Blue Dragon

Been meaning to play this for years.

I just beat the first boss and so far I really like it. Here are some observations.

It uses the job/class system. You have sword master, monk, assassin, black magic, white magic, support magic, barrier magic, guardian and generalist.

Each character has a number of ability slots and you can use the abilities you've learned from other jobs to customize loadouts. There's much more to be said about this but I'm early in the game. Will wait until I get more skills. I'm currently working on the support magic class.

One odd thing is for black magic I have flare (your basic fire magic), wind and water, all early spells with water being the most recent but for some reason it's a multi-target spell. I thought I would've got a single target version first.

Magic can be charged. Before you cast, a bar appears with a hit zone. You hold A and let go when the meter reaches that zone. If you succeed you get a way stronger cast, but you can just tap A twice to get off a weaker one depending on the situation. Like if you get a full charge, it's possible that you'll have to wait until that character's next turn depending on enemy speed, where the non charged version will happen instantly.

The meter shows who, if anyone, will get in a turn before you if you full charge which is pretty useful.

The combat is simple turn-based fare. You have the front and back row from FF games, but you can be forced to the front row if your front line is taken down. Same goes for enemies.

Those giant, blue genie things behind the character are called Shadows. Characters don't actually have weapons in this game; Shadows do the attacking. They aren't separate characters on the field though. Consider them the characters physical attack.

What you have instead is accessories. There's neck, finger, bracelet and earring. These fulfill the rules of weapons and armor I guess.

Now onto the enemy encounter mechanics. These are the most unique I've ever seen.

Enemies are visible on the world map and you can back attack them for an advantage and they can do the same to you. This is pretty common. You can also attack them with a single strike where the character appears to jump forward and come down with a chop, and this seems to give an advantage as well, but not as great as the back attack where all enemies are facing away.

Some enemies can block your attack. I had this lizard man with a shield do this, but the second time I broke his guard. Later you get other map abilities like stun bomb and shields to help avoid or gain the upper hand before battle.

The enemies can launch a strike at you as well. I had a really bizarre situation play out that went something like this. This grinning scorpion dash at me at the same time I did my attack. Its attack was this big jumping hook punch with its claw and somehow it went a little above and my character clipped underneath so we ended up on opposite sides with our backs to each other. Now here's where the funny thing happened. That scorpion hops backward after that strike, so he immediately hopped back into my characters back which initiated a battle. In the battle, it was me who got the back attack. This will probably never happen again but it's interesting to know the mechanics work like that.

Now on to the really interesting mechanic. Pressing the right trigger makes a ring appear. You can net monsters in this ring to get multiple fights, or better yet, have monsters attack other monsters.

Say there are two enemies in your ring, (note that any single enemy could be a group in actual battle) when you get into battle you'll fight each group one after the other. Basically two fights in a row.

If the enemy names are yellow, this means they are hostile to one another. In this case they'll appear in the same group. I'm not sure of the exact rules yet, but so far the hostility only appears to be one way. Like if I net this big rat with these bugs, the rat uses its turn to attack the bugs. The bugs don't fight back at all and use their turns to attack me.

These attacks against other monsters have different names and aren't used against my characters. They seem like special properties that only affect these monsters.

Another example is this giant bear. I clearly was not supposed to be fighting it as it could one shot a character. After a few attempts I got these ghosts with rifles nearby to chase me and when I netted them with the bear I saw the yellow names and started the battle.

The hunters immediately used their turns to shoot the bear, ignoring my party. They also did INSANE damage, like near 300 HP per attack. When they shot my characters they only did around 30 HP. The name of their attack was 'bear killer' or something, totally unique to that bear.

That's about all on the mechanics I have for now.

I was slightly off regarding magic. When you hit the zone, you don't cast instantly and I thought it makes you wait until your next turn, but it actually just pushes you back one space from what I'm seeing. Might vary depending on enemy speed. You do more damage and use less MP.

Regarding the multi target water magic I talked about; it only hits a single row, not every enemy on the field.

Looks like you have to learn each class for each character individually. You get a class every 5 levels it seems.

I realized that some magic can be both single and multi-target depending on charge.

