After 40 hours of Blue Protocol, here's my honest review... (full breakdown)

I played 40 hours of blue protocol this past weekend deep diving as much as I possibly could to learn everything about the game so that I could provide you guys with a full review now right out the gate I do want to say that I did think that this was a good game and it had a lot of potential however there are a couple of major concerns I have about this game so in this video I'm going to be addressing those concerns I'm also going to be addressing everything else The Good The Bad everything in between this is going to be my honest review of this game if you guys do find this video helpful please don't forget to subscribe to the channel it'll help me reach my goal of 100K subs and I do plan on continuing to cover blue protocol content as much as I possibly can and also follow me on Twitch come chat with me on that platform I would love to get to know you guys personally and that's the best way to ask me questions let's begin the video I want to start by painting you a general picture of what the experience will be like playing this game blue protocol is a true anime MMORPG but the best way to describe this game at a core is that it feels like a mix of wow Classic Tower fantasy Dark Souls in Final Fantasy 14 put together wow classic in terms of pacing the progression and leveling experience was a very very slow one in the beta test we'll talk more about this later but there are a lot of elements that will give classic wild Vibes for example every single mob being an actual fight that you can't just face roll over power of fantasy in terms of look and animation outside of the vast anime inspired world the combat with games like Tower of fantasy and Genji and impact are action combat and will have you perform combo based attacks using a lot of your left Mouse button and right Mouse button these attacks have long telegraphed animations that can look pretty flashy Dark Souls in terms of difficulty and well the combat this may take a lot of people by surprise but the combat felt very single player action RPG like in blue protocol taking damage hurts and you won't be one-shotting anything there's a huge emphasis on manually dodging attacks and not getting hit but we'll get more into this later as well Final Fantasy 14 in terms of the social aspects Japanese theme and flavors and of course the class system you'll start by creating your character along with your starting class your class can be changed at any time after level 5 by simply equipping the respective weapon identical to Final Fantasy 14. when beginning your journey you'll level up to around 10 by completing quests and completing your adventure boards which are similar to Adventure journals in other games journals that have a separate list of missions for you to complete that provide rewards once doing so you'll be able to craft and obtain your first real major upgrade which is your weapon along with other items you'll craft to enhance your character's power as you progress you'll unlock more content mostly dungeons which will be gated by your item level you will have a lot of stops in your journey where you'll be grinding a way to upgrade your gear via crafting in order to progress further this whole process essentially repeats itself with your next tier weapon coming in every 10 levels all this while you go through a pretty good anime storyline that seems to be pretty epic especially since a lot of the scores are from the same guy that did the music for Attack on Titan upon hitting the level cap you'll be able to access a variety of Dungeons and instances World boss Tower of Beginnings Rush battle and regular dungeons were the end game for our beta test I say upon hitting level cap because these are the things you'll be doing at level cat but they are actually gated by gear score not your level for those of you who are curious Tower was a game type where you climb floors complete objectives on each floor with boss fights every 10 floors Rush battle being a wave clearing instance that you can even compete against other players with World boss being well just the world boss only not in the open world but in an actual instance overall blue protocol is definitely not an easy game I'd argue that it's actually quite difficult for the average gamer and I'd suspect new players to die or get lost a lot you feel a lot of the old school RPG elements with blue protocol there is also a huge benefit in Parting Up and having friends to play with you can 100 play solo but your progression will definitely be slower generally speaking this is the game in a nutshell there are a lot of things that I want to share with you guys so I'm going to be breaking them down into individual sections in the video starting with the world first and foremost blue protocol is not an open world MMO it certainly feels and looks like one but it's not each area is separated by by zones that you'll load in and out of however I can't stress enough how gorgeous this game looks the graphics the look of the world the character immersion is definitely one of the standout features for me it really feels like you're part of a living Anime World especially with the social aspects The World Isn't small but it isn't incredibly large we only had access to a few zones but I could tell by the world map that there was potential for a much larger world the zones we had access to despite the game looking gorgeous did start feeling a bit repetitive