And now, introducing Blue Dragon, the Marmite of the gaming world! For those overseas readers who might not know what I'm talking about, Marmite is a yeast extract spread that has a real love it or hate it flavour, and Blue Dragon is just the same - while going down a storm in Japan, it's divided the Western gaming world like few other titles. Some gamers are massively disappointed with it, while others are loving every minute (and, believe me, there are a lot of minutes in this massive three disc game!) However, I've not had a Marmite style reaction - instead of love or hate, I find myself merely quite liking it.

Our story begins in the rather desolate village of Talta, where peppy young Shu and his sensitive, intelligent friend Jiro are prepared for the return of the Land Shark, a fearsome creature that appears every year to terrorise their village, heralded by the sky darkening with mysterious purple clouds. Their defeat of the creature marks the beginning of a grand adventure that will take them all over their world, meeting many different races and exploring faraway places and strange civilisations, as they seek to end the threat of Nene, the purple-skinned old goblin creature with really bad glasses who is intent on causing havoc throughout the realm.

That in a nutshell is the story of Blue Dragon, although it doesn't by any means do the story justice. To say too much more would be to begin spoiling what is a fun if unexceptional RPG saga of child heroes rising to defeat an evil nemesis, so I'll leave it there - suffice to say though, there is plenty to discover along your journey, with many varied locations to visit and explore.

My initial impressions of Blue Dragon weren't that positive. For starters, the cartoon graphical style of the game makes everything look really cute - none of the many enemies you face are fearsome (or particularly imaginative), and even the bosses are usually quite sweet looking. This immediately throws up the problem that it's hard (but not impossible) to become immersed in the world and care about the saccharin sweet characters, although you probably will grow to love Shu's never give up attitude, Jiro's calm demeanour and the crush he holds for their orphan companion Kluke, crazy little Marumaro and gutsy teenager Zola, the only member of your party who's even vaguely sexy (but again, in a cutesy way). The enemies meanwhile are fairly standard in design, from clunky robots with big eyes to flying fish, giant rats, poo snakes (yep, they're snake-shaped poos with arms and legs!!), swordfish (with actual swords), steel monkeys, armoured turtles, giant bears, and much, much more. Discovering new enemies is fun, but there's rarely any wow factor due to the cartoon style, despite how excellent the graphical quality throughout the game actually is.

Every environment really is rendered with loving care, from the ruins of ancient civilisations infused with advanced technology to the sprawling deserts, mountain canyons, lush forests and marshy swamps. Jibral City is without doubt one of the finest looking locations, a living, breathing city full of characters to interact with and the grand architecture of the main castle, adorned with all manner of plush décor. The enemies and indeed your party are all wonderfully animated too, with a range of attacks that are beautifully executed but constantly lacking the wow factor of Final Fantasy, a shame given that one of the makers of FF was involved in the creation of Blue Dragon. Even the most impressive elemental spell effects and physical attacks lack real impact and so the repetitive animations of the turn-based combat become something that you will most likely endure rather than enjoy, as you grind through the endless battles in between each city/village hub where you can have a rest, interact with NPCs, search for all manner of goodies in the scenery and stock up on supplies.

The sound meanwhile is fun like the visuals, with appropriate sound effects for attacks, monster noises and the discovering of items, along with a range of very catchy and sometimes atmospheric, usually upbeat tunes, which fit each location very well and always enhance the atmosphere. Often evocative and usually engaging, the musical ensemble on offer here is the audio highlight and it's unlikely that many of the tunes will start to grate unless you spend too long in one area (Jibral's grand royal theme can become tedious after a while, for example). The voice acting is well executed; it's fun, over the top and clichéd, fitting in with the often clumsy and basic dialogue that you can overlook because it fits in well with the cartoon style and comes off feeling like a modern day kids' cartoon such as Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh (although just a little bit better on the whole).

Probably my biggest disappointment early on however is Blue Dragon's almost total failure to innovate or move the RPG genre on in any meaningful way. While there are a few neat touches and creative new features, this is very much a by-the-numbers RPG of the old school tradition, splitting action between traversing across the 'fields', entering turn-based battles and exploring hub locations where there is no fear of being attacked. One of the best innovations is undoubtedly the flexibility you have while out on the field though; throwing away the annoying tradition of constant random battles, you can see enemies out on the field and attack or avoid them as you wish, meaning that you can either zip through or hang around to attack the endlessly respawning monsters that appear as you traverse each area. That isn't anything unusual, but your abilities on the field are - you can force weaker monsters you've already defeated to flee in your wake, become invisible so that no monsters can spot you, stun them with bombs then attack from behind for an extra battle advantage or attract them to pursue you relentlessly, among many other possibilities.

You might wonder why you'd want to attract monsters, but this soon becomes clear after you've experienced your first Monster Fight. In a very nice touch, some monsters prioritise attacking each other over attacking you, so if you engage the right combination simultaneously then they'll be busy fighting each other while you lay waste to them. Pulling the right trigger pauses the action and brings up a circle that shows you all monsters currently in range - if you have multiple monster types in range whose names turn yellow then it means they'll fight each other; if not then you've just got a multiple stage battle on your hands, although in another nice touch if you take on multiple monsters at once, you get a stat boost at the end of each round, making the next round that much easier.

Once into the combat, it's turn-based bliss (or tedium, depending on your views) all the way. Your initial party of three, eventually expanding to five, all take turns to lay waste to the opposition, and the picture at the top indicates the turn sequence for you and your foes, allowing you to focus on foes whose turns are coming up first. You can also set your formation for front or back, with members at the back doing less damage with a physical attack but taking less when attacked, while remaining just as effective when it comes to magic. The same goes for enemies, except they're in two rows, and the back row cannot be physically attacked until the front row is vanquished (one monster on the field can represent half a dozen or more in a battle, and they might be accompanied by other monster types they're allied with too).