My attention was always focused on the bar and hitting the right spot so I failed to notice the white circle under enemies growing wider the more I charged. This goes for support magic too.

Some stuff is auto all like slow. In those cases it seems hitting the sweet spot on the meter grants better bonuses.

Regarding monster fights, I was off about these too. They will attack each other. Had it happen today with two groups of beetle monsters. They proceeded to beat the shit out each other every turn.

Not entirely sure why others don't hit back and instead stay focused on my party.

There's a lot of interesting quirks with the enemies.

I was fighting a lizard man who had a sword and shield. Certain attacks can make him drop his sword which lowers his attack power and takes away his sword moves.

Some stone enemies had high physical defense but water drops it.

This hermit crab with a stone shell could hide but certain attacks caused it to be knocked upside down.

Regarding the charged magic, think of it as stretching the area of effect to gain 'all' status like in FF.

Like Wall affects a line, and charging stretches the line until it covers any characters in that line.

Just found there's DLC. There's the Shuffle Dungeon which is randomly generated, the item pack, and the difficulty pack. This one includes NG+, hard and impossible modes. It was free. The others are less than $2.

Why is everything in this game so weird?

Sometimes the enemies drop dollops of poo you can sift through for treasure.

A lot of the enemies have those goofy Toriyama grins. DQH had this too.

You can examine pretty much everything for items, gold and...nothing. it actually says 'nothing' onscreen and the game counts how much nothing you've found. You can trade your nothings for exclusive items from the Nothing Merchant.

I love it.

What I don't love is having to level up the classes for each character, but the real problem is you learn at class at specific levels. Once you reach these, you can choose any single class.

At first I thought it was every 5 levels but it goes up at some point to 10. You won't be able to get them all until around level 50 I think, though you can get most of them.

Using the Field Barrier 3 trick in the Laser Fields to level up my classes. I'm getting each class to 99 in 1-2 hours. Insane.

So once you've learned an ability you can equip it on any class. So a white mage can also be a black mage if you've learned black magic.

The support magic class has some stuff like double cast, so you black or white/support mage can make good use of this.

Monk has an ability called Charged Attack. This let's you charge your basic attack like you would a spell. I also noticed it affects other abilities like Magic Sword. This is a Swordmaster ability where the shadow does a physical attack with an elemental attribute. If you have Charge Attack, Magic Sword can also be charged. It might work for other physical attacks like Mow Down which hits the front row

So many abilities I want to try and see what kind of combos are possible.

Some notes.

There's no lightning element. Robots are hurt by water which makes sense I guess if they were going by the fact that electronics are ruined in water.

Panic is FF confusion. So far I've only seen an enemy attack itself. Sadly it's single target only no matter the charge level, but their might be an all hitting one available later.

Assassin class has a move called Control that makes an enemy like your own party member. They even have a battle menu. Only affects a single target. Could work well with panic.

Also noticed that each element has a bonus effect but not sure what's triggering them. I had a fire attack inflict attack down. Might happen when the enemy is weak to it.

Something strange has happened to me 3 times now. After landing a basic physical attack with Shu (dragon), I noticed the enemy went grey and vanished, and the word 'petrify' briefly popped up.

No idea why this happened. I looked through my accessories and there doesn't seem to be anything that could cause this.

I know you can inflict other stuff like slow which as far as I know happens if you exploit an elemental weakness (and only seem possible with Magic Sword) but I wasn't attacking with an element.

I don't even have a petrify spell though I've seen enemies use it.

Just as I'm writing this I'm starting to doubt my own memory. Maybe I didn't always hit with a physical attack. I'll need to keep an eye on this and note the conditions.

Just beat disc 2.

Turns out I do have an accessory that can cause petrification. I got it recently and equipped because it raised a few stats but didn't look closely at what it actually did.

I have a poison one too. They barely trigger though. Might be related to enemy resistance.

Now that I have almost every skill from each class for everyone, I've made some setups.

First, I give everyone Accessory+3 (this gives you 3 extra slots for special acc) and Skill+8. Without this you'll only have the default class skill and 3 slots.

