Preview: Blue Dragon Plus
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When I am game mastering, I pull my adventure ideas from many different sources. These sources include, but are not limited to, movies, television shows, history, real life, comic books, and… video games! I particularily like video games that are in the roleplaying genre or any video game that has a great story line. I could write an entire series of posts on the adventure ideas that I’ve developed using ideas from video games I’ve played, but that is for another post.
I was recently offered a review copy of a game called Blue Dragon Plus. If you aren’t familiar with the Blue Dragon series, its game designers have a pretty good story-teller lineage. They include many of the developers that brought us the iconic Final Fantasy series, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and more. With that kind of a background, I jumped on the offer for a review copy. Here is a little preview of the game and what it is all about.
Title: Blue Dragon Plus
Genre: Action/RPG
Platform: Nintendo DS™
Release: February 2009Game Overview
One year has passed since Shu and his companions defeated the tyrannical remnant of the Ancients, Nene. In the midst of the battle, the world split in two and now consists of a myriad of “cubes” that exploded from its depths. In one of these cubes, King Jibral stands on the balcony of Neo Jibral Castle and surveys the scene before him. He notices a mysterious cube in the distance suddenly start to move violently, and from it he sees the Shadow of a Balaur, a three-headed dragon, emerge. The enormous and sinister Shadow is just the beginning of the new turmoil and devastation to come.
Features
o Single Player Campaign With Over 30 Hours of Game Play
o Legion vs. Legion
+ Control up to 16 humans and Mecha Robos to fight against a horde of enemies
+ Equip your units with items and alter their composition to bolster their strength
o Take Advantage of Your DS Features Through Exciting Real-Time Battles and Shadow Fights!
o High Quality Dual Screen FMV’s Showcasing More Than an Hour of Story Events!
o Exciting RPG Elements Such As Item Collection, Character Progression and Robot CustomizationsProperty Overview
o Strong Collaboration of RPG Veterans Storyline created and directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy Series Director)
+ Characters created by Akira Toriyama (DragonBall Universe, Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger)
+ Music composed by Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy)
o Highly Acclaimed Development Studios
+ Mistwalker
+ Artoon (Yoshi’s Island)
+ Brownie Brown (Heroes of Mana)
+ Feelplus (Lost Odyssey)
o Rave Reviews of Blue Dragon on Xbox 360
+ Game Informer rated 9/10
+ Game Pro rated 4.75/5
+ IGN rated 7.9/10
Leave a Comment
February 20, 2009 at 5:01 pm
You’ll have to let us know how the game controls and if it kept you interested for the entire length of the game. I find I can only play my DS so long before I just need to put it down.
You’re quite right about adventure ideas, and how different things can inspire them. I’d like to hear more about how you come across adventure ideas and then develop them. Making the different parts of an adventure connect and make sense can be the tricky part, but rewarding when it all comes together. Perhaps you could also talk about what the differences between how a video game adventure is structured vs. a pen and paper game session.
February 20, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I think the DS game that kept me interested the longest was one of the Final Fantasy Tactics games for the DS. However, I made it through about 90% of the game and got to one particular battle that I just could not pass. I really believe that I required a combination of character that I didn’t possess, and thus I quit that game.
However, video game storylines are getting better and better. It no longer is acceptable (for the most part) to put out a lame game that looks cool but has no storyline. I find some of my best plot twists and hooks for adventuring for roleplaying in some of the video games I play.