I’ll have to check, but I’m pretty sure it’s federal law that if you’re an RPG fan, you must own a Nintendo DS. The system plays home to practically every conceivable breed of role-playing game, and there are a lot of them, too; small wonder when you consider the handheld’s runaway success in both Japan and America. On the other hand, what is a bit puzzling is the question of why we haven’t seen more real-time strategy (RTS) games on the platform, as its unique touch-screen interface is perfectly conducive to such styles of gameplay.
Brownie Brown recognizes this bewildering deficiency. And so, following their recent DS release of Heroes of Mana (albeit to mixed fanfare), they bring us Blue Dragon Plus, a direct sequel in name and story to Microsoft/Mistwalker’s 2007 Xbox 360 RPG—but quite different indeed in terms of gameplay.
A little background
Before we move further into discussing the gameplay, let’s back up for a moment and review the story. If you didn’t have the pleasure of playing through Blue Dragon for 360, the game follows the adventures of Shu and friends, who live in a world threatened by a terrible phenomenon called the Land Shark. This mechanical beast is controlled by an evil King known only as Nene, who reins destruction on the world from his vantage point in a fortress among the clouds. One day, Shu and friends are dragged by the Land Shark along a riveting journey to Nene’s fearsome fortress, where they discover an eerie set of floating spheres in the center of a room. A mysterious voice commands them to ingest the spheres, and upon doing so, their shadows transform into creatures—each one different. The party eventually goes on to prove their power and confront the Evil King. Blue Dragon Plus tells of the events one year after Nene’s defeat, when the tumultuous battles have split the world into a series of strange floating cubes, and everything is relatively peaceful—until now.
Blue Dragon Plus’ story is told via a series of beautifully-rendered full-motion video sequences, a feature which is among the strongest points of the game’s otherwise sometimes less-impressive presentation. Legendary composer (and God?) Nobuo Uematsu provides the soundtrack, which, to be perfectly honest, is actually somewhat less captivating than I had anticipated; but it’s still perfectly adequate and, at times, truly great. Meanwhile, Akira Toriyama’s character art is expectedly top-notch, with all of the in-game sprites exuding the same sort of unique personality typical of his works. If this team of developers sounds familiar to you, that’s probably because they’re also among the hallowed names responsible for one Chrono Trigger—though rest assured Blue Dragon Plus does not encroach upon its crown.
Deceptively different
If you’re familiar with how Heroes of Mana worked, you’ll recall that it was most comparable to modern RTS games (Command & Conquer, Starcraft, et al), which was a bit surprising seeing as the franchise’s history is rooted in RPGs. While Blue Dragon Plus definitely lifts a lot of elements from Heroes of Mana, it is in fact a very different type of game. For instance, you won’t find any structure building or tech trees here; instead, gameplay is much more similar to Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, or even Final Fantasy Tactics, with much more prominent RPG characteristics (such as individual unit development, level-gaining, equipment management, and the like) and a far stronger emphasis on unit-by-unit strategy. It’s still a mission-based tactics game at heart, however, regardless of the degree to which role-playing elements play a… er, role.
While a tutorial is provided to help acquaint newcomers with the underlying formula, it doesn’t go much deeper than basic movement and combat. After that, you’re left to fend for your own, though the game does do a pretty good job of gradually introducing new concepts. Following the first couple of opening events, you run across a bizarre radar cube, which quickly reveals itself as a dynamic map of a particular cube, marking the movements of sinister robots armed with deadly bombs. Shu and gang theorize that if these machines manage to have their way, terrible things might happen—and so, in the midst of other events, they embark on a journey to hunt down and defeat each and every one of these terrible sentinels.
The radar cube serves as your hub of sorts, providing a central map of the paths leading to and from each area (hence why it’s also called a route map). In between battles, you’ll command your parties in turn-based fashion through the depths of the cube, in search of threats to neutralize and answers to behold. It’s here that you can also prepare for the battles to come, managing personnel, choosing equipment, setting skills, and so on. In Blue Dragon Plus, anything and everything you use on the battlefield must first be equipped via this preparatory interface (including items, which must be assigned to a skill slot). This makes planning an absolute necessity, but also occasionally a bit of a burden. Nevertheless, it’s a fact of life when you’re dealing with a genre as complex as hybrid RTS/RPG. Too bad neither the instruction manual nor the in-game tutorials cover this aspect of the experience with any amount of depth, as it’s a bit overwhelming to wade through all of the commands yourself, even if most concepts are established in single-file fashion.
Hot isometric action!
Once you encounter an enemy on the radar cube route map, you’ll engage in battle, and the real action ensues. Here, you’ll find yourself dropped into a 3-D battlefield (with beautiful 2-D hand-drawn sprites!), filled with a variety of hazards and generally plenty of treasure. You can command your party across the battlefield by simply tapping a unit and then tapping its destination, an arrangement that works quite well (though it would have been nice to see a feature where the unit remains selected until you choose to deselect it… but I’m nitpicking). Units will automatically attack any unfriendly targets within range, a feature which is often handy, but also rather irritating (more on this point later)… though you can also directly attack anything by simply tapping it (ditto treasure chests and other items of interest). Fans of Heroes of Mana will recall that commanding multiple units is similarly effortless; you can either tap the multiple-select icon and then draw a virtual border to “rope in” all units you wish to select, or you can simply tap the ALL icon to command all your units simultaneously. This is a fantastic innovation for touch-based RTS mechanics.