From there I assign everyone a job and seeing what abilities synergize well. Monk's charge attack skill works with normal attack and Magic Sword as noted, and confirmed to work with Mow Down. Double Strike is a normal attack upgrade so it works with that too.

Guardian is an interesting class. I'm experimenting with making an entirely defensive character. Guardian has the highest defense stat and various skills that mitigate damage.

One ability I'm just calling Cover (forgot the real name) makes the character guard others by appearing in front of them exactly like FF7's cover. It doesn't work on magic though.

Other abilities I have on this character are:

*HP>MP
If you run out of HP, your MP is used as HP. Both max are 999 so it's like double HP. I'm guessing you can then heal all your HP back.

*Resurrection
Revives once per battle I think. Should make for a nice combo if HP>MP fails but I don't see that happening. Maybe on Impossinle mode.

*HP Absorb
Get HP back when you attack. That's all this character will be doing along with casting barrier magic now and then

*Charged Defense
This works like Charged Attack but for the defend command. I need to test if the defense boost extends to Cover. If not I might switch it.

>Magic Fence
This is learned from the Barrier class and gives you the same magic defense stat as that class.

>Barrier Magic
This is all the barrier spells. Stuff like Wall, Shell and Trapfloor.

Forgot the rest. Probably Quick Charge for barrier magic, and maybe MP Absorb. I need to test if Counter works with Cover, and if Counter works with the absorbing skills. Also if Cover works with barrier spells.

Some notes.

Cover works with Charged Defense. Until now, I've never used it. It has a unique animation which is nice, so you can clearly see it working. Don't know about the other characters, but Zola stands with her hand extended in a 'stop right there' pose. When she covers, she stays in this pose so you know it works. This is perfect for the build because when charged you take so little damage.

I also just got the Ribbon accessory which prevents all negative status. Zola was more vulnerable to these due to often covering others. I got paralyzed quite a few times like this but with the Ribbon you're set. It doesn't prevent instant K.O, which is kind of like a status but not really. I have an accessory that prevents it though.

Need to test a few more things with the Monk class but have been waiting for her to reach the level cap. Really wish I chose it earlier but at the time I had no idea what each class offered when maxed.

The things to test are the ones I mentioned in my previous post and a few new ideas. Can Counter be activated by Cover? What about defensive spells like Wall and Trapfloor?

Initially, I thought Cover didn't work with anything other than physical attacks, but I've since seen it work with other stuff. It definitely doesn't work with all hitting attacks.

Would be awesome if when you Cover, the enemy attacks, does minimal damage due to Charged Defense, further mitigated by Wall, hit by Trapfloor, then smashed with Counter, and to top it off get some HP back with HP Absorb.

I could have tested all this with others who have the necessary classes and skills but I'd already set everyone up and it's a pain to add/remove skills.

Control won't let you target your party. You can only make the enemy hit itself or its allies, unless it has a positive buff; then you can target your party. I find this dumb. I wanted to do funny stuff like make an enemy attack one of my members who had Trapfloor set up.

Loot doesn't seem to work with Counter. It could be that it was just failing though. Will be looking into this further.

Some things that irk me are the world map and some menu things. The map is on this angle above that doesn't let you see far in any direction. Doesn't change when you get the airship. Some areas are quite large and it would be nice to see ahead.

Skills can only be removed at the bottom of the menu by selecting remove. Annoying. Should just be able to highlight and press something to instantly remove.

Yay! Counter works after Cover so long as the attack can be countered. HP/MP Absorb doesn't work with Counter.

Forgot to test Trapfloor with Cover but it should work since Shield and other barrier spells work. Makes sense that the character carries whatever they have active when they warp over but just wanted to make sure since some things don't work that I thought would.

I assume Loot won't work with Counter but we'll see.

Trapfloor doesn't work for the character using Cover, but if the covered character has Trapfloor set, it will active while being covered. Almost the same thing.

Would be cool if both traps went off at once. I assume they were trying to avoid this.

What next?

I wonder what would happen if I gave everyone Cover. I forget what happens if you do that in FF7.

I'm on disc 3 now tackling the optional stuff.

