The original Blue Dragon was released way back in December of 2006 and finally brought to the US in August of 2007. Due to its success, there is now a sequel, Blue Dragon Plus. It is not a port of the original game. This is an entirely new game with completely different gameplay. Whereas the first one was a true turn-based RPG, Blue Dragon Plus is a real-time strategy RPG.

When they show the characters on full screen, they look exactly like they did in the first Blue Dragon. Otherwise they're much more sprite-like to make them smaller and fit the screen better. The backgrounds themselves are very different from the original. Instead of being mostly outside in nature scenes, here you're in a digital world. There is a lot of grey and computer-looking areas. Personally, I thought the backgrounds were slightly boring with little color. You'll recognize most of the enemies from the previous game. Given that they're in a digital area, there are a lot of robots. But there are also some of the ghost monsters and the other monsters that you saw in the ancient's areas before. Cut scenes are just beautiful though! Animation is amazing. They make up for the lack of color in the backgrounds of the battles.

The sounds can be very helpful in the game. If your characters are all spread out, which happens more than I like, it's hard to keep an eye on all of them. If you hear certain warning sounds, you'll know someone is low on health and you need to find them to heal them quickly. This warning saved my guys more than once. The background music for the most part is pretty, but not necessary to the game. I wouldn't recommend turning the sounds off though, because then you'll miss all the helpful warnings!

Blue Dragon Plus starts off one year after the final battle with Nene in Blue Dragon. The gang thought that Nene was destroyed and everything was going to be fine. Granted Jibral had to be rebuilt, but the new city is very nice. Unfortunately while observing the surroundings, King Jibral and Zola noticed a disturbance. They call in Shu to see if he'll go investigate it. Zola and Szabo are going with him. Yes it is the same Szabo who was a really difficult enemy in the previous game. He has been rebuilt and is now a friend of humanity. When Maru-maru hears that Lady Zola is going, he demands to go along as well.

Things go along fine until Szabo's old pals show up. I know you remember them too. They're all robots that used to be commanded by Szabo. Things really start to get messy here and the battles begin in full. The gang learns that Nene is back, which means that trouble can't be far behind.

Throughout the game, the gameplay is always the same. You have a group of heroes and a group of enemies. Your heroes must defeat all the enemies. You will get new characters, even Fushira (Shu's grandpa joins in this time) and different enemies as the game progresses but it's still the same type battles. To me it got tedious after a while. One thing you should definitely make note of is the statement King Jibral makes that if any of the enemies make it to the castle, the city will be destroyed. If the city is destroyed, it's game over for you. I would highly recommend that you work your way down to avoid losing the game early.

Blue Dragon Plus is an easy game to win, but a difficult game to control. To start off with, they never actually tell you how to play the game in-game. They just throw you out there, put enemies on the screen and tell you to defeat them. These enemies turn out to be really easy to beat, but it would have been nice to have some kind of instruction. They do give you very useful tips on how and what to use each character for when they introduce them, but this is only helpful if you know how to tell them what to do. I really hate having to read the manual to find out some little control detail. Especially if you get the game used without a manual, I can see how it would end up frustrating to figure some things out. Granted you can go through the Tutorial, but tutorials always feel like a waste of time to me.

The scenarios themselves I found to be very easy to beat. You are given a very large number of healing items on each character. These will heal instantly so you can let their health get really low without worry. Some of your characters will be able to call healing spells too and mass heal everyone. Most times if your whole party dies, you'll just end up back in the control room and can try again. The one thing to avoid is letting an enemy get to Jibral as I mentioned earlier. Otherwise, you shouldn't have any trouble beating the game.

As I just said, you don't get any instructions on the mechanics in-game, so I'll give you the basics here. First thing, you can save anywhere by pressing the Start button. It will also prompt you to save after you complete a mission. The Select button will change out the map that you see on the top screen. This can be quite helpful in figuring out where you need to look at. The (L) and (R) buttons rotate the camera so that you can see things from a better angle and the D-pad will move your camera around the areas.

So you're probably wondering how to move troops if it's not with the D-pad. Almost everything else in this game is played by using the touch screen. To tell an individual where to go, tap on them and then tap where you want them to go to. If you want to tell a whole group, you can circle them on the screen by tapping on Multiple Selection and then drawing a circle around the group you want. You can also tell everyone where to go by tapping Select All.

To use items, spells, and other things that might be there, tap on a character and look at the bottom left corner of the touch screen. Tap the icon there that you want to select. You'll then be given a menu of anything under that category. You might have several items to choose from or several different shadow attacks to use. Tap on the one that you want and it will be called forth.

On the whole, Blue Dragon Plus is a decent strategy game. I did find it difficult at times to keep up with all the characters since they just stand there after they've killed whatever you told them to kill (unless they are directly attacked). Quite often, I'd lose someone and find them just chilling out by a chest they had opened. But it wasn't very hard to beat the monsters, so I usually didn't need that guy anyway. Given that the gameplay is the same throughout though, I would recommend renting it to find out if you like the style of play first.