and small you feel completely immersed when you're in the major city but you lose it a bit as you go through the leveling zones or blue protocols quote-unquote open world you didn't feel like you were immersed in a vast world like you would in World of Warcraft but it also wouldn't feel like you're playing an MMORPG on zone maps like Elian either honestly it felt somewhere in between role playing is also absolute absolutely a thing in blue protocol I mean it's literally a concept option that you can select when creating or searching for a guild from being able to hold hands with other players quick emotes and stickers that you can send on the go mid combat and of course a big photo taking mode this game will really hit home for role players or just anyone that loves an emphasis on social aspects in an MMO the anime theme isn't for everyone but there are a lot of people that have been wishing for a true anime and more PG for the PC and blue protocol is just that I had two major concerns going into blue protocol one was the endgame Loop which we certainly did not experience in the level 20 beta test the other was the combat to be perfectly honest I was a bit skeptical with how the combat looked especially having a big background in Lost Ark in Black Desert online after playing this game extensively I was pleasantly surprised as to how good the combat actually was the more I experienced it the more it grew on me the reason for this was definitely because of the dark souls-like challenge rather than being just a regular action combat spam Fest blue protocol places a large emphasis on being able to identify enemy attacks and dodging them this completely changed the dynamic of combat because fights became very challenging there's a funny meme our community made about the mobs and blue protocol but it's actually very true even a basic mob at level will be a challenging fight that you can even die to if you're not paying attention you cannot mindlessly spam your attacks because they have animation logs and you can't afford to take damage since one blow can take up to a quarter of your health you have access to a lot of stamina which allows you to pretty much Dodge raw iframe at will and the combat and blue protocol revolves around this feature and places a very high emphasis on it you also have to pay attention to the attacks each mob has since they are all unique to each individual mob some will run away and cast Magic on you some will literally backstep Dodge your attacks some will have different wind-up times to their attacks baiting you into Dodge rolling early and smashing you after your iframe this place is an even greater challenge when you're training mobs trying to kill multiple at a time outside of the graphics in the look of the game the biggest W was definitely the combat For Me classes in blue protocol are definitely unique it's pretty clear they're trying to mix interesting combinations with their classes by having a gun Hammer class or a ranged bow healer each class in BP did feel different to one another there were clearly roles for each class and each one perform their roles in their own unique ways for example the twin Striker which is your dual wielding ax class was designed with the intent of constantly attacking with high uptime and faster animations the class mechanic was that of a combo system where you deal increase damage the more uptime you have on your target then you have the Mage class where you have literally zero cooldowns and your class mechanic revolves around you manually regening your Mana which is what you burn using your skills my only gripe with the classes is that they need more variety I believe the classes at the moment aren't enough to scratch the itch for other players who may not be interested in playing a typical Mage or may not be interested in the unique hybrid bow healer class this is something that will obviously be guaranteed to get better as I'm not expecting BP to only have five classes forever but I do wish they had more options with classes available to inspire people to play the combat is definitely what carried it for me and if I had a class that I really enjoyed playing it would have certainly raised my addiction level to the game I would love to see a great sword or my personal favorite a gauntlet wielding class to be added as stated in the beginning of the video I have a couple of major concerns that I feel could have a devastating impact on this game I want to now share those thoughts but I also want to preface this by saying that this is a game that I am very excited and hopeful for I'm expressing these concerns not as someone that's bashing the game but as someone who's trying to provide objective information on a video game as a content creator while providing real feedback and sharing his honest opinion I wish nothing but the best for this game and I do plan on playing at launch and covering this game extensively it's a great game with potential but I feel the following information I'm about to share leaves me questioning whether this game will be a game at last the test of time a lot of the game's success will revolve around its end game which we are yet to see but the gearing process and itemization for all MMOs is also very important and we did get a preview as to how that's set up in this beta test the first thing to understand is that the overall pace of the game is just very low the leveling is slow the upgrades are slow and small killing a single mob takes