Blue Dragon Plus

Developer: Mistwalker
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Players: 1
Retail Price: $30
Availability: Nintendo DS

Real-time strategy on the DS shouldn’t be such a risky proposition, but developers still have some strides to make to get it right. Brownie Brown (Magical Starsign, Heroes of Mana) has made another attempt at the genre with Blue Dragon Plus, a sequel to the non-Plus JRPG, but demonstrate that they still have some kinks to work out.

The game is more in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics than Starcraft in terms of presentation, and micromanaging isn’t as big an issue because of this. You’ll have a handful of characters, as opposed to straight up armies. Good thing, too, because controlling 8 is difficult enough, nevermind 80. Inputting commands is simple in theory — tap the character you want to use, then tap the enemy you want them to attack. Or the place you want them to walk. Or the chest you want them to open… you get the picture. And it works well when managing 1 character at a time. But when 10 enemies converge upon your party at once the system shows its flaws. You rarely click the character you want because everything is so close together, and you run into the same problem when trying to select an enemy to attack. It’s almost best to click the “select all” function, run, and reset up formation — hardly an exciting tactic.

Also, using spells can be an exercise in futility. Certain spells affect a radius, so those are fairly simple to use. Click it, let the meter charge and it auto-unleashes. Direct attacks, on the other hand, can be a bigger pain. Enemies have to be in your character’s sights in order for the attack to occur. Since there’s a charging meter, you have to time it correctly, lest your enemy slowly strolls past your charging hero, canceling the attack. Again, it’s not such a big deal when you’re fighting one or two enemies with one or two characters, but it’s incredibly disheartening during a battle with 20 or more sprites around.

Even in the face of these flaws, there’s still some pleasure to be had. The game is a good deal of fun to play once you account for the shortcomings, even if it is highly repetitive. Baiting and luring groups of enemies back to your party for an attack is satisfying — which is a good thing since it’s one of the only tactics that works.

Blue Dragon Plus seems like a game geared for existing fans of the series, but it isn’t limited to them. Obviously, it can be difficult getting into a series when games and cartoons have already established the story, but the game does an admirable job bringing the inexperienced up to speed. The game introduces each member of your party with a profile that describes their powers and their characteristics. It’s maybe a bit redundant for existing fans, but it’s a welcome feature for the uninitiated.

Despite the interesting character interplay, the plot is fairly drab and does little to inspire the desire to continue on. This is where the game will probably lose those who haven’t played the Xbox 360 prequel. If you don’t find the core mechanics engaging you probably won’t sink a lot of time into this one. Those who can get past the gameplay-snags will find a basic, but decent DS RTS to slog through, but it does require a fair amount of acceptance.