Blue Dragon! The Dragon's Shadow Awakens on DS!

Quando nel 2006 Mistwalker by a certain Hironobu Sakaguchi (the legendary game designer who gave the world Final Fantasy and forgive me if that’s not a small thing, to say nothing of holy shit) developed exclusively for Xbox360 Blue Dragon, it was certainly aware that it would have to work hard to develop a title that had something extra beyond the masses, so that that famous flight we were talking about earlier could happen without too many jolts or disastrous falls that would have made credibility plummet as well as sales. The title went fairly well despite many reservations, so Nintendo seized the dragon, uh I mean took the opportunity and published those that to this day constitute the two direct sequels for Ds, Blue Dragon Plus and Awakened Shadow: in those years, Nintendo’s dual-screen console was undoubtedly the first choice for a dynamic and colorful role-playing game like this.

Having had the good fortune to play all the titles in the series back to back, I can say that not only does the world invented by Sakaguchi have its own raison d'être, but fans of classic role-playing games will find plenty to sink their teeth into on the little big console with the dot on the top! The character design is easily attributable to the Master of Masters: just a quick glance at Shu and company to understand that it was handled by none other than Akira Toriyama and his studio, giving it that extra authorial touch.

From the very first moments, this title loudly tells us that yes, the evolution of the plot from the series’ original entry is there and can be seen, but at the same time it tells us of the desire to distance itself from it and take on a clearer, more defined role as a game in its own right. You can feel this both in Blue Dragon Plus and in Awakened Shadow, the first thanks to the revival of the combat system that closely resembles gems like Revenant Wings (which I devoured), the second by adopting a fun and spectacular multiplayer mode: a necessary little digression of mine, because just imagine, we’re talking about almost fifteen years ago, what could that have meant, especially on a tiny handheld console? In simple terms, an absolutely awesome thing, no more and no less.

If we talk about the mere visual aspect, the graphics engine reaches a good level even if it does not exactly work miracles; the game environments, both the dungeons and the cities, forests and various settings, are rendered with the effectiveness one would expect from the console we have in our hands.

Ambiented a couple of years after the main events of the first chapter, the new iteration of Blue Dragon does not choose the path of originality and dresses the game in a steady series of deja vu that could have been shaped with more innovative elements and that creative wit that seems to tell us: hey, I'm just doing the bare minimum, I know, but I'm doing it well enough, right?

È anyway fun? Yes, again, it is worth it; if you are JRPG lovers, don’t let this blue-scaled dragon slip away, and if you really want to see it fly, let it be on your consoles.