It's safe to say that there are few MMOs I'm looking forward to more than Blue Protocol. Amazon and Bandai Namco's anime MMORPG has been squarely on my radar since I first started following it in 2020, and it's one that I can't help but be excited for the Western release.
An action MMORPG, Blue Protocol, is already out in Japan, releasing last month on June 14th. While Blue Protocol was initially slated for a Western release on PC this year, Amazon has delayed the MMO into 2024 to give the team time to really adjust to player feedback and ensure that the game that releases in the West is the one players want.
"A lot of it comes down to reacting to player feedback," Mike Zadorojny, franchise lead on Blue Protocol at Amazon Games told us at Summer Game Fest back in June. "So our schedule is directly tied to the Japanese schedule, and they made adjustments based on their final network test results, and really listened to player feedback. And so it's really about having a chance to listen and make adjustments. […] We are obviously still working on Westernization efforts, trying to bring and make the game as accessible to as many people as possible."
Back in June, I had the chance to go hands-on with a build of the English version of Blue Protocol while at Summer Games Fest, whetting my appetite for the MMO. And boy did it make me eager for more.
Anime-inspired world
Blue Protocol takes place in the anime-inspired world of Regnas. While our demo illows us to explore this world, it was contained with just a few zones: the tradesport of Asterliese, as well as the areas of Godswatch Rise and the Reitz Tradesway. Visually, I adore the cell-shade-inspired art direction from Namco as it feels pretty unique MMOs today that strive for gritty realism.
Despite being set in a world facing a world-ending conflict, Blue Protocol's Regas is colorful, with craggy rock outcroppings dominating the Bahamar Highlands, and the shattered spire of rock dominating the skyline. It's here the Pillar o heref Divinity rests, the sheer cliffs of the Godwatch Rise standing guard over the sacred site.
I especially loved the medieval vibe of Asterliese, one of the main trading hubs on Magnas, the continent where Blue Protocol takes place. Green-tiled roof houses dot the city streets, while its market square felt bustling with life, despite there being very few players around me during our demo.
Honestly, I felt like I was playing through an early episode of Sword Art Online or .Hack//Sign; two of my favorite animes of all time that center on MMOs. Indeed, this feeling was rammed home when I met the first character in my playthrough: the mischievous Feste.
Feste is an unassuming character who helps the hero out during an early encounter with a goblin-like enemy. Feste ends up becoming a charming yet completely underhanded character and I loved every second she was on screen during the opening moments of my playthrough. Her back and forth with the Coinkeep at the Inn where I awoke stick out, as I could tell that the two characters looked out for one another, despite their disagreements and arguments about Feste's outstanding tab at the bar. She's a character-driven, at least early on, by an insatiable need for gold, though even in this brief moment with her, she feels like she's much more layered than just a simple opportunist.
Crafting You Hero
However, to travel the world of Blue Protocol, one typically needs a character. BP's character creation tool isn't nearly as robust as, say, Black Desert Online, but there is still a surprising amount of depth there. You can adjust everything from your hair color (two-toned if you choose as well) to even making one eye a different color than the other.
While you can't make fine changes like the exact length of each curl or the slope of your cheekbones like you can in more robust character creation tools, Blue Protocol has its own charm. I especially appreciated showcasing the character I was creating from different angles and facial expressions and even being able to toggle the time of day so I could see if I liked the color of his eyes and hair regardless of the setting sun.
From here I was presented with the chance to choose my class. Classes in Blue Protocol are varied, each offering a different playstyle, such as the sword and board-wielding Blade Warden to the hulking medium-ranged Foe Breaker, which carries a large Warhammer-cannon into battle.
Thankfully, too, you aren't locked into a class when you select one here. Instead, at some point in the story you unlock the ability to specialize in other classes, much like the Job system in Final Fantasy XIV. As a noted hater of Alt characters, this is a godsend for me. My biggest complaint about alt characters is down to the fact that I oftentimes don't want to replay the same content just to level up a new playstyle. Here, I just equip a new weapon, such as the Twin Axes to move to the Twin Striker or a Staff to turn myself into the ranged spell-slinging Spellweaver, and boom, I'm a new class.
