JRPG Blue Dragon gets Xbox One back compatibility

Blue Dragon, the Japanese role-playing game that was supposed to endear Japan to Xbox 360, is now backwards compatible on Xbox One.

It didn't endear Japan to Xbox 360, obviously - that didn't work at all - but Blue Dragon was a big budget, big deal back in 2007, designed in part by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, and scored by Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. And I quite liked it.

The eponymous blue dragons are spirit beasts that a group of kids discover they can summon in battles to fight for them. Those dragons level up and gain abilities and powerful magic over the course of the 50-hour-or-so game.

Blue Dragon is very pretty, and I didn't mind the combat, but there were wearying random battles, and the childish cartoon tone did grate.

Eurogamer Blue Dragon reviewer Rob Fahey wasn't as keen as I. "It's by no means terrible; but without borrowing Sakaguchi's rose-tinted glasses, it's not much fun either," he wrote.

A better option, if you're looking for this sort of JRPG thing, is Lost Odyssey, which was the other Microsoft Xbox 360 game that was supposed to win Japan and didn't. But it's a better game, and Lost Odyssey is available on Xbox One back compatibility too.

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