Welcome to our Backlog Review of Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow, one of two Blue Dragon games that were released on Nintendo DS.
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow is an epic action role-playing game in a fictional open-world environment and the sequel to the critically acclaimed and successful Xbox 360 title. The player, aided by a young boy named Shu and his friends, will possess the power to control phantom shadows that mirror the action of its master, giving its owner miraculous strength and magical powers. Players can also enjoy a variety of new features to the series such as a customizable main character, equipment synthesis, and a different level of strategy as they embark on a grand adventure to stop the threat of a presence more powerful than anyone has ever known. Brand new storyline from tri-Crescendo, the developers of the critically acclaimed Eternal Sonata.
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow expands the gorgeous storyline of the beloved Blue Dragon game to immerse players in a land of unbelievable monsters, enduring quests and magical powers. Create your ideal character with the ability to choose and customize your avatar’s gender, hair, facial expressions, armor, weapons, and voice. Set two years after the original 2007 Blue Dragon story, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow features multiple side quests to unlock special items and characters and continues the series’ contemporary approach to traditional Japanese role-playing games. As you embark on this encompassing quest, you can explore eight 3D worlds filled with missions, monsters, and huge bosses. Beat even the most difficult bosses with the help of up to two other friends via local multiplayer mode or online Wi-Fi multiplayer. With a variety of weapons and magical Shadow powers at your call, you have the tools to succeed, but do you have the courage?
This game starts 2 years after the epic story told in the original Xbox 360 game, a game I recently reviewed and can be found on our site now.
On Nintendo DS, we will get the elephant in the room out of the way, yes, the graphics were not so good compared to X360, but comparing them to similar titles on the same platform, they were really nice. The second screen was almost never used and I think it would be easy to update this to 3DS or even Nintendo Switch as the top screen, when in use, was mostly the map. Nothing that can not be shown as an overlay on the big Switch screen.
As the story plays down in the same world as the original, we also encounter our old friends like Shu or Kluke and Jiro. You do play as yourself and in my case, I created a young boy in the style of Trunks from Dragon Ball Z. The designs were clearly from the hands of Akira Toriyama again, which I loved. Once the character creator was done, I got thrown into the game which unlike the game on Xbox 360 was not a classic RPG but this is more an action RPG with real time battles.
As the world lost its shadows, my main character still had his shadow and was able to borrow his power from those in his team. The RPG elements like upgrading everyone and everything were still very much present and were most easily accessible. There were a lot of features thrown at you from the start and as the story progressed, I had more and more things to learn about merging items together, … All to become more and more powerful and let me tell you, it was so very necessary.
Fighting is the main attraction in this game, but at the same time, I also consider this its biggest enemy.
Allow me to explain what I mean, as you are facing real-time battles, you got 2 choices, to use your shadow or your regular weapons. You need to keep the action button pressed and charged in order to activate your shadows, then you need to pick which attack or healing power you want to perform. During all this, the enemies still attack you, so yes, you can die while preparing for a massive attack.
This is, for me personally, a system that took me a few hours to really get accustomed to. I disliked it very much at the beginning and am still not fully convinced this is the best option for a game like this. Especially when faced with a big enemy. Those appear to be mostly out of category and do take several tries to really beat. Like they are way too overpowered or the AI of your team is just plain dumb.
At one point, I was battling a big beast, clearly overpowered, I was hit very hard and had lost half of my energy. Instead of healing the team, both my teammates just kept attacking the beast. Once I managed to hit my own healing power, did they do the same… It made no sense, I had specifically given both shadows with healing powers for this fight, just to see them ignore it.
Not just that, when you fall in battle, after a while, you do revive so as long as your team members do not fall in battle, you can get back into the action. Now imagine 1 of them hitting the part where they revive, you are barely holding on yourself. The first thing they do? Attack with the regular weapon they have.
Needless to say, I had my issues with the AI for this game, despite a great storyline and a depth akin to the original. I really wondered if I was doing something wrong as it seemed like my teammates sometimes purposely work against me. I know I can not expect too much out of a game, but when you are almost dead, is it that hard to use heal instead of windcutter?
In conclusion, the OG Blue dragon does have a very nice successor in this game on DS. Its story is both strong and warrants buying the game, it is cheap enough on eBay after all. Is it something I would have recommended at full retail? Probably not as the OG Blue Dragon delivers a much better experience.
My rating is 75% and as this is one out of 2 Blue Dragon games on DS, look forward to read my review of that soon!