Each unit also possesses his or her own unique set of skills, including special moves that require the help of their shadow. Many support moves such as those which raise defense or attack are simply basic, character-specific abilities (as are some units’ ability to jump or swim, for instance), but all magic is made possible by each character’s shadow, which generally possesses an affinity matching that of the character (White Magic, Black Magic, etc.). Later, it’s actually possible to equip additional shadows on your party members, a feature which allows for a respectable level of customization that borders on class selection in other RPG titles.
Like everything else, these Shadows are controlled by simply tapping an icon on the bottom screen after having selected a particular unit. You tap the icon, you’re given a quick overview of the results of the upcoming attack (in the form of icons indicating which enemies will be hit and whether or not it’s likely to affect them greatly), and then you choose whether or not to continue with the attack. Following the attack, a short recharging period is necessary before you can cast any magic or use any special abilities again. All of this occurs while the battle progresses in real-time, pausing for almost nothing. Should two characters cast Shadow attacks against one another simultaneously, a Shadow Battle commences, which really consists of nothing more than frantically scratching your stylus across the enemy’s shadow for a few seconds. Assuming you win, all enemies on the battlefield are then subject to your Shadow Attack, and that’s quite a hefty reward indeed.
Meanwhile, everything else is pretty easy to control as well. The camera is easily panned/rotated via the D-pad and L/R buttons, and in conjunction with the map view on the top screen, keeping a handle on the action is remarkably simple. It’s also possible to save at any point in time, whether during battle or not, which is a nice feature; though there is no option to quickly restart the battle, which seems rather silly, especially considering that simply saving manually at that point accomplishes precisely the same task.
But wait—there’s more
Just when you think you have it all figured out, you quickly come to realize that Blue Dragon Plus has a remarkable ability to introduce more complex, game-changing subjects well into the experience (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely makes it a tough title to review—trust me). In fact, if you’re picking it up for yourself, be sure to give the game time to flourish—as the real meat of the experience is several hours in.
For starters, you will find your obligatory quest collection after several hours of playing. As is the case with nearly all SRPG titles, these quests are entirely optional, but yield handsome rewards when undertaken. Generally, they’re no more complex than “find and defeat this enemy” or “win before time expires”, but it’s still a fun diversion to tickle your completionist gene. There are around 30 quests in all.
The other major curveball that BDP throws at you is the eventual ability to construct and battle with your own Mechas. These are robots that are pieced together using various parts collected throughout your adventures. While there’s a definite strategy to creating your own ‘bots, the system is more simplistic than it sounds. Regardless, it’s a neat addition that helps to prevent the staling of the experience as it progresses.
Blue Dragon Minus
Not all’s well, however, in the land of cubes. While Blue Dragon Plus certainly manages to present a compelling (and unique) RTS with all the depth and addiction of an RPG, there are still plenty of aspects that feel unrefined and which could be easily improved.
Among the least important niggles still worth mentioning are some isolated presentation issues—the most impacting among these being the dialogue speed, the inability to skip cut scenes, and the surprising number of grammatical/spelling errors. In a game so heavily-dependent on text, it’s a shock that the dialogue speed cannot be adjusted; holding the A button speeds up the text rate, but doesn’t stop at the end of the phrase, meaning you have to stop holding the button at just the right time or risk missing part of the conversation. Equally irksome is the fact that such text-laden scenes cannot be skipped, so if you happen to be replaying a part of the game, you’re subject to the same slow sequence of conversation all over again with no means of recourse (at least you can bypass videos). Finally, perhaps it’s just the writer in me, but I was struck many times throughout my four day reviewing session by the uncommon number of grammatical mistakes in the text. It’s hardly a deal-breaker, but few would deny that it hurts the game’s perceived professionalism.
Far more troubling are the issues with the battle gameplay, however, which is paramount to the experience. After seeing your way through a few battles, you’ll quickly come to grips with the fact that, even with the versatility of the touch screen on your side, your units simply aren’t as easy to control as they should be. First off, the AI can be inconveniently stupid at times, walking directly through the path of hazards (such as powerful enemies or poisonous gases) and moving at a lumbering pace toward their target, especially when any sort of navigation beyond a straight line is necessary. Units en route to a specified location invariably stop along the way to attack anything nearby (which might sound opportune, but is actually quite the opposite), and on other occasions, tapping a target only causes your units to stop in their tracks puzzlingly as they wait for other friendly units to move out of their way. Needless to say, this makes commanding your units—especially in the heat of battle or during a timed sequence—frequently irritating.
It’s also worth mentioning that, for all the benefits of the touch interface, it still can be rather tough at times to select the proper unit with expedience. It would have been nice in this case to see some sort of shortcut-icon system where, say, the player could press and hold A and then tap the icon depicting the character they wish to select to quickly and accurately gain control of that specific unit. As it stands, when multiple enemies (or even allies) surround a character, it’s not always easy to find them and issue commands.
All of these gameplay-related hiccups hurt the experience to some degree, but fortunately, Blue Dragon Plus still rests on a firm enough foundation to retain its core appeal. It’s far from a perfect RTS experience on the DS, but it’s not without its distinguishing strengths.