This is a game we basically knew nothing about before it came out. SE had a countdown site, people were confused at the reveal, and then trailers started  appearing, and people were confused with them since the trailers didn’t explain much about the game. Now the game is out and it all became clear.

So, is it fun to play? Is it as confusing as the trailers made it seem? Is it worth the 60 USD it costs to import? Read on and see!

Keep in mind, this is a japanese game, and I can’t read japanese, so I played the game as well as I could considering that “handicap”, and I might forget/not know about some details.

Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Date of Release: August 6th 2009
Platform: Nintendo DS

Genre: Action RPG
Players: from 1 to 4, no online

Looks and sounds
The character sprites are 2D. Not incredibly high-quality 2D, but they look fine. One problem is the point of view. The environments (if you can call them that…) are in 3D and the camera constantly moves around as you traverse the stages, yet you always see you character from one of 4 sides, but not depending on the camera angle. Otherwise they look fine. The normal monsters are also 2D sprites. There’s a few basic enemy designs, and color palette switches for stronger versions. Nothing very original, but they look okay.
The show stealer here are the giant monster designs. They’re big 3D renditions of Square Enix summons/various other monsters/characters. And they look quite good. It’s obvious that they suffer from the DS’ lower power and the texture’s look quite bad when the giants are too close, but they’re really quite well done despite all this. Their animations are mostly really smooth and natural, and they’re huge compared to everything else in the game. So considering how strong the DS is, this is very well done graphically.

The sound design is standard. The sound effects are fine, the giants’ voices (they mostly just scream and stuff) sound fine, and the music is okay . Not a very memorable soundtrack, but it works great with the game.

Gameplay
The game is all controlled on the touch screen. You can either move around with the stylus by dragging it around, or use the D-pad (this is highly suggested). You can do a teleporting dash by scribbling randomly with the stylus, or pressing the L button (also highly suggested). Attacking is done by tapping the touch screen where you want to attack. If you tap on a normal enemy, you’ll walk towards it to hit it (unless you use a ranged character). That can be annoying since, if you’re in a big group of enemies, you character can have trouble getting to the right one. If you want to attack the giant, it’s the same thing. Tap the area of the giant that you want to attack, and you’ll attack. If you’re too far, you’ll do some kind of range attack,  while if you’re close to the edge of one of the platforms that are closer to the giant(and if he’s close enough) you’ll do a normal attack (some characters can combo by tapping multiple times, others just attack from a range normally). How a normal sword slash can hit a monster that’s a mile away I’ll never know, but that’s how it works.

So how the game basically works is that you’re on big floating platforms with areas that are at different heights and stairs to get to different parts of the platform. There’s also warp points which, during certain missions (mostly the free missions), warp you to different platforms. There’s 5 platforms in the stages. One is a bit further from the rest and is usually used in certain missions that mostly make you fight normal enemies. The rest surround the area where the giant usually is (though some giants can get out of that square to get in front of the further one).

The game is set-up with a bunch of missions. When you’re done with a mission, you get to the main menu and have a bunch of things you can do, and you go to the next mission whenever you want. The main goal of every mission is to destroy one of the current giants’ core, or something protectiong one of their cores. Cores are differently-colored areas on the giant which has less defense than the rest of his body. Armor protecting cores also gets more damage than the body itself. If you do about 6 damage by hitting the giant randomly, hitting the cores will do at least over 20. Other missions  require running to a portal, fighting normal enemies on the way, or surviving for a short amount of time.

Each giant has a set of 5 missions to go through. The last mission is always to finish off the giant. When that’s done, you get a series of free missions related ot that giant, which give you different objectives than the main missions, sometimes asking to remove certain body parts from the giant, or destroying a stronger version.

There are also multiple characters you can use, six in total. Each character is a bit different. Some have magic, some use guns, some are slow, some are fast, some only use range attacks, others use close-range. Each character has a different basic element as well. You can train any character you want, whether you train just one and concentrate on that one, or train them all to use them for different situations.

Fighting is fairly simple. As explained above, tap a target, either a normal enemy, the giant’s body, or one of the giant’s core, or armor piece that is hiding/protecting a core. The giants all have a variety of attacks. Learning the timing of the attacks is crucial, as you’ll need to use the dash/teleport to get out of  the way most of the time. All giants have some kind of attack where they’ll rest their arms/heads/weapons on the floating platform, and you can get on them to get closer to cores to deal more damage. Some cores even require doing so. Another thing to memorize is the giant’s pattern. Each of  them will act differently depending on a variety of things. Attacking them in certain ways can cause them to do certain attacks, and some attacks they will only do if you’re on a certain platform at the right height. And they all have some kind of elemental resistance/weakness. There’s lots of things to figure out here.