time to put things into perspective with an example there's no passive regen in the game meaning when you take three hits from a mob and you need to heal because you're at 25 HP you'll have to find an actual campfire to sit and replenish your health at because plots are extremely expensive and limited until level 10. of course this also depends on your class but in the early game at least it does slow down progression a bit you don't have any items that you can consume like food and wow that will replenish this health either you also have to be very careful with what you're spending your gold on what upgrades you're actually making messing these things up may not necessarily ruin your character forever but it can and will set you back hours if you're thinking well that's only until Level 10 know that it currently takes 4 to 10 hours just to hit Level 10. I should say however after finishing the main story questline line every Quest suddenly gave 10x The Experience allowing the journey to level 20 to be significantly faster I'm not sure if this was by Design or deliberately Juiced for the sake of the beta test after finishing the campaign but I'm inclined to believe it was just juice for the beta test I've heard the original Alpha test in December was very fast in terms of progression but the latest version of the game showcases in extremely slow one in fact it's probably the slowest MMO I've ever played including classic wow however slow doesn't necessarily mean bad there's a reason why classic wow is one of the all-time crates the concern for me is more so the substance in that slow journey in blue protocol you have your main campaign Quest your side quests your adventure boards and dungeons when you progress through your main campaign you will hit walls with your gear score forcing you to focus on your adventure boards main story campaign and side quests do not provide you with anything other than experience in goal the gold currency by the way is called Luna dungeons can provide experience gold weapon mats and something called plugins which we'll talk about in a bit starting with the dungeons to be perfectly honest I would say my experience with what was available was just mediocre the dungeon experience wasn't bad but it got pretty stale and started to feel a little bit spammy relatively quick I will say though you shouldn't look too much into this because these are just level 10 to level 20 instances next we have the adventure board which is essentially an Adventures journal with a series of missions that you'll complete for rewards specifically gear recipes and crafting mats this is your main form of progression in regards to your actual character power completing these boards will unlock new gear recipes along with some mats to craft them they also sometimes provide passive bonuses that increase the amount of rare jobs you get from specific mobs this can be pretty significant can considering what I'm about to tell you so keep this on the back of your mind all gear is crafted via an NPC in blue protocol these missions always consist of the same type of objectives which is to kill x amount of mobs obtain an x amount of rare mats from a specific mob that drops it at a low rate gather x amount of resources obtain an x amount of rare mats from harvesting a resource that has a low chance of dropping the problem is that the drop rates of these rare mats are extremely low it took me over an hour just to go from four out of nine to five out of 9 in the quest tracker it got to the point where I was thankful if the mission objective was to kill 60 mobs and not collect 5 rare drops if I had to guess I would place the drop rate around maybe one to three percent tops before any loot rate buff based off of my own experience and feel you know it's bad when your Twitch chat begins to question whether whether something is bugged or if you're even farming the right mob so if we were to streamline this you're doing your campaign in sciquest for the purpose of Luna and experience while doing this you also need to upgrade your character's power which is the point of the game this is done via the adventure board because the game doesn't give you any gear or power via drops or quest line on top of this the dungeons will also contribute to your mat farm specifically for your weapon all of the gear in blue protocol is crafted and in order to craft those upgrades you will complete the missions from the adventure board which will take you hours to complete and the upgrades you do get outside of your weapon will boost your gear score but you won't really feel significantly stronger considering the small amount of stats those upgrades provide keep in mind we're not just talking about mid to late game here we're talking about levels one through ten as well the single biggest issue to this progression path is not actually actually the amount of time it takes you to level up it's the tasks that you have to complete to upgrade your gear another problem is that the adventure board doesn't even always provide you with all the mats needed to craft your piece meaning I had to continue farming the mob anyway and the board was only providing me with a few mats to contribute to my craft so let's say you've now just killed 300 mobs to craft your piece you see your gear score go up a little bit higher and your next mission is to do exactly what you just did again then again and again once you finish your campaign you'll continue the same Loop that I just