Monster Raid in the Shade- Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow

SeanNOLA’s Take: Akira Toriyama gets around.  Since 1986, he’s lent his unique artistic style to dozens of games, most of which have involved dragons, their quests and/or their balls. For the most part, Toriyama’s art has been a placeholder for a seal of approval, as if were saying “I am providing my art to this product to ensure that it is at the very least above average, or very marketable,” but there is one Toriyama franchise that seems to fall short on both of these promises. Blue Dragon was covered in marketing gasoline from the word “go” when it launched on the Xbox 360, but despite the tandem release of a game, a cartoon show and a line of toys and trading cards, there was never a spark to set it off.  The game is generally remembered as a mediocre title, and the series has been fighting an uphill battle with relevancy ever since. The series’ third title, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow attempts to forcibly expose the brand to the Monster Hunter crowd by offering a multiplayer quest-fest, but with Dragon Quest IX right around the corner, it may be too little, too late.

Before setting off on your quest, you will be asked to build your avatar. The character creator is passably robust, for a DS title, and there is a hefty amount of dress-up items to equip throughout the game to make your hero unique. The story begins with your nameless protagonist emerging from a deep slumber. He/she stumbles into town to discover that everyone else has lost their shadow!  Now, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except for the fact that in the world of Blue Dragon, shadows are not just areas of low light, but giant monsters, bound to their masters to help them lift heavy things and keep them from harm. Being that you are the only person with a shadow, the king requests that you, along with a complete cast of familiar faces from the first two Blue Dragon adventures, investigate disappearance, and their connection to the mysterious doors that have popped up all over town.

Unlike its predecessors, Awakened Shadow incorporates a real-time action combat system, made up primarily of mashing the A button or tapping the stylus to attack.  Shadow attacks can be performed by holding down the attack button to charge and releasing to unleash a powerful spell. On paper, the simple battle mechanic is very straight-forward and accessible, but in practice, it suffers from inaccurate, clunky controls.  Whether you choose to use the stylus or the D-pad, you’re in for a frustrating experience. The classic D-Pad controls feel very stiff and unnatural, while the more fluid Zelda-style stylus control allows for better movement control, but suffers from an unresponsive tap-to-attack battle system. As if sloppy controls aren’t exasperating enough to make you pull your hair out, every time you die, you are forced to helplessly watch your AI partners flounder for 10 seconds while you wait to respawn, and if they die during that time(and the will die) you have to go all the way back to the last save point. I can’t tell you how many times my party died with 1 second left.

Aside from the cumbersome interface and trying death mechanic, Awakened Shadow is marred by technical issues. Although the game looks great in calm situations, battles that involve more than a handful characters on screen at once cause tremendous slow-down, bringing combat to a screeching halt. The game attempts to deal with this occurrence by having larger enemies, such as bosses, occasionally turn invisible (and I don’t think I need to tell you that being killed by something you can’t see is not fun).  The camera also poses a pretty constant threat. You have full control of the camera’s pan, but not of the tilt or center, so finding that could-be-invisible foe becomes that much more of a chore.

It’s disappointing that the third Blue Dragon isn’t more fun. The world and the characters are fairly interesting, and the possibility of multiplayer slashing would be very enticing, if the game were a little more solid.  Instead, Awakened Shadow does little more than whet the appetite for Dragon Quest IX, which promises everything that is nice about this title, backed by the Nintendo Seal of Approval. Fans of the series might still check this out to see where Shu and the gang end up, but those interested solely in this title might want to spend their money elsewhere.