toony art style). Both games feature combat systems that weren't even considered neato by the standards of a decade ago. Both games feature simple plots that throw animu or jrpg cliche after cliche. Both games have towns filled with NPCs that say the same pointless things as ten, and even near twenty years ago.
The key difference between the two? I was done with DQ8 within ten hours, and I will be riding BD to completion.
So what is it? Both games, both intentional throwbacks, old school design in a crisp candy shell, are inarguably expertly crafted. I'm not even trying to say DQ8 is lackluster, it just didn't grab me like BD does.
I think I may have figured it out. Requires a bit of an explanation, so stick with me.
Back in like 1991, I used to rent games once a week. Like every Friday I'd get to the good rental store and get to pick out a game. This was really the first good rental store in my area, so I was exposed to many things, good and bad, that I had missed in the past. One of these games was Final Fantasy 2. I remember, years earlier, in a Nintendo Power, reading a glowing writeup on Final Fantasy for the NES, probably from when it first came out. I did get to try that game, but I think I was a little too young for it to hold my interest. But in 1991 I rented FF2, and I totally fell in love with it. It was what hooked me on JRPGs, and probably for upwards of more than a decade, it was my favorite in the series, even in the face of FF3, and 7, and even other classics like Chrono Trigger. I was just the right age for the story to seem great; never exposed to animu or (really) RPGs. Yes, it was clearly a flavor of fantasy, but the scifi elements seemed so neat to me, and the globetrotting story really hooked me.
Of course, when Square started rereleasing it, I was kind of surprised to see how, well, simple and crap the game is. Nostalgia. Sometimes it's great like with Tales from the Crypt. Sometimes it's a bitch, like with FF2.
So what does this have to do with Blue Dragon? FF2 was actually missing all the elements I remembered it having for all those years. The involving story was actually. . .really simple. So was the combat. The characters, I probably enjoyed them because of the variety at the time, my inexposure to more exotic games and animu-influenced things preventing me from seeing how hackneyed the whole ordeal was. But all those things I remembered FF2 as having in spades, well, Blue Dragon sort of has them. Blue Dragon is basically the game that I remembered FF2 being for all those years when I did not have access to it. I'm not saying it has a great story or a cutting edge combat system, but it has a great, archetypal story in the vein of FF2, with a variety of distinctive characters, and a combat system that's a direct descendent from that classic model one in FF2, except punched up to be a bit more fetching.
And of course, all of this hit me as I'm invading the bad guy's giant airship, which is totally reminding me of crashing Golbez's joint, or possibly being in the Giant of Babel.
Heck, even the soundtrack during it's less, uh, rock cock vocal wailing moments, reminds me a bit of FF2.
Also, the Toriyama art of course reminds me of Chrono Trigger and DQ. I get a classic DQ vibe from the story, too. I'd say it's reminiscent of DQ in the story, and FF in the environments, though it has fingerprints of both all over.
This is going to be one of my games of the year. I can't believe I have totally fallen in love with a JRPG again. It's been a long, long time.