Another big part of the gameplay here is the normal enemies. Enemies are set in certain areas of each platform and platform area. You fighting them the same way you fight the giants, except they have no cores, they’re just small 2D sprites like you. Hitting them a few times kills them. But the catch here is that all the giants have some way of re-spwaning them. And they are actually more of a threat than the giants, since they constantly get in your way when you try evading the giants’ attacks, or sometimes you’ll try tapping on the giant and your character will attack them instead. But they sometimes drop healing balls and orange balls. The healing ones heal you, obviously, but I have no idea what the orange ones do.

You also have access to skills. In the menu, the menu item to the left of the bottom-right menu item brings you to the skill menu. Here you can learn new skills, or upgrade current skills, and set up to 3 skills to use in battle. All of this require to use gems, which you can find at the end of battles. You’re told how much you need for each skill too learn/upgrade it, and the top screen tells you the required MP and damage/effects. In battle, the skills are on the bottom of the touch screen, next to your HP/MP. Some require tapping them twice, others require tapping once, then tapping the monster you want to use it on. There’s a large variety of skills to use, and each character has different skill sets and effects.

The last important part of the gameplay is buying new equipment. Each giant has a set of materials it can give, which are unique to each of them. Each mission you complete, you get a list of all the dropped material for the mission. Also, each core you destroy on each giant has a chance of giving you certain materials. The grinding requires you to go through certain missions(you can replay any previous mission), or free missions, to destroy certain cores which will give you the materials you need. In-between missions, you can go to the shop(the middle option in the main menu). The first option in the shop enables you to buy equipment. Here you’ll see every category of items you can buy, and the characters(displayed on the top of the touch screen) will move if they can equip the items in the category you’re hovering over. When you select a category, you’ll see the items and their cost in gold. By selecting them, you’ll see what materials you need to collect. If the item name is greyed out you can’t purchase it, and if it’s white you can. Check the color of the materials you are missing to know what giant you must fight to get it(I’ll list them in the “import-friendly” section). Also, when an item is selected you have different tabs with different info, inculding stats and the stat changes on your character. There’s consumable items you can buy too. Basically they give you some sort of stat boost for 1 mission only, but they’re not too expensive to make. Also, you get no money from completing missions, so you must use the third option in the shop menu and sell old equipment or excess materials to get money. The second option in the shop menu is a lottery which has yet to give me anything worth it.

Is it import-friendly?
Yes and no, but mostly yes. The basic gameplay is easy enough to learn. Shopping is quite easy as well since you see what character can equip each category of equipment. As for material gathering, the material’s icon color tells you which monster drops it. If it’s gray, Fenrir drops it, brown means Gigant drops it, orange means Ifrit drops it, purple means Gilgamesh drops it, blue means Shiva drops it, black for Bahamut, gold for Gration, a lighter purple for Vanargand, green for Beelzebub, red for Durga and white for Shin Bahamut. So if you need a certain material for a piece of equipment, just check the color, and destroy the monster/certain body parts to get the drop you need.

The one thing that might be problematic is the mission objectives, since you start up with no idea what to do. Thankfully there’s guides on the web. Here’s the one I use (thanks A7thSteve from Gamefaqs and everyone who contributed to the guide). That’ll help you know what to do in both the main missions and the free missions. There’s probably a few communities of fans of the game that  can help you out somewhere, until an english release happens at least.

Overall it’s import-friendly enough, since the menus are quite easy to navigate, but a guide is a must.

Overall
It’s a pretty fun game. It’s frequently compared to Monster Hunter, and sometimes compared to Shadow of the Colossus.  I say it’s a mix of the two, but with a lot of differences. You fight giant creatures, but the way you beat them is a lot different from Shadow of the Colossus. And like in Monster Hunter, you have quests to do and materials to collect to get more equipment.

The fighting is pretty fun, though I don’t really like that the normal enemies pose a more dangerous threat than the giants. Sure, in the end it’s normally the giants who end up killing you, but it’s usually because normal enemies are preventing you from avoiding the attack or something.

The lack of online multiplayer is a bit of a bummer. I doubt I’ll ever get 4 people with DSs and the game together at the same time. It’s a bit weird not to have online considering the game is quite obviously built for a multiplayer experience.

It’s a good choice if you want a good Action RPG on the DS, or if you want something that’s kinda similar to Monster Hunter. There’s definitely a lot of gameplay to be had here.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Good looking giants
- Fun gameplay
- Grinding isn’t as tedious than in other games
- Finding how to fight each giant and how to destroy each of their cores is a game in and of itself
- Lots of content
- Relatively import-friendly

Cons
- Touch screen controls sometimes unresponsive/inaccurate
- The grinding may not be as tedious as in other games, but there can still be a lot of it, especially if you don’t know exactly what materials you’re looking for
- Lacks online multiplayer, which would be useful considering getting 4 people with a DS AND the game together might not be really easy

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $60 on Play-asia, the Save Factor for Blood of Bahamut is:

$35 (wait for a domestic release, and probably a price drop)

jobocan DSi, Games, Handheld, Review, ds, import, impressions