explained all the way to end game in order to further boost your gear score after getting my first significant upgrade at level 10 knowing that my next significant upgrade would be at level 20 and I'd be repeating the whole process of what I just did again the thought of this was honestly a bit daunting for me Japanese players that could read the game with no problem and were progressing hard were between levels 10 to 15 after 8 hours or so the root of the problem here could be traced back to the rare mats that you have to farm in my opinion they 100 percent need to increase this drop rate significantly keep in mind the experience that I had where it took an hour to get a single matte drop was actually with a loot rate buff they provided for us despite me referring to gear on a few occasions in this video in reality there is only one piece of gear in the game your weapon there is no armor in this game period outside of your weapon your power or Stats come from Seven imagine slots you can think of these as just enchantments in the form of equippable summons that are applied to your character five of these imagines are strictly just passive stat sticks while the other two are active summons that you can use as a skill along with with the stats it provides these imagines are crafted at an NPC and require a recipe to show up these are the gear recipes I was referring to earlier that are obtained via your adventure board missions once unlocking the Imagine recipe you'll be able to craft them with mats that you'll farm from mobs and life Skilling you can also obtain select imagines as rare drops from certain mobs or field bosses but you'll be mainly getting these via the adventure board every single imagine will require at least two rare drops from a specific mob or resource to craft meaning in order to upgrade your character by equipping a new imagine you'll have to go through the same process every time grind mobs and gather resources until you receive all the mats needed to craft that item as mentioned before the missions you do in the adventure board to unlock the recipes for the imagines will also have you do the same thing hunt mob herbs and gather despite raising your gear score via these imagines the only time you really feel a significant boost in performance is when you upgrade your weapon which you'll do once every 10 levels considering this game is paced extremely slow you will not see those upgrades for a long time the weapons are obtained in the same fashion as your imagines but they do come with some additional upgrade options the itemization here I'm about to explain is my other main concern with blue protocol you can apply what's called a plug-in on your weapon for additional effects or stats you can look at these as just gems applied to your weapon these plugins can be slotted in accordance to how many sockets you have on your weapon just like gems the plugins can also roll from a one star to 5 Star 5 Star being the strongest the sockets you have on your weapon is also in Orange G role when crafting your weapon and you can have anywhere from one to four sockets when crafting a weapon if you roll a great success you'll have two to four sockets on that item at the current end game during the beta test you'll continue to recraft your weapons in hopes that the next one will have the max sockets when it comes to the plugins themselves you can remove them but you'll lose that plug-in you can purchase a cash out item though that will allow you to remove the plug-in and still keep it the other thing that is monetized will be to create success rate of your weapon a great success as I mentioned will provide you with more sockets and a better affix attached you'll be able to purchase an item that will allow you to increase the great success rate of your craft bettering your odds for obtaining a more Juiced weapon we're not done yet because there are also socket increase tickets but we did not have access to that it's being speculated whether or not these will be obtainable in-game or via the cash shop as well and while we're on the topic of monetization the other feature that was in the game was the double loot from dungeons you will be able to purchase tickets in the cash shop that will allow you double the rewards for your dungeons you do not get double the plugins it's also being speculated how and if we can get these tickets in game as far as the Pay to Win mechanics and blue protocol go I personally don't really care about having this in the game but let's call it what it is this is definitely a pay for power pay to progress mechanic I know this will stir up the debate of what the definition of pay to win means again but you be ignorant if you don't believe that this will be considered paid to win amongst many people regardless of how you may view it personally I think it's moderate and tolerable at the moment for me the actual process of gearing up upgrading your gear is honestly just a bit it lackluster regardless of the cash shop elements in order to upgrade and or craft your gear you'll have to continue to farm mobs and harvest the materials and while you can absolutely argue that that's the same principle for other MMOs my opinion is that blue protocol's iteration of it is just a little bit boring there's no way around this process either because you have to have those specific mats for each piece of gear and there is absolutely no trading or auction house in the game there isn't even a sell feature in the game