There’s something quite bizarre on offer, too - you can search nearly any item or object scattered around the game world. The prompts for them are invisible, but you just go up to things and press A to be rewarded with some gold, an item, nothing at all, or even some good bonuses, like extra stats and spells. Trouble is, there are some places where you expect it to work and it just doesn’t, nor can you tell where you’ve searched before, so anyone looking to collect everything this way could be in for a fair bit of backtracking. But if that has put any kind of cramp on your enthusiasm, there are still other welcoming touches to ease it: the game gives you an auto-checkpoint just before boss fights, so you’ve no worry of being caught out cold by some unfair beast.

You can open up multiple warp points around the world - accessible anytime that you’re not in a fight - to help you whizz your way around with minimal fuss. That last feature is very useful for chests protected by magical barriers; you’ll come across them everywhere, and you can only open them once you’ve progressed far enough through the game. A load of trudging back over old ground would be misery-making.

We didn’t find Blue Dragon to be at all difficult to play through (well, aside from the whole it’s-in-Japanese thing; don’t even consider importing if you don’t know some of the language), provided you’re willing to put the hours in and do some overtime leveling and really make the most of each of those skill categories. And even if you don’t do that, your biggest problem will likely be nothing more than some spiky boss fights. The first disc will take you somewhere between 12 and 20 hours to decimate, depending on your dedication - climaxing with a huge battle packed with nearly a half-dozen bosses which feels like the end of the game, but is anything but. As for disc two, it’s shorter, but plenty more interesting; as for disc three, we’re not saying anything.

That’s for you to uncover.