This doesn't mean I won't need to level up the class, but crucially I don't need to play the same story over and over again to do so, which is my issue personally playing alts (to each their own, of course). This flexibility is something I really wish more modern MMOs work into their designs in the future. It's such a nice quality-of-life feature in such a core part of your game, while also not stopping someone from creating an alt and playing that way if they so choose.
When selecting the starting class, Blue Protocol thankfully offers a glimpse into the playstyle of each with short videos highlight some of the class' moves. I appreciate this approach too as I can see clearly if a style looks cool to me before plodding ahead.
I've played tanks, spell slingers, and fast-paced melee strikers in MMOs before. I've never played a character lugging around a giant stick with a Cannonball attached to the end of it, though. So, to that end, I chose the Foe Breaker for my first class.
The Foe Breaker isn't necessarily a tanking class, but it did feel more like a supporting DPS class, with its massive attacks that can shatter the ground and break up opponents. The Foe Breaker also has to worry about the ammo the cannon part of the weapon uses, which can be charged up to pull an enemy in close or unleash a devastating gale in front of the Foe Breaker, dealing damage and controlling enemies in front of them.
It's an interesting playstyle and one I want to spend more time with as future playtests happen down the road for sure. And, given that each class has a wealth of abilities to choose from, it'll be interesting to see how players approach building Foe Breakers when we've had more hands-on time to test them out.
What..do the skills...mean?
Despite only having five classes, each class has a bevy of skills they can pull from over the course of leveling each up. It's here where the flexibility that Blue Protocol offers comes into play, as you can really specialize your build to suit your personal playstyle.
This feeling is compounded for me with the limited skill bar, meaning that I have to pick and choose through experimentation to decide what build is my favorite since I can't just slot them all and work through a predefined rotation. As much as I love tab targeting MMOs that build players into rotation machines (the Red Mage rotation in FFXIV is particularly relaxing if I'm honest), I do appreciate the challenge of distilling all my potential skill choices down to just a few that fit me the best.
Each character has two attacks using the mouse (though the Blade Warden's alternate attack is their shield), as well as a limited hotbar with four main skills and an ultimate attack. Additionally, there are two slots for Combat Echoes, skills picked up that summon beasts to your aid in battle, though they have pretty long cooldowns when you do use them.
The sheer volume of skills, and types of skills each class has, doesn't quite fit them squarely into the traditional "MMO Holy Trinity" box, either. While classes like the Twin Striker and Keen Strider are both DPS classes, the nature of those attacks can change based on the skills present, such as the Keen Strider's skills skewing either to DPS or support at range, for example. Blade Warden, despite being the ideal tanking class, could probably slot closer to DPS themselves, and the Spell Weaver can go long-range DPS or heal - or a mix of the two.
This level of variety and flexibility also means that in dungeons, even if you have two of the same class join up, they could play drastically different and fit separate roles in battle. While there will surely be "optimal" builds by the time 2024's release gets underway, I love the fact that I can effectively built and play how I want in the end without much hassle.
Exploring Regnas
Roaming the world of Regnas is a semi-open affair, with each zone being cordoned off with loading screens. As Mike Zadorojny told us at Summer Game Fest, it's a "blend of instance [and] open world."
"The reason why is to make sure you always have a good feeling instance, right? Like, you're not overpopulated but at the same time, you're not by yourself because the gameplay is way better when there are a lot of people around. So it's about finding that delicate balance in that blend."
While our exploration was limited to some pretty small zones (the full MMORPG world was not available to explore), I could get a sense of movement, combat in the overworld, and more.
It's easy to take in the sights of Regnas thanks to the minimalistic and sleek UI, as well. I hate gaudy UI cluttering up the screen, and Blue Protocol's is both minimal and functional. I can see exactly what I need to and nothing more, which frees up more screen real estate to highlight the world around me.
This is good too, as Regnas is beautiful to explore. Running around Godswatch Rise, I was constantly panning my camera around to check out the landscape, or the shattered ruins that dominate the skyline. Mike in our interview likened the world to something that feels almost "alien," with the world itself aiding the storytelling within the MMO.
"A lot of the world itself and the story are interconnected," Zadorojny tells us when asking about the lore of the world of Regnas in our interview. "This is a fantasy world where obviously not everything feels the same way, right? You have these crumbling ruins that are floating and things like that. And so it's meant to be a little bit alien, in terms of allowing players to get a chance to explore this world for themselves."
