With dragons thought to be an extinct species, and you just happening to find a dragon egg next to your village, a grand adventure begins. When first loading up Dragon Island Blue, it wasn't set in stone what type of game we were expecting to play, but what unfurled is a mix between an old school JRPG and a mix between Pokemon and Monster Hunter.

The game begins with you choosing what element of dragon you've found out of the four elements of water, fire, air, and earth. From here you can begin to train up said dragon to become a worthy fighting force alongside a plethora of other monsters that can be captured and trained, or like any other creature you obtain, it can be transmuted into a soul stone that can be used to upgrade and enhance the creatures in your possession.

This begins the potential depth of Dragon Island Blue. Entering fights will often give you a chance to capture your enemy as a card, and thus you can choose to fight and train these new creatures, add them to your collection, or use their power to bolster your current fighting forces. Fights consist of up to three enemies taking on your team of up to three monsters. It's turn based, with options of attacks, status effects, and defensive maneuvers being available to choose from. These attacks can be accomplished with a swipe, but the reading of these inputs is sketchy at best so its probably best to just tap on what you want to accomplish. Travel is handled by tapping on waypoints that lead to other waypoints (or a fight or dungeon). In dungeons you tap to move from room to room, and there is never any rush to make a decision.

In town your creatures recover their health, and you can accept up to eight quests to accomplish for rewards and also to move the plot forward. All your transmuting and shopping is done in town too, so these end up being your hubs after every successful fight or dungeon crawl.

The designs of the monsters themselves are impressive, but there is little animation to the game and at time it feels like a high quality browser title. Actually that's kind of the feel of the gameplay all round. The pace is quite slow and while the mechanics are deep, they feel quite outdated considering other JRPGs on the platform, or even compared to the plethora of action based Korean RPGs. Fans of the genre who don't mind this slower pace will find their time and energy rewarded, but Dragon Island Blue does ask for a large investment of time and patience, and that's going to drive off a lot of potential players.