Cyber-geek that has always wanted to be an artist; Sings in the shower; good to his five kids; loyal to his friends; great with a rifle; okay with power tools; a touch of ADD when it comes to hobbies.
What I do
My thoughts on current events, things that I'm doing, my projects and plans.
There. Finally. The DNS has completed replication and all blog pages are go. I've uploaded the template and have the majority of the links and sidebars complete. More will be moved around and added as we go, so thank you for your patience. I still have to notify my affiliates (rpgbloggers.com and blogcatalog.com) of the changes, so it may be a little while before things start posting on the correct feeds. and there is still a matter of migrating the old feeds off this page and into the new catagories, which could take awhile. Maybe i'll just do the last six months or a year or something.
Sage is still doing up some title bars to add a splash of color, so i'll get those posted soon.
Anyhow, leave me comments on what you think of the new site. is it readable, easy to nav, etc. ? is there more of something you would like to see?
Ok, so it wasn't ready on monday. I found that I had put webforwards in my DNS instead of CNAMEs. Silly me. In a rush to finish up before a long weekend. Oh well. It will prolly be done by Wednesday. That will give me a couple more days to prepare the other pages, being that its a pain to upload templates lately in blogger. Here's a link for how to fix the BX--- errors on blogger, for any of you having the same issue.
Check back monday (about how long it should take for zone edit and godaddy to get their act together) for news about the progress of the update. i picked up www.blitzhobbying.com and that will be the new aggregate site. It's going to feed all the other pages. I've currently separated them into the following catagories:
Art
Comics
Hobbies
Personal
Reviews
RPGs
Writing
There will be links at the top of each page to each other site and feeds will be displayed on the main www site. It's going to take me a little time to move all the posts, but I think when it's done it will be worth the wait.
blog.markofcain.us will be directed to the main www site to make it easy for those who are currently reading to continue.
My few readers may have noticed a shockingly different facelift here, and I am quite pleased with it. yes, i pulled it from a free template site, but meh. I liked it (after a few color changes... default is ... pink.) This isn't going to be the last of the changes, however. I'm going to be separating things... adding additional pages that will focus on the different directions I tend to go so that readers can find what they are looking for and not have to wade thru what they don't care about.
This desire to alter my virtual home was inspired by another blogger. I was over at RoleplayingPro just now and read Samuel's post on What do Gamers want from Gaming Blogs. Very good question. I started thinking about the readers that came to my blog and what they looked at/commented on while they were here. That naturally lead my blitzy brain into additional thinking and now I need to segment my blog into various sections to respond to each situation.
For one, my video game reviews. Video Gamers that come to check out my reviews may not be all that interested in: my personal home life; the people I knew in prison; my creative writing attempts; my webcomic work; my various hobbies. Each of these things is getting its own page. I'm going to create a main page that will feedblast each section, and readers can choose which they want.
I'm also considering a domain change. i've had markofcain.us for awhile now, so that's why i've been using it, but now that i've picked the Blitz Hobby-ing title, i think its time to search for a more relevant address.
So in the future, look for big changes here at Blitz Hobby-ing. If you have suggestions or recommendations, leave me a comment.
When i let the dogs out this morning, i found a plain yellow padded envelope on the front porch with a big UPS Ground label on the front. Inside was a nice letter from the marketing agency, thanking me for taking the time for the review and reminding me to find their web tool online and let them know when the review was posted; and the game: Blue Dragon Plus for the Nintendo DS.
My DS was dead from way too much Animal Crossing: Wild World over the last couple days, so it took me a few hours before i was set up to try Blue Dragon Plus.
But i'm probably getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. This is my first video game review, and i was surprised even to be asked to take part, but i want to make sure i do a thorough job and be fair.
I will say up front that i was not influenced by the marketing agency that asked me to review the game in any way. the fact that the game was shipped to me for free, i can only assume, is the standard in reviews, as evidenced from Penny Arcade and Ctrl+Alt+Del mentioning in their blog that such-and-such publisher sent them random-game to review.
I refrained from loading up the original Blue Dragon on my 360 while waiting for this game, wanting to go into the review fresh and perhaps as if i had never even played it. It has been about a year since i played the 360 game, and i couldn't remember much, so I'm off to a good start.
I also refrained from reading any other reviews or watching trailers of Blue Dragon Plus, so as not to be influenced by anything except my own experience.
The other thing I refrained from was the instruction booklet. I had two reasons for this:
One - As a man, I have a natural aversion to instruction booklets.
Two - I wanted to really know how intuitive this game was. Would it have controls easy to guess and navigate, or would it be incredibly complex and require remapping and a cheat sheet?