Working towards level 99 now. There's an island with the Golden Poo Snakes. They give the most exp. You need to setup your skills and have a high agility stat because they immediately run from battle. My characters mostly have agility over or around 200, plus the Assassin ability 'Surprise' which raises the chance of getting the first attack. The snakes die in a single attack and I have on 3 characters an accessory that gives 50% more exp.

The DLC Shuffle Dungeon is pretty brutal and has a new set of rules, equipment, enemies and bosses. But everything about it is random.

There are chests and parts lying around to examine and every time you do the word 'Shuffle' pops up. There's no telling what you'll get.

There are colored doors that require passwords. Somewhere in the dungeon you'll find these, like from defeating enemies or chests. When you get to a door it will say a codeword, then you give it the password you found. The passwords are characters names, but there's no way to tell which is the right one.

Say I found these passwords: Marumaro, Yasato, Kluke.
I go up to a door and it will say one of many random codeword like pointy, naked, glutton. You have to just guess which pass you have and try. If you're right, when you see another door of the same color, it will take the same password. If not, you are forced into a battle.

Once you've beaten the boss you get a special crystal. There are 8, so you would need to beat the dungeon 8 times but the thing is when you enter, it's random which boss you'll get. Ypu could even get the same one. I haven't come across any major complaints so it can't be that bad.

The final RNG is the Stalactite Ring. When you get this, and put it in a transmutation chest, of which there will be one per dungeon, there's a chance it's hidden 'brilliance level' will go up or down. If you max it it becomes the most powerful ring in the game. You have no control over this from what I've seen. There is a thing called 'bonus time' that might help though. This is a random pick up from a chest that means everything you find during this time will be better.

Beat this dungeon but repeating to try and max the Stalactite Ring. Got it to 53% but in the next run it went down to 43% so I reset.

I want to talk about some cool enemy mechanics encountered in this dungeon.

*Francoise
It's a fish knight with two rapiers.
If you attack it physically, it will immediately counter with a multi-hit physical attack that can do around 300 damage. That's a lot considering max HP in this game is only 999.

It will not counter your own counter, and you can't counter theirs. This would create an infinite loop if you could.

If you use Mow Down, which is an all hitting physical attack, you'll have to deal with a a counter from any Francoise in that row. I made the mistake of using Mow Down on 3 of them, and my defensive setup with Zola kicked in where she defended all 3 counters and almost died. My set up with her has Resurrection though, so she would've come back with full health.

One cool set up is to cast Trapfloor and a defense spell like
Shield or Wall on Zola uncharged with double cast so they cast instantly, then purposely attack to trigger their counter. They'll counter and deal less damage and also be hurt by Trapfloor.

Another cool tactic is to cast panic on them. When they attack an ally with their regular attack, that ally will do the counter on them.

They can do a move where they turn invisible and their agility goes up. From this state they can do a special single hit strike but it's not that strong. I blasted an invisible one with magic and it got hit. Then a message popped up saying 'Dropped its guard because it thought it couldn't be hit'.

A lot of those little messages pop up and I dont know what some of them mean.

*Flying Knight (forgot it's real name)
This is a hovering, armored guy with a spear. They usually appear with another enemy that is a serpent coiled around a spear-like weapon. They will always attack and kill the serpent, then they actually equip the spear the serpent had. This gives them access to an all hitting wind attack that is pretty strong. Does around 200.

*Shuffle Mage
Appears with other enemies and bosses, and always starts in the back row. They will buff their entire party as soon as they get a turn, doubling attack and magic power. Pretty sure they can triple it too.

Physical attacks can't hit the back row unless you have Long Range. I don't get much use out of that and magic can hit the back row anyway. I usually hit their row with Waterus double casted which takes them out. Water spells only hit one row. I would use Ground which targets all enemies in both rows but the images are hovering and Ground magic misses anything not touching the ground.

If their party is already buffed, they'll cast a unique spell that rains fire, ice, and earth down. It's pretty weak.

If Shuffle Mages are the only enemies left, they'll run.

These enemies are another that generate a weird message. Soon after buffing their party, a message will pop up saying 'Shuffle Mage is grinning'. No idea if this leads to anything or is just to creep out the player.

*Gold Robot
I think I've only seen this guy with White Tigers. It sits in the back row and has an ability that makes its party members attack instantly even if it isn't their turn.

