Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow for DS coming to America Spring 2010
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow is coming to America in Spring of 2010 on the DS, thanks to D3Publisher who will be handling the English localization of the second DS spin-off title (following Blue Dragon Plus, released earlier this year for DS). It will also be released in Europe next year.
Plot-wise, the game takes place two years after the original Xbox 360 Blue Dragon and one year after Blue Dragon Plus. And for the first time in the series, players will not be controlling Shu and his companions. In their stead, is a character that the player fully creates, who remains unnamed in the adventure. However all the characters that fans know and love do still make appearances in the game.
Unlike Blue Dragon Plus, Awakened Shadow replaces the RTS-style gameplay with that of a straight Action-RPG. As such, you will explore fully 3D fields and attack enemies directly, calling upon your shadows to duel out magic attacks while your character hammers them with melee strikes. Your character, as mentioned above, is fully customizable and you can change their gender, hairstyle, eyebrows, eyes and of course, their armor and weapons. Additionally, the game is packed with FMV cut-scenes and contains an online multiplayer mode in which up to three players can duke it out with their customized characters.
Awakened Shadow will not be developed by Mistwalker (who created the original Blue Dragon for Xbox 360) nor by Brownie Brown, who was charged with creating the DS’ Blue Dragon Plus (Brownie Brown is a name familiar to Nintendo fans as the creators of Mother 3, Magical Vacation, and more recently, Magical Starsign and Heroes of Mana).
Instead, Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow is being developed by Tri-Crescendo, who is well-known to RPG fans as the creators of the Xbox 360 (and later PS3) RPG Eternal Sonata, as well as the Wii adventure Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon.
Even though Mistwalker isn’t handling development duties, fans shouldn’t be too alarmed because Hironobu Sakaguchi (Series Creator), Akira Toriyama (Character Designer of Blue Dragon) and Hideo Baba (Brand Manager of Tales Series) were still involved in the development of Awakened Shadow.
Here is a trailer for the Japanese version of the game (called Blue Dragon: Ikai no Kyoj? which translates to Blue Dragon: Great Beast of the Underworld).
Via GameSpot
