Blue Dragon - Reception

Reception

Pre-orders of Blue Dragon bundled with a limited edition Xbox 360 Core system were sold out in Japan well before the December 7, 2006 release date. Microsoft and Mistwalker initially hoped to sell over 200,000 copies, which would break their record for sales of an Xbox 360 game in Japan. The game did manage the goal, with almost exactly 200,000 copies sold as of December 27, 2007. Creator Hironobu Sakaguchi was pleased the game sold as well as it did.

Reviews for Blue Dragon were somewhat mixed, though generally favorable. On the review aggregator Game Rankings, the game had an average score of 77.48% based on 62 reviews. While many reviewers praised the game for its traditional approach, a few reviewers criticized it for that very reason, with one reviewer remarking, "In fact, there is very little you can point to in Blue Dragon that hasn't been done multiple times over before". The story also came under scrutiny from some reviewers for being too generic and too similar to existing Japanese RPGs, with slow pacing during the beginning of the game. Eurogamer stated that the apparent lack of effort put into the facial animations for each character resulted in a limited ability to express emotion. They also noted that the mouth movements are well timed, but that the rest of the characters' facial movements are "static".

Game Informer commented that Blue Dragon lacked "jaw dropping" moments and was missing a nebulous "key element" to make it perfect. 1UP.com also picked up on this, adding that Blue Dragon was missing "strong characters, gripping storytelling, and excellent pacing". X-Play said that the game was very visually pleasing, but indicated that it was like any other role-playing game. Though most of the reviewers criticized the game in one way or another, they all complimented it for its excellent graphics and music. Specifically, Game Informer remarked that "the characters look like sculpted figurines wandering around a world built to scale". GameSpy complimented the title's music and graphics saying the game had "phenomenal music; and magnificently rendered cutscenes".