If it's the last enemy left, all I've seen it do is a basic melee attack. Seems to be a support type only like the mages.

*White Tiger
Only thing of note is a physical attack that powers up all allies.

*Long Jumpenguin
This thing is weird.
It has a multi-hit physical attack that's decent. Does about 150.
It will start flapping and it says 'Long Jumpenguin has started its warm up'. After some time it will do a long jump attack that hits everyone and a message will pop up with the record for it's long jump. I've only seen this once since I usually wipe them out. That one time another message appeared after the record that said something like 'Needed more time to warm up.' This implies the attack could become stronger given more time, but then why did it choose to attack? I remember it started the warm up then I put them all to sleep. It attack when I hit it and woke up. Maybe it was supposed to be doing that flapping during the missed turns and only has a set amount to warm up? I don't know.

*Wandering Books
An eye with lots of spell books revolving around it.
This one isn't really dangerous. It's more annoying. It always begins in the back row and has auto-reflect so make back row targeting spells are of no use. Long Range would be useful I suppose but not worth equipping for this. I can usually wipe out the front row pretty fast.

One really annoying thing it can do is switch your rows. So whoever was in the back is now in the front, and front go to back. So for me this brings my two casters forward and sends the attackers back which cuts their attack power to near half what it was.

There's a few more I don't come across much like some other robots and a bird. Will update once I get some info on them.

There's also the bosses to talk about but I haven't kept notes since they're random. Will look into that.

...

I left the penguin alone for a few turns and it said 'Warm up complete'. It then hit all my characters for all their HP. Killed everyone except Zola and Kluke. Zola has HP>MP which converts MP to HP when your HP hits zero. Kluke has an accessory that revives you once.

Was not expecting such an attack. Seems almost everything in here has a nasty trick up their sleeves.

Completed the game on normal with everything possible done.

The King Poo secret boss was the only one who was a real threat due to often getting two attacks and able to deal huge damage. Still not enough to crush a max level and gear party.

Started NG+ on Impossible but no challenge whatsoever yet. I'm looking forward to King Poo. He should be quite nasty.

Fought Gold Mecha Robo, one of the optional super bosses.

He only has two attacks that I've seen. One is a laser that hits all characters and kills them instantly. He has higher agility so he often gets two turns. Even if I have Resurrection, he usually just kills everyone again. I've managed to cling to life with Previve and Wall but he's way too fast and dying removes all buffs. I already have super high agility and even with Quick casted he's still faster. It's just beam after beam. They revive only to instantly die again.

I have a few ideas. One is to get another enemy group in a chain fight but it's pretty cheesy. I'll let the enemies hit my party until their Corporeal meters are full. This lets you summon the Shadow's super form and do a big flashy cinematic attack that's really strong. It will take ages to build them all though. Once that's done I'll cast all possible buffs and defenses then kill the enemies and Gold will jump in. Unleash all Corporeals and see how that goes.

If that fails, I had a theory on using uncharged Wall with double cast. Wall negates an attack, but to get it on everyone you have to charge and if Gold does his beam you're done. I could give everyone barrier magic so anyone could instantly cast Wall on two characters.

Final option is to max out defense and agility and hope it makes me faster with more survivability. It would take years though. You can buy stat ups but they cost medals which are random finds. There are more in the Shuffle Dungeon but are still random. Bonus time doubles rewards but the RNG pickups will still screw with that. The guy you buy them from charges more medals the more you buy so you could be eventually looking at 100 medals for a single item.

Did it.

I used the Corporeal method. Failed the first time because I didn't realize they could be strengthened with the buff Mag Atk Up. Damage went from around 7000 to 10000. All 5 attacks killed him though he got in his laser twice. In the chain battle previously I had already applied Previve to everyone and they had the Resurrection skill. Tension doesn't go down on KO, it actually goes up so I lost nothing.

Awful fight though. There's no other way to win that I can see. His damage output ignored any skills.

King Poo is going to be the same.

Here's the latest.

