Although I usually only review retro games here at The Dwarf, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a review copy of a new Nintendo DS title, Blue Dragon Plus, and since I’ve hardly had a chance to play with the DS, I figured I’d give this game a shot. Blue Dragon Plus is a spin-off from the Xbox 360 game Blue Dragon, a Japanese RPG that was fairly well-received when it was released in late summer 2007, no doubt thanks to the involvement of three video game legends – Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, musical genius Nobuo Uematsu, and Chrono Trigger artist Akira Toriyama. Now, while fans are waiting for a sequel, the Blue Dragon series is taking similar steps to the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series by expanding onto other gaming platforms.

I had no idea what I was getting into with Blue Dragon Plus, I only knew that it was supposed to be a very different style of game in comparison to the original for the 360. As it happens, Plus is a game that blurs the line between tactical RPG and real-time strategy. So if you’re in the mood for a game that falls somewhere in-between Ogre Battle and StarCraft, you’re in luck – although, perhaps for the better, BDP has less depth than other games of its ilk, meaning it’s much easier to get invested in without getting bogged down with mounds of minutiae and micro-management. Gameplay consists of putting together units from the sizable cast of characters (many of whom return from the 360’s Blue Dragon) and completing missions on a variety of battlefields. Some missions require you to defeat all your enemies on the screen, some only ask that you destroy one particular enemy, while others ask that you obtain a certain item or successfully direct your unit members to a particular location without getting killed. The usual RPG tropes are all present: you gain experience points, level up, acquire new skills, buy and sell items, etc.

I’ve played through almost ten hours of Blue Dragon Plus, and my main reaction thus far is simply: the game is fun. Now, I’m not going to say that BDP is any kind of revolutionary game, except perhaps in the innovative use of the DS stylus for all the commands, but it’s one of those games that will be certainly be a blast to play for RTS/RPG junkies, especially those bemoaning the slim selection of games from this particular hybrid genre on the DS. There seems to be a nice amount of challenge to the game, not too easy, but not so hard you’ll want to chuck your DS across the room. You’ll probably get smacked around by the bad guys a few times, especially if you come to a fight ill-prepared or put together a unit with members that don’t compliment each other, but the game makes up for it by tossing you a slow-pitch battle every now and then, and you’re constantly rewarded with good loot. There’s no job system, ala Final Fantasy Tactics, to concern yourself with – instead you have pre-defined character archetypes. The game goes out of its way to tell you how best to use each individual character, which genuinely helps. Some characters are best used at the front, some are long-range attackers, some rely on speed, while others are more suited to soloing groups of enemies. You’ve also got a few different types of spellcasters to utilize – healers, status affecting mages, and the defensive and offensive skilled casters. Later in the game you can build robots to add to your party, which you can customize (provided you have the right parts) in order to fill in any weaknesses your units may have. The only slight bummer in terms of gameplay is the AI, which seems to always be somewhat of a problem in a RTS environment. If you’ve ever played one, you’ll know the drill: you try to send a unit to a nearby location and they take the longest possible route instead of the obvious short path in front of them, or your friendlies blindly walk through or into dangerous hazards on the map – so you may have to keep a close eye on your team members during the battles.

The game boasts at least thirty hours of gameplay, but if you want to go through all the extra stuff included, it could very well end up being much more than that. There’s a number of sidequests that offer you bonus treasures and rewards, in addition to the Pokemon styled monster book, which records the percentage of monsters you’ve encountered and defeated, and a treasure chest hunt. Obsessives will definitely be going out of their way to achieve a 100% on both monsters and treasure chests. There is, unfortunately, a bit of level grinding you may have to endure, although you may be able to avoid this by spending your time building up only one or two elite squads instead of trying to level everyone up simultaneously.

Graphics are among the positives this game can boast. The majority of your time will be spent looking at the 3-D battlefields on the touch screen, while the top screen shows an easy to comprehend map and the conditions for victory and defeat. The sprites are all 2-D, and despite my usual aversion to anime style art, even I cannot deny how beautiful they look. Many of the battlefields take on dark tones – deep maroon and crimson to represent a furnace room or midnight blue in a frozen tomb, for instance. This is complimented perfectly by the character sprites, which are vivid and colorful in contrast to the background art. The spell effects are wonderful little animations (that thankfully don’t last for too long like certain other RPG’s), and there are even some FMV cut-scenes included, the quality of which is surprisingly excellent.

On the other hand, the sound department is not on the same level as the graphics. Effects are generally fine, the aforementioned spells give off great ‘whoosh‘ or ‘boom‘ noises, weapons swish, bang, and clank, etc. It is with the music that I am more concerned. I’ve always held Nobuo Uematsu in the highest regard (the man did a 23 minute opera piece in one of his scores for crying out loud), so it pains me to say that the score to Blue Dragon Plus is only serviceable at best. It’s not that the music is bad or annoying in any way, it’s just very, very unmemorable. There’s nothing that will stick out and grab you like the famous arpeggios in the intro to Final Fantasy or one of the many instantly catchy battle tunes he’s come up with. Of course, you can’t hit a home run every time you step up to the plate, but this score only just makes it to first.

The plot could be a potential issue for some players. Odds are, you’ll probably get more enjoyment out of this game if you’ve played through Blue Dragon on the 360, although some might not find it necessary. I often found myself confused as to what the heck was going on, and would just try to hurry up through swathes of dialogue to move on to the next battle scene. That’s another problem: for a game that has this much text, there should be an option to change the speed of the speech bubbles if you so desire. Because of the amount of talking that goes on, you won’t get into the meat of the game until over an hour of gameplay, and even then you’ve got another few hours before you can start taking on quests or adding robots to your team. It’s fair to say that you’ll need to give BDP some time to show you everything it’s made of before you decide whether or not you like it.

Overall, despite a couple of flaws, I think Blue Dragon Plus is going to be a winner. It has a high fun factor, obviously the most important aspect of any video game, but doubly important in a RTS/tactical RPG game, where boredom can rapidly set in if the developers aren’t careful. I’ll be interested to see whether or not this series can really push itself up there and compete with Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, especially in Japan.