Blue Dragon Plus: BFDs

When it comes to video games, I love two things: guns, and shooting things with those guns. Every once in a while though I attempt to expand those horizons by playing titles that are outside of my preferred genre. I have discovered it often times either drops a wonderful new world at my awaiting fingertips, or it bugs the absolute shit out of me in no time flat. My most recent adventure, Blue Dragon Plus on the Nintendo DS, managed to do a little bit of both. Wondering why I chose that particular game? Primarily because I’m extremely lazy and can play it in a fully reclined position while being tucked away safely in bed. Doesn’t that sound fabulous? And it was, for the most part.

While Blue Dragon Plus is available exclusively on the DS, it’s the successor to a console role-playing game previously released for the Xbox 360. If a story about five cute little friends who are determined to defeat an evil purple king by the name of Nene sounds familiar, you might have played it. If those five little friends had big ass dragons magically come out of them on the random occasion, you definitely played it. While the original Blue Dragon was an RPG, Blue Dragon Plus starts off as that but slowly morphs into a real time strategy game. The main thing I learned is that there’s lots of talking. Lots and lots and lots of talking. So the little characters, they talk right? They tell you all about their fighting skills, magical powers, and tidbits from their past. And apparently you have to pay attention because if you just speed through the text by keeping your stylus constantly on the screen, you’ll have to start over again because you won’t have any fucking clue what’s going on. Trust me on that.

On to play through number two (which involved actually reading the text and paying attention to the storyline). The first thing I noticed is that the cut scenes and accompanying music were absolutely enchanting. Having only played simple puzzle games on my DS prior to this experience, I had no idea that little device could power such beautiful graphics and sound. Watching those full motion videos clued me in that the plot to Blue Dragon Plus was ridiculously similar to Blue Dragon. Remember the goal of defeating Nene? Despite the fact that you did that the last game, you are all the sudden doing it again. Deja vu, I had it.

The beginning of the game is easy to pick up controls wise, especially if you go through the simple tutorial that teaches you the basic movements. However once the meat of the game starts (the turn-based system), things get a lot more complicated. Unfortunately it’s not very intuitive so if it’s your first experience with this sort of game, be prepared to spend a decent amount of time trying to figure out exactly how to play. There are a plethora of different things to look at, from navigating where you want to go to dividing up your teams to utilizing various items you find on your travels to accepting side quests to assigning character skills to scouting out areas to five hundred million other things. Ok, perhaps not five hundred million other things but it was certainly overwhelming enough to feel like that.

While figuring out the finer details of the game was challenging, gameplay during the battles was a breeze. There are three different ways to guide your characters: individually, circling part of the group, or moving them collectively as one. While that part was quite convenient, the way the teeny tiny characters moved was often beyond frustrating. Say you want them to go from Point A to Point B. For whatever reason, half the time they would choose the most ridiculous path to get there, taking much longer than needed due to weaving around nonexistent objects. The other half of the time, they thought about the most ridiculous path and then made it 110% more complicated. Not only was it less than optimal, but it often made me want to bang my head repeatedly against the wall. Luckily, as I played in bed, my pillow was the nearest object so it wasn’t quite as painful as it could have been. Thank goodness for small miracles.

Basically this game can be summed up as fighting battle after battle as these adorable little characters that have magical dragon powers to assist them. There is the customary ranking and leveling up along with the distracting side quests with the entire game taking up 20-30 hours of your time. If you’ve played this sort of game before, it will all be familiar to you. If you haven’t, you’ll be able to pick it up, even though it will be a bit of a struggle. If you’re anything like me, you may just find yourself pleasantly surprised at how much you are enjoying a game that does not have a big fucking gun in it. Perhaps because it has big fucking dragons in it! Apparently that’s an acceptable substitute. Who knew?