I finished it!!!!!!!!! You know a game was phenomenal when you actually get a chill when "The End" pops up. And watching the credits was... gah!!!!! Seeing Manabu Kusonoki, Yutaka Sugano, and Yukio Futatsugi in end credits again just... yeeeeeeesssssssss!!!!!!!!!! (I'm a huge fan of Team Andromeda FYI) In so far as the game... oh my God. That sums up the last 40 minutes of the game. Just me sitting there... mouth agape... constantly exclaiming, "Oh my God!" The plot goes nuts, the music is amazing, and all in all it was just an amazing end to a really good game. To be perfectly honest, the ending sequence in this game is one of the best I've ever seen in an RPG period. Quite possibly THE best (and yes, I'm including FF6, Chrono Trigger, Shining Force games, and even PDSaga in that assessment). It was just... so damn well done. The entire final sequence was just phenomenal. Complaint: I did all the extra stuff before playing the final dungeon. I killed all 5 dragons, killed 2/3rds of the secret stuff, and... played through all of the extra dungeons. Therefore, I was like, level 84 during the boss fights. I also had insanely powerful items. So... the final boss fight(s) were just... not challenging. Um, actually, the boss before the true final boss never even got an attack off. And the true final boss got one attack off. So, if you want to be challenged during the final bit... DO NOT DO ALL THE EXTRA STUFF FIRST!!!!! Maybe go through the Sea Cube, but don't mess with the dragons and all that. You'll be FAAAAAAAR too powerful. I was really disappointed in the final fights themselves honestly because I was just way too overpowered. And honestly, getting overpowered is my major gripe with Blue Dragon as a whole. Sure, the kids being... well... kids, is annoying if you're wanting your deep character developement (but they are kids, so... at least its being realistic), but even that isn't too much of a problem. The graphics... well, there does not exist an RPG that looks this good, so yeah, the graphics are rather amazing. Gameplay is top notch. If you LIKE turn-based RPGs at ALL... this is the pinnacle of that. No joke. Its Final Fantasy V but insanely improved. And the initiating combat in the game is so fun. Somehow Sakaguchi actually made it FUN to get INTO combat, and then he made turn based combat ITSELF fun. The only problem is... sure, its fun to plan out your characters' jobs and what skills they'll have... but in doing so you're going to overpower yourself INSANELY. Everyone in my party had hit level 36 in Generalist, so they ALL had Skill +8. So EVERYONE had just SICKENING skills upon skills making them so PAINFULLY powerful boss fights lost all their challenge towards the end. Don't get me wrong, the SECRET stuff is still hard as fuck. The 5 dragons, Golden Mecha Robo, and the King Poo Snake? Hell, I didn't even manage to defeat the King Poo Snake, thats how insanely hard that thing is. But everything else? Painfully easy. With the items I had our agility was so high half the time the enemy would never even get a TURN to fight. It would just keep going back and forth between three characters, so the game turned into "Quickest way to end this" since I was never in danger of being attacked. Hell, I think I got 4 or 5 vollies of attacks off against the final boss before he got his ONE attack off (which did very little damage since EVERYONE'S defense was just sickening by then). The whole defense thing is kinda annoying too... since there's a skill you get that allows you to use your MP as HP once you run out of HP... but I only ever wound up using it ONCE (against a dragon, of course). Of course, you can even cheap out the dragons. There's elemental accessories that will make the dragon's attacks GIVE you HP. So slap that on Shu and go to town. Thankfully, Golden Mecha Robo and King Poo Snake are stupid fucking hard REGARDLESS of what items you have, so thats good (and beating Golden Mecha Robo was definitely a "YOU TAKE THAT!" moment for me, since I was around level 72 at the time). But sheer lack of difficulty aside, Blue Dragon was fucking awesome. Better than Skies of Arcadia, better than Grandia II, better than everything on the Saturn except Panzer Dragoon Saga. Hell, I'd argue its better than FF7, 8, 9, and 10 (never played 11 or 12). Actually, the ONLY Final Fantasy I like more than it (that I've played), is VI. Thats right, I like Blue Dragon more than Final Fantasy IV. So yes. Blue Dragon is amazing. It EXCEEDED my every expectation, and I highly recommend it to ANYONE that enjoys turn based RPGs at all.
I am going through it now, only about level 20 and in the big main city, going to level up a few different classes to give them a bit of variety. It's the same as anything though, in FFX I did all the extra stuff, legendary weapons, dark aeons, etc and the final boss took me about 3 minutes.
