Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light

Rating ESRB: Everyone Genre role-playing Publisher NIS America External Links Official Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light Website

Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light comes to us from NIS America, a subsidiary of Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. of Japan. When I realized this was the same company that created the Disgaea franchise and La Pucelle Tactics, I got really excited; strategy and role-playing games are right up my alley. NIS America lists Blade Dancer as a role-playing game, but it is the strategic elements of the game that make up for it being a rather mediocre title (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

The game centers on main character Lance and his chance encounters with somewhat interesting characters. Each individual that joins Lance's party ends up more-or-less falling into the classic RPG job-type, such as the Warrior, the Leader, the Healer, the Mage, etc. As expected, each hero learns particular "Lunabilities" (special moves/magic/etc.) as they level up. What makes the individuality of the characters so cool, however, is how their respective strengths and weaknesses affect the group when they take on the role of the leader. With one in charge, you may encounter more enemies on the field, but the enemies will be weaker. With another as leader, you might find yourself fighting less, but encountering stronger enemies.

Changing your party's formation also plays a key role in Blade Dancer's battle system. Similar to the ATB (Active Time Battle) system in Final Fantasy IX, you have a "Luna Clock" that controls when you can select your action. When in the front row, your Luna Clock moves faster and you can attack more often, but your accuracy goes down. In the back row, your defense and accuracy are higher, but your Luna Clock is slower and you attack less often. This plays partially into the strategic aspect that I previously alluded to.

The most interesting element of Blade Dancer is the "Luna" Bar (not to be confused with the delicious health bars you can find at your local market). Instead of each character having separate magic points to use up for special moves, there is a single Luna Bar at the top of the battle screen. Each attack a member of your party makes adds a proportional amount of Luna points to the bar. Every hit your party takes also adds to the Luna Bar. When ready to use a "Lunability," you can draw from the points collected in the Luna Bar. Unused Luna points give you extra experience points in the end, rewarding you for the amount of damage you take and dish out.

Things get tricky when you find that enemies use the Luna Bar to do their special attacks. And this is where the strategic planning comes into the game-plan. If you spend an entire battle building up points in your Luna Bar, do you go ahead and use them to prevent your enemy from knocking you out cold? Do you covet them to gain the extra experience points? Is that special group attack worth 100 points out of the 230 you have slaved for? These are the kind of things you will be tackling while in battle. And it is this kind of strategic game play that makes battle interesting.

What the game has in strategic elements it somewhat lacks in just about everything else. The beginning of the game is very frustrating, featuring a slow (non-existent?) story-line for the first few hours of gameplay, extremely slow navigation (Lance is probably the slowest "running" hero of any RPG ever created), and degradable weapons. That last one is the worst. Well, actually, I guess it is not that bad. Blade Dancer makes up for it by using a fairly simple crafting system, where you can find out the components of items and weapons and re-synthesize them later. Unfortunately, it costs money to figure out what is in that sword you love, but the satisfaction of knowing that you can make it again without buying another one is much better than it just disappearing forever.

The field changes as time passes, but it is unclear as to what kind of system the game follows to control "time." Enemies you encounter are icons (evil-looking skulls that cackle maniacally at you while you pass). Approaching an enemy from a particular direction does not seem to make any difference, unfortunately. How fantastic would it be if you approach from behind and get to attack first? I guess that would not function well within the active-time Luna Clock system, but it would still be cool.

If you are just dying for an RPG for your PSP, give Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light a whirl. Once you get a full party together, the battles are very engaging and challenging. If you can coerce a friend (or three) to buy it, you can use the Ad Hoc capabilities of the PSP to play through some multiplayer-specific dungeons and find some rare items and weapons. Neat.