Despite some mindnumbing Friendly AI and some slight slowdown, Blue Dragon AS is one of the best RPGs on the DS.
The graphics are rendered in 3D, and you can easily control the camera angles from pressing the trigger buttons. The graphics are quite attractive for the DS, but there is some noticable decrease in the FPS. You'll notice it during battles when there are a large amount of combantants or in the main area of town, however the decrease won't affect you that much, and the game is still enjoyable.
In terms of controls, it's actually a matter of opinion and it varies from person to person. Some people reported that they had problems playing the game (some said they felt like they needed 3 arms to play this game), while others said the controls worked well (personally for me I had no problem at all with the control scheme).
The gameplay is an action-rpg. Instead of leveling up individual characters, you get a total of 6 shadows which level up while in use. You get three shadows at the beginning of the game (the Dragon, the Phoenix, and the Minotaur), and unlock more as you level up. As shadows level up, they unlock more skills, and each Shadow has an almost completely diverse array of skills that continue to strengthen as shadows grow stronger (some classes have the same skill however such as increasing health regeration). The main character is custom designed by you, allowing you to choose whether to be a boy or a girl and change their looks. The main character can use any skill as long as the shadow can use it, while the 2 teammates that buddy along with you use any skills available to the shadow they are equipped with.
Now comes the biggest blackmark (to me personally). The Party AI that is in desperate need of special attention. They don't act, think, and behave stragetically or tactically at all. While they do use their skills to some effectiveness, the AI is more liable to get them and you killed.
Lets go over some of the ways, the AI screwed me over.
1) Facing a Boss with an area of effect attack, allies think it is smart to bunch up.
2) I have 20 health left, and my healing party member is staring at me with a bar full of mana and refuses to cast a healing spell. 3 seconds later the boss flies over and finishes me off.
3) Boss casts confuse on my healing ally. Confuse in this game reverts all the damage (you heal enemies with attacks and you damage allies with buffs). Ally casts the heal spell, and my whole party dies.
4) I'm busy fighting a group of enemies by myself while my two allies stand by idly in the background. Was losing so I tried to run and ended up dying. They stare at my body and freely take magic attacks from the enemies who killed me without doing anything.
However the game comes with Wi-Fi, so if you got good friends, you can bypass this problem entirely. However the main singleplayer campaign parts is a punishing exercise of dealing with your idiotic allies.
The enemies are diverse and there are plenty of them. The highlight of the game however are the large amount of diverse and tough bosses. Each one is devious, tough, and fun to fight. There are plenty of these bosses, ranging from a gigantic Flower Lizard, to a Evil Poo God (yes Poo), to a Dragon Ghost, to a maniacal pair of ghosts bound to each other by chains. This is just a small fraction of the total bosses, as early in the game a bunch of doors appear around the main town that lead to these bosses. A large portion of these doors are locked at first, and are eventually openable as the game progesses. There are a huge amount of these boss doors, and there are also a large amount of bosses for the main and side quests.
There is plenty of loot to go around, but the interesting part of this game is the Combining mechanic. Early in the game you gain access to this piece of machinery, which allows you to combine multiple objects (ranging from your weapons, your armour, your helmet, your jewelry, and materials) to upgrade your items, give your items brand new abilities, or even create brand new items.
With considering the online multiplayer, the lengthy singleplayer story (I don't like spoling the story for gamers, but it's an interesting one, as I never played any of the previous Blue Dragon games, but I still enjoyed this game and understood its storyline), combination possiblities for completetion whores, the large amount of boss doors I mentioned earlier, and some sidequests, this game gives you alot of value for your money. I have played this game for over 21 hours and I've STILL not finished the game's singleplayer storyline (however after spending so much time with this game, I feel that I am qualified to type up a review).
Overall the game is amazing, but there are some technical issues (namely the Retards for Allies) underlying that weaken the game. However Blue Dragon is still an great buy for any RPG DS fan.