Blue Dragon Plus – Hands On Preview

The first of Mistwalker's two Xbox 360 Japanese RPGs (the second being last year's Lost Odyssey), 2007's Blue Dragon was a game of several firsts for Microsoft.  For instance, it was the first title to ship with multiple discs, and it was also the first title to sell more than 200,000 units in Japan.  A follow up on the Xbox 360 is rumoured to be in the works, though news on that is ageing and sparse.  For now, the brand is expanding in a somewhat different direction, with the late-March release of Blue Dragon Plus on Nintendo DS.

Set one year after the the original Xbox 360 game, Blue Dragon Plus picks up the story of Shu, Jiro, and the rest of the gang as they face a new foe (and discover that an old enemy isn't quite as defeated as they'd thought).  So how has the brand evolved and changed to suit its new portable platform?  TVG caught the Land Shark to find out...

If The Shu Fits.
Naturally, the switch to the Nintendo handheld has meant a visual overhaul compared to its triple-DVD brig brother; Akira Toriyama's easily recognisable character style is replaced during gameplay with 2D sprites.  Graphically, it's the sort of thing anybody can expect with the switch from console to handheld.  However, by far the key difference between the DS and Xbox 360 releases is the switch in RPG sub-genre.  Plus waves good-bye to the traditional JRPG turn-based gameplay of its home console older brother, favouring instead a more real-time Tactical Role-Playing dynamic.  Pausing the real-time combat only for quick pieces of text dialogue or to show gamers where new enemies are spawning, Blue Dragon Plus feels much more immediate than its older big brother ever was – hopefully a sign of an engaging experience throughout its tens of hours of campaign.

Real-time combat has increasingly become the system of choice in Japanese RPG titles in recent years, especially on the home consoles with the likes of Disgaea and Valkyria Chronicles, and its use here will be more than welcomed by gamers perhaps little fed-up by the more plodding pace of turn-based combat - they're far from being 'commuter friendly' after all.  The flip-side of making Blue Dragon Plus a TRPG is that gamers have to be much more aware of what's going on across the battlefield, especially when the party is split up across the screen.  All too often, several groups of enemies can approach the party, pushing players into spreading the group thinly; thankfully, the deft use of the touch-screen is responsive enough to keep up with the need for fast movement along the battle screen.

Using the stylus for the bulk of control – the shoulder buttons are used to rotate around the gameworld – Plus aims to deliver a rapid but engaging system for players to pick up immediately.  Highlighting a character and selecting one of the Shadow powers or a health boost is just as quick to execute with the touch-screen, although there is one area where real-time gameplay could be a little tighter.  There are several occasions where characters don't face the right direction to fire off a Shadow attack (Shu and his straight-line attacks is particularly susceptible for this), and instead just ignore the command.  Of course, this isn't a big complaint, and it's probably one that hasn't been rectified by the AQ team, but it's a little big of a niggle when we're trying to juggle a party of eight against over a dozen enemies.

Character selection with the stylus is quick, with some intelligent use of the touch-screen to draw around the party members you want to send off into battle, and thankfully it seems that path-finding isn't too much of an issue either.  Moving throughout the gameworld also looks like an aspect that's been well thought out too, with Shu and the team guided through a branching network of simplified corridors before entering the 'battle stages'.  Built into the exploration of one of the world cubes that makes up the gameworld, the corridors continues its predecessor's attitude of showing an enemy on the screen rather than rely on ambush attacks, together with 'shops' to stock up on various supplies along the way.

Chasing The (Blue) Dragon.
The considerations of making the switch to handheld also goes further than an overhaul of the combat system; the ability to save progress at a point, the branching gameworld structure and single screen battlefields, and the stylus-only controls, all ease the path for Plus to become a quick-fix, pick-up-and-play portable title.  It's exactly the sort of RPG that we'd expect to see on a portable platform, with its very accessible control system and gameplay features building into a well-rounded experience.

But there is one dark cloud on the horizon.

One of the key criticisms of the original Xbox 360 version was its rather sedate difficulty levels, which posed little problem for gamers.  In fact, it was the trudging pace of the original that proved more of a barrier, with many struggling to hold interest into the third disc.  The difficulty of the brand is something that we have to raise at this point however, with Plus seemingly going down the same road of posing much of a challenge.  Several hours into the preview, and we were yet to lose a single member of a party during a battle, let alone experience a 'Game Over' by losing the entire lot.  It helps of course that the party easily racks up dozens of medicine potions, and has the healing powers of Jiro's shadow to boot, but we're hoping that the learning curve gets a little steeper as the game progresses.

The latest Xbox 360 to Nintendo DS transition may not quite as well as Viva Pinata in 2008, but with the intelligent changes to the gameplay to better suit portable gaming, Blue Dragon Plus is looking like a decent stab at expanding the Mistwalker brand.  Plus, we get to hear Uematsu's haunting piano theme all over again...