you literally cannot even sell something to an NPC this also makes me wonder if the plug-in system is the ultimate end game after obtaining the highest level weapon and imagines this in itself would be an issue for me because having an end game around what are essentially just gems seems very Bland and unappealing from a gearing perspective if nothing changes the majority of your gameplay protocol will consist of joining Farm groups for whatever mob you need to be farming or running around a zone for a long period of time harvesting resources also assuming we will have to continue recrafting weapons for better roles which certainly could not be the case by the way then dungeons would also be in the mix of things to grind now upon hitting level 50 a lot could change everything could change honestly what we've seen in the beta test is not even the halfway point to the actual level cap but the journey to level 20 has given us a general idea of the core elements of the game The Last concern that I have about the game is one that I do feel pretty confident that they will fix in due time and that's the optimization it's not far off but there are some issues with performance a lot of players ran into memory leaks drop frames full screen Window mode randomly changing just to name a few none of this is too alarming considering many new MMOs deal with these issues during its Inception but I am hoping that they can better optimize it quickly because running around town with 15 FPS on medium settings with a pretty decent system is just not fun the world boss fight was also nearly a slideshow for me in any little flashy animation that was played with drop frames on my stream heavily unless I capped my frames out at 30 which feels terrible even the character selection screen for some reason would make my OBS and stream stutter into a full-on slideshow mode I'm really hoping some of these concerns get addressed for our version of the game there were of course other minor things that I had also experienced so before rounding this video out here's a list of some notes that I took along the way to provide additional feedback campaign and side quests can all be tracked with a glowing light thing that will lead you to where the quest objective is this feature isn't available for adventure board missions I'm not sure sure if this was by Design to force players into finding locations themselves but considering the adventure board missions is much more important than the actual quests themselves I find it a bit inconsistent that the guide isn't available for it the world map isn't amazing when opening it up you have to select a region or city at the top of the screen to view that area rather than being able to zoom in or out this makes it a bit confusing for new players not accustomed to the world and will cause some confusion because they may not actually know where they are or where they need to go you cannot track the location of a party member in the world map only by minimap similar to Adventure board missions this makes no sense they should 100 allow you to see the location of your party members on the map multi-day Buffs that are consumed aren't anywhere to be seen Buffs you get in game are only visible but you aren't able to see the duration since you have no way to use your mouse which brings me to the next one not being able to pull up the mouse cursor to navigate your main HUD feels a bit frustrating at first for an action MMO main story campaign cutscenes and dialogue are completely skippable but side quests are not side quest dialogue you can only fast forward for whatever reason and finally with no passive health regen and very punishing mob damage I feel to help brand new players in the first few levels provide them with extra pots to help ease them into the game dying constantly in the beginning of the game would not make for a great experience for new players especially since you respawn back in with a weakness debuff and only 50 of your HP expecting new players to find a campfire to regain their HP at the beginning of the game is a bit too much in my opinion 99 of the players won't even know there is a campfire that exists to begin with last thing I want to say is to remember what every successful game was like during its Inception every game requires time to become a masterpiece blue protocol is no different it may have some issues but it doesn't mean it can't become that staple game but it can be won over an extended period of time if they have the right team running it we don't know too much about the team that's running blue protocol and we're certainly not used to getting AAA MMO titles from Japan based off of the feedback that they've already given their communication just their actions in general lead me to believe that they do have a pretty good team over there balls in their Court let's see what they can do with it thank you guys so much for watching the video I hope you guys found it insightful if you have any other questions just come find me on Twitch and I can answer your questions there I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Kanon

Views: 233,310

Keywords: kanon, kanonxo, asmongold, mmorpg, blue protocol, review, pay to win, guide, free to play, amazon, bandai, beta test, jp, japan, aegis fighter, twin striker, spell caster, blast archer, heavy smasher, ign, gamepsot, genshin impact, anime, waifu

Id: _6VJFA5H_x0

Length: 27min 54sec (1674 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2023