However, the real highlight of our demo was the dungeon run, where myself and five other journalists were able to run one of the early dungeons together.
Taking part in the Dragon's Rive dungeon, I swapped my Foe Breaker for the Twin Striker (and the Spell Weaver since I came back the next day and ran through the demo again). We had a fairly balanced team, though, with one of our spot filled by an Amazon QA tester running a Healer since we were down a player for the dungeon.
While I was able to fight in the open world sections, Dragon's Rive really opened up combat in Blue Protocol for me, giving a glimpse into team play and now each character plays their role in a dungeon run. Running up against waves of boars and goblins, we picked apart each group of enemies rather easily at first.
Combat is a balancing act, managing your resources such as the ammo as a Foe Breaker alongside your pool of stamina for example, as well as weaving skills when they are off cooldown as needed. Basic attacks are done using the left mouse button while alternate attacks use the right button. Some skills can be charged up, such as the Spell Weaver's Fireball, to deal more damage.
All the while you'll need to able to dodge attacks while the hectic dance of battle goes on around you. It's a cacophony of visual effects, and there were times during all of this when my character got absolutely lost in the shuffle.
There is just so much going on in such a small confined space in spots of this dungeon that I just felt like I was flailing instead of acutely controlling my character since I just couldn't plain see them. And while I have pretty good vision, it does make me worried about some of the accessibility features for players with low visibility, like my daughter who will absolutely want to play this (and even cosplay as Feste).
"We actually have an accessibility group within Amazon Games who helps us go through each of the titles and gives us feedback," Mike tells me when asked about the accessibility features in Blue Protocol. While he stopped short of stating that there will indeed be a toggle to tone down some of the visual effects for clarity, Zadorojny did mention that the goal is to get as many people as possible to appreciate the game, so it comes down to what else Amazon can do to make it more accessible to players. And this initiative to make a more accessible game won't end at launch, either.
"A lot of our experience is taking our feedback from internal teams, from groups that we're working with, and providing that feedback directly to Amazon Games and Bandai Namco Online. So there are some changes that will be in the launch. But we're going to continue working with that not just at launch, but beyond."
The dungeon itself was a bit of a letdown from its structure if I'm being honest. It was a pretty linear path from one end of the dungeon to the other, facing waves of enemies in combat zones as our team progressed through Dragon's Rive. I do wonder if this dungeon was chosen for the preview event simply because it doesn't require a ton of problem solving or puzzles for players still learning the basics of the MMO. I really want to see even more dungeons, especially some of the late game ones, to see just how much they evolve over the course of Blue Protocol's runtime.
Yet despite the linear dungeon, the combat itself made up for it. I loved being able to zip in and devastate enemies, wracking up combo damage with each successive hit. Dodging out of an attack (when I could clearly see it through the spell effects), always felt good, though I do think the Spell Weaver's "blink" animation when dodging out of the way is enough to make me roll one on launch because it just looked plain cool. When popping an ultimate, the game camera swoops in and focuses squarely on your character as they set up the attack - such as the Twin Striker's which saw me juggle enemies with devastating slashes, slamming them back to the ground when finished.
At the end of the dungeon was a large boar which didn't put up much resistance in the end. It was here that learning the boar's attack patterns, as well as finding out where he was weak helped in creating some shake-up to the otherwise straightforward flow of the dungeon. I found myself bounding onto the boar's back, aiming for its weak point there to deal extra damage, all while dodging out of the way of devastating charges and slams from the boar itself. After a few minutes of repeating beatings, dodging, and ultimates, the boar was down, thus ending the demo.
At the end of the day, Blue Protocol isn't breaking new ground with insane mechanics, but what I played is a glimpse at an otherwise solid MMORPG. I was excited before I played it during Summer Game Fest, and in the month and a half since, that excitement hasn't really diminished. I've longed for an anime MMO, and I'm eager to learn more about the world of Regnas, its people, and uncover the mysteries of those alien-feeling floating ruins in the sky, but sadly that has to wait.
However, last month's Blue Protocol demo certainly whets my appetite to play more in upcoming tests and eventually when the launch happens in 2024.
