Hello everyone, and welcome to the UltraGN cooking show (cue applause and screaming hysteria, probably). Today, we’ll be rustling up what promises to be a mega-tasty RPG cake, and to help us along we’ve got some much sought-after, highly valued ingredients to add a heck of a lot of spice. With no other RPG cakes of decent quality in the Xbox 360 bakery window we’re sure to be on for a winner, especially in the rather picky Japanese market that we’ve been trying desperately to feed for the past 18 months.

But! This isn’t the only exciting thing we’ve got for you, readers. No – to produce this cake, we have three guest chefs of high renown to help us along. I’d like you to give a hearty welcome to messrs Sakaguchi, Toriyama and Uematsu, responsible for creating the Final Fantasy series, creating the Dragon Ball books and television characters (and Chrono Trigger’s motley crew, too!) and, lastly, providing the aforementioned Final Fantasy series with some memorable music throughout the years. These three men are all masters of their craft, so let’s take a deeper look at what’s being chucked into the mixing bowl.

First off, we’ve got the setting and plot – the sponge of the cake, shall we say. Blue Dragon opens with cheeky youngster Shu and his slightly more austere chum Jiro attempting to save their village from the Land Shark, a monstrous beast that has seemingly been summoned by a strange purple cloud. In doing so they are dragged off underground where they discover that the Land Shark is actually made of metal, and with their friend Kluke who somehow manages to involve herself in all the fun they set off to discover who’s making these giant mechanical beasts and put a stop to his dastardly deeds.

A promising recipe, I think you’d agree. Whilst Mr Sakaguchi continues mixing things up, let us take a look at a few of the ingredients he’s planning use for the icing. A cunning mix of traditional and new elements, we’ve certainly got ourselves plenty to investigate. The adventuring and battling seems initially rather like the classic RPG formula of running around and initiating turn-based battles to gain experience and job points, but a cunning new blend is soon introduced to keep things feeling a little fresh when it comes to battling it out with your enemies.

The much-vaunted change is that your characters don’t actually touch your opponents during the scrapping. Instead, they each have a large shadow in the form of a dragon that do all the dirty work for them. Each dragon specialises in a particular job that can be chopped and changed throughout the game depending on personal preference and what you’ve managed to unlock. In effect this is actually not so much a brand new experience, but a slightly different way of presenting a classic turn-based system – a new skin on a pretty standard apple, you could say. Still, it is a reasonably tasty experience all the same.

There are nuances, of course. First off the bat, there’s the queuing system for turns, much like the one Final Fantasy 10 offered. Each character is placed in a line, and given all the time they need to make those crucial decisions. Experienced players will thus be able to not only dish out a great deal of damage, but also delay their opponents at crucial moments to get in an extra shot or two. It’s a neat system – perhaps not too flashy or full of unique features, but one that allows you to master and use it to your own advantage.

Adding a little extra zing is the monster battle feature, which sees enemies of certain types fighting with each other during a battle, obviously much to their detriment. Whilst strolling around the world map you are given the option of tapping the right trigger to bring up a target circle around you. Any monsters inside this circle can thus be battled consecutively, and if they are the monster equivalent of cats and dogs then you’re going to have a lot of the hard work done for you.

In terms of decoration, what we are offered here is beautiful, colourful and sprinkled with all sorts of different textures and bizarre shapes. The game takes styles from plenty of Mr Toriyama’s previous offerings, with the lead character looking as if he’s come straight out of an episode of Dragon Ball Z. The only fly in the icing is the fact that at times during hectic battles things do slow down a little, or judder.

Right, all the ingredients have been in the oven now for a good half hour so let’s see how it’s all turned out! Ah… oh. *Whispers to producer* this is the right cake, yes? Right. Okay folks, let’s dig in and see how it tastes. Er… okay. You know what, it tastes… like a normal sponge cake. Maybe a little icing here and there, but pretty plain overall. Sure it looks pretty, but the more you chew, the less special it becomes.

So what’s the problem? Well, first of all, Mr Sakaguchi: your story filling for the cake is a little… well… plain. It’s treacle-slow opening dozen hours do Blue Dragon no favours at all, and although things to become much more exciting later on it’s a bit of a struggle at times finding the motivation to get there. In fact, it’s fair say that it takes until the mid point of the second disc (of three) for things to really ramp up in pace, at which point the game does provide an entertaining plot for you to get your teeth into.

Of course, a story is only as good as its characters, and in this area Blue Dragon is a little stale too. Whilst Mr Toriyama has a rich, proven spice rack of characters in his kitchen, he seems to have come up with a bunch that are – for the most part – rather dull and uninteresting this time around. Lead character Schu is the well-worn spunky, carefree chap, his friend Jiro is quiet, thoughtful and much more sensible, and Kluke is the nervous, sensitive one who, with a little support, begins to find herself. This isn’t to mention Marumaro, a small yellow blob that has a voice so annoying that it’ll practically give you a hernia.

In fact, it’s fair to say that only Mr Uematsu has bought out his famed flavouring out of the three. The music side of Blue Dragon is packed full of a mixture of elegiac, vibrant and mischievous songs, although perhaps you could question the inclusion of a recurring boss battle ‘metal’ tune voiced by Deep Purple’s Ian Gillen as it does somewhat taste of cheese. Still, it’s like falling back into a nice, warm comfort blanket as soon as the first strains of the music float out of your stereos, and throughout it won’t disappoint.

So, we’ve ended up with a reasonably tasty, rather attractive looking cake, yet one that won’t blow your socks off. The story is a slow-burner that picks up a tad too late, the characters are rather generic yet still somewhat charming mostly, and the music is trademark Uematsu. The game itself is pretty much a traditional RPG with a few added ingredients, and although the Japanese market lapped it up, perhaps for Western tastes it’s a little too predictable and safe. Still, it’s a game that all RPG fans should at least give a try for the production values at least, and if you can make it through the first disc and still have the hunger to devour the rest then chances are you’ll love it. For the rest, it’ll probably just go right through you and out the other end.