SERIOUSLY FOLKS, CAN’T WE JUST STAPLE THE WORLD BACK TOGETHER OR SOMETHING?? THOSE CUBES ARE CREEPIN’ ME OUT…

This entry in the Blue Dragon series marks a bit of a milestone for me. I’ve really never been a big RTS gamer, but I’ve always been fond of a good RPG. And although the first Blue Dragon was a very traditionally-styled Japanese RPG, Plus was made as blend between the two genres – very much in the style of Heroes of Mana and Final Fantasy XII: Revanent Wings. I’ve always found the combination strange but ultimately pretty damned enjoyable. The fact that developers Mistwalker, Brownie Brown and Feelplus have joined forces also warrants a look at this game that you might not have given it before.

That being said, let’s hop in and see what all the fuss is about.

Let me first address that some people will be turned off by the younger theme (or what some could presume by looking at the game’s characters). I say to you people: Get. Over. It. You’ve got a game that has the minds behind such outstanding RPGs like Chrono Trigger (my favorite RPG ever). So look past the screen shots and the character design and just play for god’s sake.

Anyways.

Plus picks up one year after you defeated Nene. For those of you who don’t have a clue who that is – no worries. You get a brief – make that very brief – overview of the events from the first Blue Dragon. So the bad news is you’ll have no idea what’s occurred if you haven’t played the last entry. The good news is that it doesn’t really matter. This game stands on it’s own two legs quite well.

Long story short (Plus is about a 30-or-so hour play through) the world is still in half, cubes are still in the center of the broken world, an evil three headed dragon shadow called Balau emerges from one of the cubes and Shu along with his cohorts find themselves in the middle of another awesome adventure. I would love to go on, but there would be so many spoilers you would hate me for it. So find out for your damn self.

Shu is joined by thirteen other playable characters each with there own Shadow to control. The Shadow battles are always cool and are easily a big part of the enjoyability. As usual, certain characters can boost up defense or heal others in your party – just make sure you don’t get them killed or you’re screwed pretty hard (especially later in the game). Controls: pretty straightforward. Left and right shoulder buttons rotate the current area and the D-pad pans the camera. The stylus controls everything else. Stylus controls are what they should be, but sometimes selecting a character can be a bit messy when other characters and objects get in the way. And while there isn’t any grouping allowed, at least your characters don’t get stuck or glitch out when traveling from one end of the screen to another, which is a problem in other games of this type. Actually the fact that your characters can auto-lock an enemy and get there without any help is a pretty damn big deal (it might take them a while, but they get there nonetheless). Freezing the real-time battles and selecting enemies to attack in order is always awesome, especially when controls option are as limited as they are on a DS. The system for leveling up is nice but to me feels weird paired with RTS gameplay. That’s not a complaint by any means, it just strikes me as odd.

Graphically, I love this game. The art design is fun, interesting and inventive. The 3D levels are perfectly accented by the Chrono Trigger style sprites. On top of all that, loads of FMV are packed in – about an hours worth, which is exactly what the DS needs these days. So we’ve got all the good looks that are needed for a new release.

All said, Blue Dragon Plus is a worthy addition to your DS library. You will definitely get lost in the story here and there if you haven’t played the Xbox 360 original, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You’ll be too busy losing large chunks of time seeing where the current storyline takes Shu and the others. There are a couple of twists here and there that will throw you – guaranteed.

So go ahead and pick this one up. You’ll be very glad you did. Praise Jeebus.

Overall: 8 out of 10

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