*King Poo

Way easier than Gold Mecha Robo. I did get a nearby poo snake party involved but only to cast my buffs. No need to get Corporeals ready. King Poo hit super hard, like 700 damage and often got two turns, but my defensive set up on Zola kept him from stopping other characters charging their spells.

Had to keep Wall cast as King has an all hitting darkness attack. Dark is kind of hard to get resistance to. Ribbon protects against everything BUT darkness. Chocobo Mystery Dungeon was like this too. I guess it's an FF thing.

He got me with it once but it missed one character and I had Resurrection on everyone anyway.

*Giant Robo boss
This is near the end of disc 2. The giant is pretty useless but after some damage its head falls off and 8 small robos come out. These actually can be trouble because if you're charging a spell, they have this machine gun move that cancels it and it does between 200 and 300 damage. Here's where my Zola set up really had a chance to shine because she kept guarding the character all the robos were trying to cancel. Seems if someone is charging, they HAVE to stop them. This allowed me to safely double cast Ground and wipe them all out at once. They almost killed Zola. HP>MP saved her. She had Resurrection too.

*Shuffle Guardians
Oh man, these guys.
These are evil versions of your shadows. It took me a few tries to figure them out and I had to change my skills. Up until this point, I'd assigned everyone a job, but these guys were so strong nothing I had in place could save me from them. I guess everyone else's set ups would be to have everyone casting all types of magic and be able to physically attack too but I was attempting to keep each character unique.

It was like this. Claws and Horn were in the back row. Wings would double cast black magic, and Horn would buff Claw. Claw would obliterate my party instantly with Mow Down, and it could even hit the back row. This fight broke a lot of rules actually. Like Zola was countering magic which never happens elsewhere.

If you put anyone in the back row, Claws could still hit them with Long Range.
He only has 3 attacks; a single hit, Absolute Counter and Mow Down. Hitting him with physicals triggered the counter for around 700. He can't counter magic.

Dragon didn't do a lot but would use Magic Sword Shadow (darkness of course). Zola and Wall could cover that but I was having a real trouble with Claws' Mow Down. Then I realized something I often overlooked. The Cancel spell. Claws would always start charging before using Mow Down. I had to equip everyone with White and Black Magic. Every turn I'd have Shu cast Wall even if I already had it on, just in case one of them attacked, then cast Cancel even if Claws wasn't charging. I found as long as he couldn't use Mow Down, I was largely safe. Sometimes it would miss so I had another cast it. Jiro would cast Previve when he had the chance as well as other buffs like Magic ATK up. Physicals didn't hurt these guys much.

Kept blasting them with double casted Ground. Got three down and only Wings was left. What happens is whoever is left will do this huge explosion attack even if it isn't their turn. It takes all your HP and MP down to nothing. I managed to slip in two MP replenishing items, cast a few spells and had a Corporeal ready to go. That was enough to deal the the final blow. I barely survived. I wanted Horns to be last because Wings could double cast and take out two characters at once. Horns mainly used buffs and Shina, which is a light attack. Shina only causes damage to ghosts and stuns anything else, but Ribbon protects from stun.

The other answer would be to play the Shuffle Dungeon collecting thousands of medals to buy those super expensive stat ups, but that would take years and would just lead to me destroying them with ease.

Hardest fight in the game. But also sucked because I couldn't do anything but what I detailed above. Really put me in a box. Not sure if I'll even bother with the final dungeon and boss. So far no regular boss on Impossible Mode has been able to put up a decent fight.

Decided to beat the game. The final few bosses were decent. They either have a lot of new moves or they died too fast on normal mode to ever get the chance to use them.

They all had high damage stuff, but weren't fast enough to build on it. I'd already healed, buffed and attacked by the time they could strike again.

Got all the achievements so the 360 will go away for a while.

This has been quite the interesting read of the last few weeks, cheers for taking the time to write things down as usual. I'm eyeing the game, might take a plunge when I have a few months that I just want to sink my teeth into something huge. These notes will be very welcome.

People read this shit?

I read it. Sure I don't have it but I do enjoy seeing every note.

Have you seen or played the DS title? According to Wikipedia, it's an ARPG. Reading this made me want to try one game in the series.

Birdman wrote:People read this shit?

Makes you think doesn't it.