The Shadow Harvest Continues

Heh, you spambots haven't gotten me yet!

The Harvest continues in Blue Dragon.  Too bad there isn't a dedicated crafting system, but whatyougonnado?

So far things are still going fairly well; you can tell that this game was done people that really turned the JRPG into an art form.  The default difficulty is just easy enough to make you confident, then randomly knocks you on your ass when you get cocky.  The battle mechanics are polished, with traditional turn-based attacks and spellcasting and whatnot.  Remember how JRPGs used to abandon the ol' Attack command a few hours in in favor of flashy special moves, spells, theft, and the like?  How, maybe, sometimes, a game would give you a way (or ways) to make that Attack command crazy broken, but you had to wait until around 30-40 hours in (FF6 and the Genji Glove/Offering combo comes readily to mind) so you needed other flashiness?  Well, with just a bit of effort, your humble, dirt-basic Attack command can become a charged punch of doom that absorbs the target's HP and steals (al a Final Fantasy's traditional Mug) very quickly, and with even more effort, absorb MP and double-strike (!!!!!1!!!one!)  Throw in other craziness like a barrier that auto-kills most mooks, invisible ninja shenanigans, and actual red-on-red combat scenarios, and it's plain to see why they won't give you the Limit Break equivalent until about 2/3 into the game.

It's all about the Skill system.  Much like, say, FF5, you have classes to pick from (as stated in the blog before), and after gaining enough SP (shadow points) the current class gains a rank, and at certain milestones, you get a skill, usually something like a new command or a passive, and you can mix-and-match at will.  It gets insane with the Generalist class, where you trade the stat boosts and innate skills of other classes for...an extra accessory slot.  Sounds terrible, right?  Well, (again like FF5), looks are deceiving here.  Progress through the ranks, and you wind up with more accessory slots, and more importantly, more skill slots.  Once you wind up with, say, Skill+4 (easily gained, even without dedicated grinding), you can jump back into your favored specialty and let the doom roll!  Throw in the effects of special accessories, and the forces of badness are in deep doodoo.

And they know it, too.  The field symbols for a lot of minions have a 'flee' command, and they use it a lot.

The little shooter minigame is terrible, though.  More on that later.