Written by Neilie Johnson, 3/17/2010
In 2007, legendary Final Fantasy game designer/director/producer Hironobu Sakaguchi first introduced JRPG fans to a group of young friends: Shu, Jiro, Kluke, Zola, and Marumaro, as they fought the evil, pointy-eared king Nene and his robot minions. This original RPG—Blue Dragon—featured turned-based combat, the core of which was the use of magical shadows. Each young hero had the power to call up a distinct shadow which when summoned, took on the shape of a tiger, a bat, a phoenix, a dragon or a minotaur and could then access special (and very powerful) attacks. The first Blue Dragon was succeeded two years later by Blue Dragon Plus, a title that functioned more as a stopgap than a true sequel, with real-time strategy-style gameplay, rather than turn-based. At this year's GDC, D3 Publisher offered us a sneak peek at the first game's true sequel, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow and we were happy to take it.
Set two years after the first Blue Dragon, the game avoids its two predecessors' turn-based or real-time-strategy approach to combat, featuring instead a combat system closer to that of an action/RPG. Combat is fairly simple, consisting mainly of attacking with the A button (or holding A down to summon your shadow) and blocking with the B button. You control one character at a time in a party of three, fighting until your magic bar fills up, thus enabling you to cast from a range of spells located at the bottom of the screen. Shadows this time include Phoenix, Minotaur, Beetle, Mecha Robo and Dragon and function a bit differently, leveling up (rather than your characters leveling up) and with any shadow being able to cast any available spell. From what we saw, the action combat system seems a little strange, mostly due to the widely-scattered enemies, but the upside of that is that you don't get pushed into one random battle after another.
Although the game is a sequel, players this time do not play the usual main character Shu, and instead have the ability to create their own character, a nameless hero who awakes from a mysterious sleep only to find that all shadow magic has vanished from the world. Players start their adventure by customizing their characters with options that include gender, hair style and color, facial features and even voice. Throughout the game, players will be able to change the look of their characters by visiting barber shops and they can also choose their own special emblems, which at first seem merely vanity items but later in the game, give players access to even greater powers. What's coolest about the item system this time is that whatever your character equips actually shows on it, which provides a lot of options for creating a unique-looking character.
Other changes in addition to combat and character customization include crafting and enchanting. Players will be able to collect materials from vanquished enemies and use them to create various items and weapons, and will also be able to power those things up through item synthesis. This becomes even more interesting due to random drops gained during the three-player boss battles. We were told that this multiplayer mechanic adds greatly to the game's replayability, giving gamers good reason to fight bosses, and fight them more than once. Even with the slew of gameplay changes, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow will still feel familiar in many ways to fans of the series. There's still the extensive item collection, with over 250 weapons and items for players to customize their characters with and the battle UI looks much the same, with players choosing from various attacks using onscreen icons during battle and charging up shadows at key moments.
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow features artwork by Dragon Ball Z artist Akira Toriyama as well as 20-30 hours of gameplay in just the main quest line. Players ambitious enough to take all the side quests can look forward to upwards of 60 hours. The game also offers multiplayer in the form of three-player challenges and boss battles both locally and via WiFi Connection. D3 Publisher wouldn't give us a more specific release date than “April or May of 2010”, so let's just say Blue Dragon Awakened Shadow is set for release on DS some time this spring.
