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Blue Dragon Plus
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Developer: Feel Plus
Genre: Strategy RPG
Release Date: February 24, 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS
ESRB: E - Everyone
Reviewer: Eric
 When
Blue Dragon was first released it marked the beginning of a line of stellar RPGs
on the Xbox 360. The next move for the series was on the Nintendo DS, a portable
system that is known for its strong role playing games. Can Blue Dragon Plus
make a name for itself or does it deserve to be forgotten as soon as possible?
There are more disappointments in this game than the Xbox 360 Blue Dragon. These
games play completely different but there have been games like Blue Dragon Plus
before. Blue Dragon Plus plays just like Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and
Heroes of Mana, both games doing a much better job and they came out before
Plus.
One of the major problems with Plus is the developers tried to add in too much
from the Blue Dragon Universe. For the first major RPG on the Xbox 360 it had a
lot going for it and the final product was great. Here Plus is putting all
that in one cartridge with a gameplay formula that makes no sense at all.
Heroes of Mana and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings worked because it had a
story that built around the whole main character controlling an army of
creatures. Granite the story might have been a bit on the bad side in Revenant
Wings but it worked for the gameplay. Blue Dragon Plus gets rid of the creatures
and adds in a bunch of new menus that are way hard to go through in a game like
this. It is down right sloppy.
Everything unique in Blue Dragon is here. All of those unique features are way
hard to use in Plus. To use your special moves with your shadows you have to be
so far from your enemy and they can not be running away way too fast. If they
are moving too fast then the move is cancelled out and your character is
standing still, twiddling their thumbs. That happens way too often and later on
in the game it will become the key part in the battle.
 On
the other hand the animations are spectacular, much better than both Revenant
Wings and Heroes of Mana. The special moves look just like they did on the Xbox
360 just compressed for the DS version. All of the in-game videos look real good
too but they are lacking voice acting.
Even with the great animations there is still worse to talk about. Plus has the
typical “one year” storyline. Pretty much every character from the first game is
here and some of them have some revealing secrets. That is my problem, all of
the sudden other characters have shadows now. Really there is no other way
around this? How come these characters didn’t step forward when things were
getting rough in Blue Dragon on the Xbox 360?
The best strategy for this game is having all your characters stay in one group
and move forward. Trying to branch off into little groups will show how bad the
controls can be in the game. Do this for 30 hours and you will have the game
beat. That’s right 30 hours, you’ll either enjoy the whole thing or the
weaknesses will take over your Nintendo DS.
Final Verdict
Blue Dragon Plus can not compete with all of the other RPGs on the Nintendo DS.
With Dragon Quest V, a new Final Fantasy game coming out in the next month or so
and a strong lineup of Atlus games I can’t help but think that Blue Dragon Plus
came out at the wrong time. It has a few strong elements but most of them won’t
matter in the long run.
Rating
6.75 out of 10
Blue Dragon Plus Trailer
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