Blue Dragon is about as unoriginal as they come. It's a turn-based role-playing game focusing on an impetuous and idealistic kid and his friends as they fight to save the world from the machinations of a diabolical figure with godlike powers.

We understand the rationale, we really do. The Xbox 360 is going down in Japan in a manner which makes lead balloons look like a sound investment, and Something Needs To Be Done. What does Japan like It likes Final Fantasy, and it likes Dragon Quest. A lot.

Thanks to John Ford and Led Zeppelin we all know how the West was won, but over at Microsoft, they’re dying to know how the East was won. Japan has notoriously been something of an impenetrable fortress for Western companies, its gaming culture doesn’t typically interest the market and the...

Is Blue Dragon finally enough to give Microsoft's Xbox 360 an answer to Final Fantasy The short answer is a resounding "no". While Blue Dragon is by no means a bad game, it fails to reach any reasonable expectations; the pacing and story are unlikely to grab newer audiences the way more adored RPGs...

Blue Dragon is not a game that is going to elicit a strong reaction from you. It's not terrible, or particularly great or memorable, so the most remarkable thing about it is how unremarkable it is. It's big: three DVDs big, thanks to loads of cutscenes and voice clips.

It's fun to watch your dragons do battle; Occasional minigames mix things up; Class system lets you customize your characters in endless ways

Unfortunately; class system turns party members into a generic mishmash of spells and skills; You won't care about the long; boring story or cookie-cutter characters; Visuals are bland and rely too much on blurry depth-of-field tricks

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of the famous Final Fantasy series, went on to create his own game studio, Mistwalker, in 2004. This was big news, and when Mistwalker finally announced its first game – Blue Dragon – you could imagine that it was even bigger news.

With its generic characters, story and gameplay one could argue that this is just an imitation of better role-playing games on the market. But when you're the only Japanese RPG on the console then you're a little less choosey.

Blue Dragon throws you into the shoes of young Shu, Shu is from a small mountain village that is occasionally attacked by a being known as the Land Shark and is accompanied by a "purple mist".

That Blue Dragon wasn't the commercial and artistic success Microsoft (and us) were hoping for seeing the top development studio, is by now common knowledge. We too have checked out the game and made our own conclusions.

Blue Dragon is a beautiful RPG, there is no doubt about that. In fact, it is probably one of the most graphically stunning efforts at the genre ever created. It's got a top-notch intro that excellently introduces some of the game's eye-catching main characters.