Okay, I got the game and will try it out later tonight. I better be searching poo by the time I go to bed, though, otherwise I'll very disappointed.

Just remember that yellow poo contains gold, blue poo contains items.

so when do you get the field skills?
i'm at the beginning of the mountains and have yet to encounter one?
I'm guessing you need to buy it somewhere?

You can't buy skills -- you get skills as you rank up in various classes. Check the back of the manual; there's a table that shows which skills each class gets at each rank. Don't forget you can switch back and forth among classes.

So I played with it for about an hour so far, and I'm really digging it. As expected, the shadows add a whole new dimension to the fights. But more than that, I love all the little touches they've put in, like intra-monster fights and so on. Can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Nothing

Quoted for WTF-ness.

I'd also like to add that the Sheep Tribesman alone make this game worth playing.

Yay, I'm on disc three! As soon as I'm finished with the game I'm buying a copy of the soundtrack. I was in love with it before but the moment I got to the level that had a background track composed of Italian guitar that sounded like it came from The Godfather soundtrack, I knew I had to own it. There are so many styles on this soundtrack and they're all just bursting with a sense of fun and adventure. It really feels like Uematsu was able to "let loose" once he broke the shackles of Final Fantasy.

By the way, one level on the demo is the very end of disc two and the other level I haven't even gotten to yet.. plus they already have you ready to do the shadow's super attacks, which if they were not in the demo it would have been a super sweet surprise at the start of disc three. Whoever put that demo together needs to be smacked, I know that's been established already.. but getting further into the game even makes it more apparent.

Speaking of the soundtrack, the other day I got to a boss battle and my wife wandered in from the other room to ask if I was listening to Dio.

is there a max level for each shadow class?
after you get the last skill of a class, do you continue to lvl other stats for that class?

Max skill is 99, which means if you want to get the "maxed all classes" achievement, you need to get 99*8=792 ranks total per shadow.

Bring on Blue Dragon 2!

So I got to the point where you can get through one of the colors of forcefields. Is anyone aware of an FAQ that lists where all the forcefields prior to that point are so I can double back and open the treasure chests, etc. inside those forcefields?

how can you tell what buffs have been cast on your chars?
do the buffs remain even if you die and get resurrected?

Ah... so you just got the ability to knock down the Blue Barriers. Unfortunately I haven't seen an FAQ regarding these locations. Really, I have just warped to a few places that I remembered seeing blue ones (Jibral for instance - there's a poo bracelet there). I was going to wait until I got the ability to take all of the barriers down before I trekked backwards to find them again. (I have blue and green right now)

Here's what I did with the barriers, I just waited until I had the White Barrier Device and the Field Barrier 3 skill (level 50 Defender skill), and then reran every dungeon and town from the beginning.. it only took a couple of hours and I got to level up a lot of classes easily with the Field Barrier skill (use this time to get everybody's Generalist class to 36 if you haven't already). Oh.. on my rerun I was writing down the locations of the black barriers so I could easily come back to them.

It's worth mentioning that the Black Barrier item is actually NOT part of the regular quest. It's in a section that's considered a side quest so some people may miss it if they just stick to the game's main path!

All the side quest dungeons (and there's a lot of them!) are marked on the map.. or mentioned at Café Jibral and/or the Mecha Cube. I don't think there was anything in the game that wasn't clued at in some way, which I loved.

I believe it's either the RB or the RT button. Hold one of them and it will show what type of enchantments you have on your chars.

Dammit! This is up today.

Title: Blue Dragon

Content: Ultra Hard Mod
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Japan

Dash Text: [ESRB: T (Teen) FANTASY VIOLENCE] The Ultra Hard Mod adds three new features to Blue Dragon. New Game Plus is a game mode that allows you to start your game over using a saved game from near the end of Blue Dragon. The Hard game mode allows you to play at a difficulty level that is twice as high as the original. The Impossible game mode is the ultimate in difficulty and is meant to be played starting at Level 50 or higher. © 2007 BIRD STUDIO / MISTWALKER, INC. All Rights Reserved. © 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. BLUE DRAGON contains AT&T Natural Voices® Text to Speech technology licensed from Wizzard Software Corporation. Microsoft, the Microsoft Game Studios logo, Blue Dragon, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

So, any guesses as to whether or not adding the new game + to our files will mess up
the ability to get the "all items" and "all monsters" achievements? A similar thing happened
with Rainbow 6 Vegas when they added the map pack downloads where it seems that
everyone on my friends list who hadn't had the play all maps achievement couldn't once
they downloaded the new stuff.

so i just finished the game last night and made 25/1000 achievements.
wtf? are achievements that difficult in this game?
beating the last boss did not give me a single achievement point.

The achievements are listed in the menu, so you get an idea of look for.. and the "secret" ones follow the others. Basically, all the mini-games and such have achievements and then there's achievements for getting the best items, level 99s, etc. The mini-game ones can be missed though, which is a pain.. but if you know beforehand you can save/restart each time you get to one.

like Pixy said, you really actually have to try to get the achievements in this game. some of them happen as you start to quest for them though. 99 levels? Well, chances are you'll get $1,000,000 on the way too. Same with Shadow skills, etc. Also if you're crazy enough to get lvl 99 then chances are you'll be looking for the barriers and power items as well!