So, on with the review
Initial Thoughts
Good intro cutscene, really reminded me of what i remember from the 360 version. Very cinematic and recognizable characters. Kind of surprised me for the DS (but the only other game I have is Animal Crossing, so I really don't have much of a basis for comparison).
Feels like final fantasy tactics at first glance after the cutscene. 3D Isometric, shoulder buttons for rotating the camera, D-Pad for positioning the camera.
I like that it introduces the characters in the party at the start and gives tips for how to effectively use them in combat.
Controls were very intuitive and only took mere seconds to play with and figure out. No complexity at all.
Yes, so there are the first three thoughts I had. My initial impression is a positive one.
Initial Thoughts Rating: +
Storyline
The second thing I noticed is how story-driven Blue Dragon Plus is. Packed with excellent cinematic cut scenes and story-furthering dialog interspersed with some very strategic real time combat. For those of us that are fans of the Final Fantasy series and can handle lots of dialogue and cut scenes, you'll feel right at home.
The story was engaging and interesting. It built upon the world from the original title and flowed well, much like a comic book or graphic novel. It made sense in context and was well written.
Storyline Rating: +
Gameplay
The real-time combat takes a little getting used to. Most isometric games like this that I am used to (FF:Tactics and even Blue Dragon(360)) were turn based, but when the enemies don't wait for you to pick your action, they just start walking and beating on your characters out of the expected turn sequence, the world flips upside down and its time to build a new strategy.
This is where the simplicity of the controls shines. Three icons on the right side of the screen control party selection. The first is for scrolling through your party individually, the second is for circling the target party members with the stylus, and the third is selecting all party members. Clicking on an enemy sends all selected characters to release whoop-ass. There are two to three icons at the bottom of the screen for each character selected. Special attacks, and medicine for healing. Simply click one with the stylus and combat pauses so you can ensure the target of your spell.
I was easily able to group my combat-oriented members on the enemies to overwhelm them and send the scout out to gather treasure and medicine to keep them alive.
The rest of gameplay is spent reading through the linear storyline and watching the cut scenes, or making minor direction choices that automatically move you to an area occupied by either a monster or a shop. Simplified perhaps too much, but easy to understand and work with.
Gameplay Rating: +
Genre Elements
Blue Dragon Plus is listed as an Action RPG. Combat action is the primary element of gameplay, so I give it a + for that.
The 'Key Points' page of the marketing site boasts "Exciting RPG Elements Such As Item Collection, Character Progression and Robot Customizations".
Fine, let's talk about RPG Elements.
Items are collected and assigned to characters to grant additional stat bonuses and counteract weaknesses or increase strengths.
After combat, characters are awarded experience points and possibly level up. There is nothing to do during level-up. Stat increases are awarded automatically.
I haven't even gotten to the robot customization yet. This intrigues me, and I'm looking forward to it.
But how does it play as an RPG? That depends on your definition of Role Playing Game. I'm a paper and dice RPG'er and text-based RPG'er, which means I have a much different view on role play than WoW or EverQuest RPG'ers. So for me, the RPG element was the weak point of this game.
But as for the Action, Blue Dragon Plus is all about action.
I would say this is a neutral, one plus/one minus, but the RPG portion is listed as "Elements", and not designated as the primary genre, so we'll catagorize it Action.
Genre Element Rating: +
Replay-ability
I know I haven't yet played the whole game through to the end, but in my experience so far, there isn't much to replay. Choices are limited to how you go about taking out the bad guys during combat. All conversation is pre-scripted with no input from the player, so once you've played through to the end, that's it. I'm not one who even re-reads books more than once, so I probably wouldn't play it more than once, but what I have played so far was good.
Replay-ability Rating: -
Summary
Blue Dragon Plus is a good story-driven combat game with some innovative elements in a familiar world. While not a true RPG, it does try to incorporate popular elements to appeal to everyone, and does an okay job. The 30+ hours of playtime is a fresh release in the wake of shorter games, but the complete linearity does not promote replay-ability. More of a graphic novel with combat breaks, but still recommended for fans of the original or similar titles. Having first completed the original is suggested for understanding the back story.
Dragon Score Image copyright: WarSpider Entertainment LLC, and is used with permission. DragonClash.com is neither owned or operated by Nintendo and is not associated with the Blue Dragon Plus product.
This blog is about Soul Existence and his completely random hobbies that change at least monthly. It will chronicle each of these unfinished hobbies in their various states as he wanders back and forth between them. It will update regularly, as there is always something new to try.
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