We played the western version of the MMO for an hour and got a first impression.

The MMO genre desperately needs a breath of fresh air. The current top dogs like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 or The Elder Scrolls Online are long-established kings on a throne that has gone unchallenged for too long.

Many players long for a new, worthy competitor. But finding one is not so easy.

Contenders like Lost Ark fail because of bot floods and endless grind, New World offers too little exciting content and Throne and Liberty is being torn apart by the MMO community even before its release because of its autoplay function. Now Bandai Namco and Amazon want to start a new attempt.

Blue Protocol focuses on PvE, has an answer to the bot problem and wants to convince with pretty graphics, a multi-class system and its story. At first, that sounds like the dream come true of every MMO fan – but can it all work like that?

We played Blue Protocol for an hour and are sceptical.

What kind of game is Blue Protocol?

Blue Protocol wants to convince us with an action combat system, five different classes, which we can all master with one character, and a whole range of dungeons and raids. The focus is also on the story, which wants to stand out from the crowd with fully dubbed dialogues and pretty cutscenes.

We know very little about the story so far: we are a chosen hero or heroine who wants to save the planet Regnas from its impending destruction. Everything there is slowly going down the drain due to the excessive use of space-time technology.

Of course, the world doesn’t save itself just like that, because to make matters worse, we’ve lost our memory and, in addition to saving the world, we also have to play a bit of memory with our experiences in order to find out where we actually come from.

Blue Protocol does not have an open world, but rather, similar to Guild Wars 2, relies on individual zones in which up to 40 players can run around at the same time. In the cities, even up to 200 people are supposed to cavort. Speaking of cities: We probably don’t have to be afraid of bot floods like in Lost Ark, because there is no trade within the community.

This is important because you have to craft all your own equipment instead of taking it from dead monsters’ pockets like an end product. Blue Protocol also dispenses with other classic MMO customs such as the so-called Holy Trinity, i.e. the division into tank, healer and damage dealer, in raids and dungeons.

The bad word with F

All in all, this sounds like a solid contender for the MMO throne, right? Let’s get to the catch of the whole thing. And it’s called Free2Play. Blue Protocol is free to play, so the MMO has to finance itself through in-game purchases in order to be economically successful in the long run. But we don’t have to fear Pay2Win at the moment – after all, there is no PvP mode.

But the in-game shop will probably play a big role in crafting. As already mentioned above, we have to craft all our equipment ourselves and are exposed to random elements such as value bonuses.

Meaning: If you want to have the best armour on the planet, you either have to be really lucky, invest a lot of time or put money into it. Founders Packs at release (like Lost Ark) and a Battle Pass, divided into free and paid tiers, is also planned.

What Amazon says about the Free2Play model:

We spoke to Franchise Lead Mike Zadorojny in an interview about the rationale behind the monetisation model and the shop. This is his explanation: 

We’re trying to create something that’s inviting, and F2P fits that style, because the moment you establish a price tag or a subscription, you start alienating part of the player base

…]

If you don’t buy anything and I do, we won’t have a fundamentally different experience. The things you can buy are cosmetic, even though there is a random box mechanic. But in the western version we have a kind of stop mechanism that guarantees you things. 

There is a secondary mechanism to get things that you don’t want for cosmetic reasons. You can convert it into a secondary currency and then use it to buy things you want

What could we play in one hour?

Of course we didn’t get to see the shop at the play event. But that’s not a rarity in principle. Instead, we were able to try out three small bites at different points in the game:

The character creation and the prologue

Exploring the world with a higher level character

Exploring a dungeon with other participants on location

Like an anime with a wooden face

In an hour, in which three individual parts have been squeezed in, there is not yet so incredibly much that can be said about the game. But what we noticed right at the beginning: the opening and the Japanese voice-over are fantastic. Here, especially anime fans should have their hearts lifted.

