The Xbox 360 isn't known for having a lot of role-playing games. That's usually the area of other systems. So having a new RPG for the system is welcome, even if the game isn't perfect.

"Blue Dragon" comes with some big names attached -- character design by "Dragon Ball Z's" Akira Toriyama and music by Nobuo Uematsu, well-known for his music in the "Final Fantasy" series.

So it's kind of funny that these are also the areas I took issue with in the game. Well, let me clarify: Most of the music is nice, but the song that plays during each and every boss fight makes me mute the television. It's a cheesy rock song that feels out of place with the rest of the game and it loops on and on for as long as the battle lasts. Seriously, it makes me want to rip my ears off.

My other problem is with the characters. They're very similar to the characters in "Dragon Ball Z," a style I don't really care for. I'd be willing to overlook that, except for the fact that half of them are so annoying that you just can't care about them. And in an RPG, you kind of need to care about the characters.

The story is standard RPG fare -- the main character, a boy named Shu, and two of his friends get whisked away from their village and must try to defeat the bad guy who is intent on torturing everybody. Later, they meet up with other people who join their quest.

One of these later additions is an animal-like boy named Marumaro. I hate him with a passion I haven't felt toward a video game character in ... well, maybe ever. Every word out of his mouth is shrill, loud and whiny. I cringe every time he speaks. I don't care how powerful he is, I'd be happy to kick him out of the party.

But despite my irritation with the characters and the overall generic feel of the game, I still found myself enjoying it because of the core gameplay.

Each of the characters has a shadow that allows him or her to perform magic. These shadows are what actually attack in battle, and they take the form of animals. Shu's is the dragon in the title.

The shadows can be set to have certain battle types, such as assassin, white magic or black magic. As you fight, you earn experience, which levels your character, and SP, which levels your current shadow type. As each shadow type levels, new skills become available.

The best part is that the shadow types can be swapped out at any time, and even when you're playing as, say, the assassin, you can still use the black magic skills you learned earlier. This gives you nearly infinite skill customization.

There's also a tactical element to moving around the world that I really liked. You can see enemies on the screen (no random battles here!), and if you hold the right trigger, a circle pops up. Any enemies within the circle can be attacked as a group. Certain enemies don't get along with each other, and if you group them together in a battle, it's possible they'll fight each other instead of you.

Despite the cartoonish style of "Blue Dragon," it actually looks very nice. The textures and animations are well done, and it's got a polish to it that transcends the cartoon feel. Interestingly, it comes on three discs. I haven't seen that since the original PlayStation era.

So, strangely, even though I didn't care much for the characters, and the story wasn't all that interesting, I really did like "Blue Dragon." It may not interest everyone, but it's at least worth checking out as a rental.

It's a bad, bad 'World'

One other RPG option for the 360 is "Two Worlds." I was wary of "Two Worlds" from the start just because of how much it looked like a ripoff of "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion." I had some hope, though; after all, "Oblivion" was a fantastic game.

"Two Worlds" is not fantastic. It's painful. It's what "Oblivion" would have been if it were created by monkeys.

I was turned off before I even started the game, at the character creation screen. For one, I could only be male. Female is not an option, which was really disappointing. But, OK, I was willing to overlook that, until I realized even the male character only had a few options for his look.

And then the game itself. It's easy to sum up. Here's what was bad: the combat (sloppy), the story (boring), the dialogue (horribly cheesy), the voice acting behind the dialogue (awful), the way the characters look (deformed), the way the characters' mouths move (like fish), the way the characters move when they walk (something I can't say here), the menu and inventory screens (too hard to read and navigate even on a decent-size TV), the map (also hard to read). Even the difficulty level is a bit of an issue -- I got killed by a boar at the very beginning. A boar!

Maybe I should have started with what's not bad. That list is a lot shorter. The environment isn't bad. Some spots actually look pretty good. I like that you can battle on horseback. And the character leveling and item creation systems both are interesting.

But none of this is enough to qualify "Two Worlds" even as mediocre. More like horrible. Or torturous.

It's possible I'm just jaded after the excellence of "Oblivion," but it really seems that there is a lot that needs fixed in "Two Worlds." Even with achievement points, it's not worth the pain of slogging through it.