Today Bandai Namco released the benchmark software of its upcoming MMORPG Blue Protocol including the full character customization.
The benchmark, for now, available only for PC and only in Japanese, can was released this morning as previously announced, and it runs perfectly fine on my western Windows 11. You can download it from the official site.
The program itself is really slick. It includes three main parts. The first lets you create up to 24 characters (you can create more, but you need to delete previously created ones to free up a slot) with the full character customization tools from the current build of the game. And it's awesome. It's basically the perfect "create your own anime character" suite.
You can see it in action below.
The second part of the software will appear after you've created at least one character. It lets you apply more outfits to your created characters, take a good look at the models in various animations, and even create a full party of six characters to display in different scenes. You can see how that works at the end of the video below.
The third part is the benchmark proper, which you can run with one of your characters displayed and is a rather spectacular series of cutscenes. In the end, it'll give you a score depending on how well your PC will run the game. You can take a look at it below.
The characters you create can be exported and will be usable in the upcoming Japanese beta, which is currently slated for the end of March.
Interestingly, while at the moment there is only a "Japanese" option, the option for the language choice is indeed included, which likely means that the software has been created with localization in mind. This isn't surprising since Amazon Games 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. It's likely that an English version of the benchmark will be released then.
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.