The sadder it is that the facial animations in the game itself seem absolutely wooden and can in no way keep up with the drawn sequence of the opening. A similarly double-edged sword is our main character, whom we can customise at the beginning.

He or she is basically dubbed, but is awkwardly silent when sentences with their own chosen name are dropped – as if the sound is simply turned off on these subjects. You can also see this in our video clip of the first few minutes of play:

We don’t see much of the story so far. But what we are shown in the prologue is, in classic JRPG fashion, absolutely confusing at first. In an interview, Franchise Lead Mike Zadorojny reveals that we should expect a lot of confusion and betrayal within the story.

Sightseeing on the fly

The game world is convincing even without being an open world. We climb down cliff ledges, find paths over bridges and shred our way through everything nature has to offer. We don’t discover any puzzles or secrets here, such as those we find at every turn in Genshin Impact. We were not able to complete any quests during this short familiarisation period.

In exchange, we familiarise ourselves with the combat system.

While in the prologue we tried out the twin slayer with the double axe and ran like a human sorcerer towards everything that moved, we now play an enemy breaker armed with a huge hammer that conveniently also shoots projectiles. But they are limited per magazine, so we have to reload from time to time.

We fight with two standard attacks that are on our two mouse buttons and use special attacks with the keyboard. In doing so, we have an ultimate ability that charges agonisingly slowly, unlike the others. In addition, we have two pets that support us in battle.

We are honest: There is no time to learn the class properly. So we bash around friendly and without much of a plan on the abilities and shoot out everything that is not on cooldown at the moment. This also works well in the dungeon.

Dungeon without a plan

Here we are with a total of six players. There is no classic division into healer, tank and damage dealer. It also doesn’t matter if classes are represented more than once. In this mixed constellation and with the aim of simply wiping out everything, we set off. You can also watch this in the moving image:

The worst opponent is not the boss, but the abysses into which one or the other falls every now and then. But that doesn’t matter, because the group doesn’t have to wait long for the respawn.

Generally, we seem (consciously) a bit overlevelled with level 20, because the monsters don’t give us any problems despite our headless-chicken tactics. Even the end boss feels more like a bullet sponge than a real threat.

What’s missing here are exciting mechanics. And maybe a hint that the boss is particularly attackable from above – we get this info from the franchise lead before the presentation, but not in the dungeon itself.

Can I play Blue Protocol completely solo?

Franchise Lead Mike Zadorojny tells us in an interview:

From the story perspective, you can experience yourself from beginning to end on your own. Before you can play a dungeon, there is a story version with the NPCs that unlocks the dungeon. From a crafting and gathering perspective, there are places that are more challenging for a solo player. You don’t have to be in a group to take advantage of the fact that there are players around you. Stealing loot is not possible.

Editor’s Verdict

I’m ambivalent about Blue Protocol. On the one hand, the focus on PvE, co-op and crafting is exactly what many MMO players want. And also the bot problem could solve many bellyaches due to the lack of player trading.

The battles are fun, the classes original and the pet system could also be exciting. But what I’m still missing so far is that special spark that needs to jump over.

Blue Protocol has many exciting ideas, but it still lacks a unique selling point or something that sweeps my feet out from under the MMO floor. I need something that says play me instead of the other MMOs.

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself and the story will be as good as Final Fantasy 14 or the dungeons and raids as exciting as WoW. But for now I’m undecided. To be fair, though, I have to say: I’ve only seen a tiny fraction so far. Colleague Alex from MeinMMO is much more positive in his article. But he has already seen more of the game than I have.

The biggest doubts and hurdles lie in the things I haven’t seen yet: crafting and the shop.

Can crafting with random elements motivate in the long run or will motivation turn into frustration? How big a role will the shop play? Due to the lack of PvP, pay-to-win is ruled out, but will raid groups take me along even though my equipment has not received good stats through crafting?

Many of these questions will only be answered when we have seen more of the game. For example, in the planned closed beta. In Japan, the game has already been released.

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