RPG’s are great video games! They encourage logical and strategic thinking, require puzzle-solving skills and teach kids inventory and resource management. Unfortunately, most RPG games are not suited for children or pre-teens due to the level of difficulty.
RPG’s are originally derived from traditional role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, and use both the settings and game mechanics found in such games. The story usually involves a group of characters (a party) that have joined forces in order to accomplish a mission or “quest”. Along the way, the adventurers must face a great number of challenges and enemies (usually monsters inspired by fantasy, and, to a lesser extent, science fiction and classic mythology). Characters have a variety of attributes such as hit points. These attributes are traditionally displayed to the player on a status screen as a numeric value, instead of a simpler abstract graphical representation, such as the bars and meters favored by video games in general.
Blue Dragon was designed by legendary game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy) and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball). Parents should know that the ESRB rated Blue Dragon “T” for Teen (12+). I played the game with my 8-year-old son and we did come across some mild fantasy violence and crude humor, which compared to content found in TV anime shows.
Kids will immediately relate to the main characters due to their age and appearance. Even enemies look rather goofy and don’t become frightening or ultra-violent at any point. The game starts and progresses rather slow – most likely too slow for older or experienced RPG fans. The player can choose to engage in combat or not, random encounters which result in “must-fight” situations do not exist. During combat the team of characters lines up nicely, which provides a clean and easy to use battle interface. The party then takes turns attacking with the help of magical shadows in form of Blue Dragons. A more advanced “attack circle” battle system, which let’s players select multiple enemies in sight provides an alternative and more exciting (but still easy) way to attack. Characters can make use of potions and spells, all of which are relatively cheap and easy to acquire. Players are unlikely to run short on money - Gold is hidden everywhere.
Blue Dragon comes on 3 discs, which equals to more then 60+ hours of game-play. The game becomes notably harder, but not impossible by the time the player reaches disc 3. I personally suggest the official strategy guide ($20 at Gamestop) if you are serious about playing through the entire game.
Overall, Blue Dragon is by no means the most original or best RPG you’ll ever play. However the games “laid back” and “easy” game-play make for a great first RPG’s regardless of age.