Blue Protocol Benchmark Released Including Impressive Character Creation [UPDATE]

Tomorrow Bandai Namco will release the benchmark of the upcoming MMORPG Blue Protocol, including the game's impressive anime-style character creation.


Published: February 28, 2023 11:03 PM /

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Blue Protocol

Today Bandai Namco hosted a livestream dedicated to its upcoming MMORPG Blue Protocol, and announced that the benchmark is releasing tomorrow.

The software will be available on the official website on March 1 at around noon local time (which translates to 7:00 pm PST or 10:00 pm EST today, 3:00 am GMT or 4:00 am CET tomorrow, depending on where you live). 

Update: The benchmark has been released and can be downloaded on the official site. It's a 5.3 GB download and the installer and menus are exclusively in Japanese, as expected. 

If you're familiar with the usual Final Fantasy XIV benchmark released with every expansion, you know what to expect, including a cutscene that will provide a good look at the game's visuals and will provide you with an estimated score. You will also be able to post it on social media.

Perhaps the most interesting included feature is the character creator, which will allow you to enjoy the impressive anime-style character customization of the game and save up to 24 characters. It's likely that those will be compatible only with the Japanese version of the game, mind you, but there's no specific info on this.

The characters you create will appear in the benchmark's cutscenes and there will also be a character and party viewer feature. It's worth mentioning that the software is only for PC and operation isn't guaranteed. We'll have to see if it plays ball with Windows without having to set your localization to Japanese. 

As for the upcoming Japanese network test, the developers are still hammering at the issues previously found that caused its delay, and it's still scheduled for the end of March. 

You can check out the benchmark in action in the video below.

At the moment, it isn't known what Amazon Games will do and whether it'll publish the benchmark down the line. The publisher plans to bring the game to the west in the second half of 2023 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S and has been teasing a beta of its own.

if you're unfamiliar with Blue Protocol, it's a free-to-play anime-style MMORPG with a business model focusing on battle passes and paid cosmetics. It features an extremely deep character customization suite designed to let players basically create their ideal anime-style character, on top of fast action combat and interesting character progression and storytelling.

It’s developed by a team named Project Blue Sky, which is a joint initiative of Bandai Namco Online and Bandai Namco Studios, and it was announced all the way back in 2019. Two beta tests have already been hosted for the Japanese audience, which has received the gameplay quite well. The western release was announced in December 2022 during The Game Awards. 

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News Editor at TechRaptor since January 2023 following over 20 years of professional experience in gaming journalism both on print media and on the web.… More about Giuseppe