When it's your turn, your party member can attack, defend, change formation position, use an item or use a special ability, such as Mow Down, where you attack all enemies in the front row, or Control, where you take control of one monster and use it to attack another. While this sounds limited, there is a great deal of depth and variety in the excellent class system, which is one of the finest I've come across in an RPG. Each of your five characters has had their shadows transformed into fearsome, magical monsters, with Shu's being the titular Blue Dragon, and it is these that actually perform the attacks, either swooping in to hit their foes or launching elemental magic attacks. However, you're not stuck with your starting class - as you gain experience and rise through the levels, every so often you can unlock a new class, or Shadow as it is called, for your characters, then you can switch between them whenever you like. So, while Shu starts off as a Sword Master, you can if you wish change him to a Monk for example, whose speciality is Charged Attacks for enhanced damage. After a while you gain various skills in that class, so when you change back to Sword Master you can bring the charge skill with you and charge up your Sword Master attacks for even more damage. You can only equip three skills (plus the base skill granted by your chosen shadow), but once you've acquired a range of skills from two or more shadows, you can pick the Generalist shadow, which grants you extra skill slots as you rise through the ranks (your shadow levels up separately to your character) and the ability to wear more accessories, which enhance various stats.

This skill system gives you tremendous flexibility to customise your party exactly as you want. For example, while Shu might stay as a Sword Master (using those charge skills as well if you rank him up as a Monk), Kluke can focus on her Black Magic skills (using six elemental attacks, the four elements plus light and dark) and Jiro can stick with White Magic for healing and curing status ailments like stun, poison, paralysis and sleep. Barrier Magic skills nicely compliment Jiro's skill set (granting abilities to protect and enhance your party) while Kluke can use Support Magic to inflict ailments and weaken enemies. Or you could do it the other way around - it's entirely up to you. The amount of skills available across the various classes (Assassin and Guardian are the final ones I've yet to mention) are tremendously varied, granting such abilities as reducing the cost of purchasing items and spells, gradually recovering MP or HP either in battle or while walking around on the field, absorbing MP/HP from foes after a successful attack, stealing items or gold, and more. It'll take you some time to explore them all and unlock every ability, and there's more than enough here to keep you occupied and to outfit your party exactly as you desire.

The stats themselves are as you'd expect, including HP and MP, attack and defence, magic attack and magic defence, and agility (for turn frequency in battle). You can gain permanent enhancements to these through special items or by equipping accessories in your four slots, with the special accessories that go into your Generalist slots being the ones that are generally the most potent. Items meanwhile can do almost anything that you can do with a skill, and you'll pick them up frequently by searching the scenery wherever you go - pipes, rocks, barrels, pots, counters, plants, monitors, tables... you name it, you can search it! And you even get something for nothing in this game, which you'll understand if you search Jibral thoroughly and locate the Nothing Man, yet another of the many very nice little touches scattered liberally throughout the game.

It all sounds pretty great really, doesn't it? And to a degree it is - I'm thirty hours into my adventure and haven't even explored half of the world map yet, while the story is still unfolding at a nice, gentle pace, having experienced many grand cut scenes and big boss battles already. However, I often find myself getting impatient as I search every last bit of scenery for hidden treasure, or enter into the umpteenth battle against familiar enemies to get the experience to level up and discover some new skills. My mind wanders and I find the whole thing a bit tedious at times - yet I can play for hours and don't want to stop when I finally do tear myself away. The game has an almost hypnotic quality, which will doubtlessly be soporific for those who don't like the game and find themselves nodding off due to the repetition and familiarity of the combat and scenery searching.

Another problem is that the game is very easy; I've only died a couple of times so far and those instances would have been avoidable if I didn't want to have all my party revived from a knockout so they could all get the experience (KOs are pretty rare anyway), so you don't have to bother doing much battling or searching at all if you don't want to - you could just charge through the game fairly easily and follow the story, although if you don't fight much at all then you probably will have to level grind a bit in the later stages, as enemies do get gradually tougher as you progress.

If, however, you want to discover every secret, unlock every chest protected by the various coloured barriers, and max out your characters then you've got hundreds of hours of gameplay time ahead of you. The game world is huge and there is much to see, do and discover, which is why the warp machines are so handy; once activated, you can warp back to a previous location at almost any time (you can't warp from battles or some areas) and re-explore for new goodies now you can lift a coloured barrier, take back an item to someone who needs it in one of the many NPC mini-quests, or just go back to discover new Monster Fight combinations or gain experience. There's a comprehensive record of all your accomplishments too, including a list of every item and monster you've discovered on your travels.

Blue Dragon is already a fantastic success in that it has achieved exactly what it set out to achieve - namely to cause a surge of interest in the Xbox 360 in Japan and get units flying off the shelves. It's a Japanese RPG through and through, and the Eastern audience are lapping it up. However, while it's undoubtedly one of the best looking and most consistently polished and flawlessly constructed games I've ever come across, with masses to discover and a very nifty class and skills system, its many neat touches and features can't hide the fact that it's a very straightforward old-school RPG, whose repetitive action can get tiresome and whose cutesy graphics will fail to inspire, or even impress, some people. If you're a big fan of RPGs then you owe it to yourself to give Blue Dragon a try (and by that I mean at least ten to twenty hours, because it takes some getting into). If however you've never really liked the genre then there's absolutely nothing in Blue Dragon to change your mind. It really is very much down to personal taste as to whether or not you'll enjoy the quirky world of Shu and his pals and there really is only one way to find out - play it for yourself. I've done all I can to guide you; now the final choice is entirely up to you.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).