RPGs aren’t really my bag anymore, not because i dislike them, but because they’re way too much time consuming for me nowadays, they simply are, and while i make some exceptions.. i usually don’t bother because i know i will most likely lose interest or be forced to play something else that i can finish in far less time so i can write a review for it and have it out in a reasonable timeframe.
Dragon Quest doesn’t need presentation nowadays, as is THE quintessential Japanese RPG series since its heyday, arguably even more than Final Fantasy in the land of Nippon, but since i’m not familiar with it, i won’t be making any presentation, even more so since this title is clearly catered to hack n slash fanatics that might or might not have played at least a Dragon Quest game, meaning it’s a gateway title for musou fans or general audiences that have some understanding of the series only through pure gaming osmosis but not had any chance or big interest for the series itself.
Which leads us to the plot being a spin-off affair with an original story that does the “multiversional tango”, as it custom to most of these Warriors crossover games overall, in order to have an ensemble cast of heroes from the various mainline games enter the fray alongside original protagonist characters and a fairly generic common threath for everyone to band together against the baddie responsable, in hope this can also sent the various heroes to their home world/dimension.
Works for me.
The premise (as not so suddly hinted at in the official long ass subtitle) is someone how related to the world tree having a sickness or an affliction, but the first thing to happen is to have the kingdom thrown into chaos, as an evil wizard/warlock makes the monsters (whom haven lived in harmony with the humans) go crazy during a festival taking place in the royal capital of Arba, forcing two of the king chosen knights, Lucyus and Aurora, to intervene, managing to save the king and the royal city. But they soon learn that the now made evil monsters hordes are spreading through the entire world, so it’s off to adventure, with new foes and friends to meet along the way, the latter often coming through the ever so popular (and useful) arrays of “spontaneous appaearing dimensional portals” so we can justify having various charactersfrom the franchise in the mix.
The evil wizard obviously wants to sink the world into darkness, doing so by summoning increasingly powerful creature, the titular World Tree is somehow central to the story…
It’s pretty typical old school JRPG narrative all the way through, with the classic “power of friendship” coming to the rescue often, but it’s quite enjoyable and pleasing, the dialogues are quite funny and charming, as are the characters, so i find myself honestly invested in the plot and interactions, especially the ones with Yangus and Alena!
Sorry if you wanted more, but honestly with what i know of DQ overall, it’s about all i can say, so let’s talk gameplay, shall we? Yes.
Hyrule Warriors (the original HW game) already did a lot of effort into taking elements from the series it crossed over with to integrate them in the Warriors gameplay formula, more than most of these Warriors licensed crossover, but with Dragon Quest Heroes Omega Force really went the extra mile, instead of just slapping a skin on the more recent SW or DW iteration and calling it a day.
This is actually proper hybradation, obviously the main formula is the classic Warriors one, with the tried and true combat system at the base, but the RPG elements are even more integrated and vital to the experience, with a MP bar for magic that doesn’t remove the musou attack/system, here is called Tension and is actually balanced to fill up far slower than before, once its filled letting you use some of it for some powered up attacks or all at once for the classic Musou super attacks.
Status effects are more relevant now, with enemies being able to silence you (hence blocking the use of magic), poison you, and foes have distinct elemental weakness, meaning – for example – the Mechacentaur robots enemies now are stop/disabled by thunder magic or attacks with thunder effect, and you go on mission with a party up to 4 characters you can freely switch control to, akin to how it worked in Samurai Warriors 4.
The biggest differences though is in the map design, as there is no systems of bases to capture/control and move to-and-fro, but instead it leans more towards a tower defense kinda of affair, as it revolves around killing enemies that summon other foes from portal, using switches and levers, fighting boss that often have contextual systems meant to deal them extra damage, and – here lying the tower defense element – having to protect specific objects in various locations from hordes of monsters, helped by the Monster Medals system.
You see, monster foes can drop medals that let you summon that very foe as an ally, and are either one-use, doing whatever they supposed to (launch a powerful attack, boost your attack, heal you) and then vanishing, or they remain in the field fighting for you, which of course can and will be useful to guard multiple objects on the map at once, adding more actual strategy to the mix.
Obviously stronger monsters (like the Golems) fill up more space in your Monster Medals’ slots, so you’ll have to choose carefully which to keep or discard, until you can expand the slots you possess.
Aside from being a pleasure to just collect the Monster Medals themselves, it’s a great addition to gameplay because they will be crucial as the game keeps introducing new obstacles, objects, gimmicks to keep you on your toes and add the often lamented variety lacking in Warriors maps: teleport zone interconnected to each other, switches that raise and lower doors, mud slowing down enemies and allies alike, alongside an incredibly variety of enemies (taken from the huge DQ bestiary) that often emerge in the last wave of a level, or as properly challenging boss encounters.
My only gripe in terms of map design is that sometimes, even if the maps aren’t as huge as they are in some of the older DW games, you’d wish you have a mount or something to move across the stages faster, and it’s odd because this was not an issue in the previously released/made (and already referenced) Hyrule Warriors, so it looks like a “rookie mistake.”
Sure, eventually you get the “teleportation magic” (Zoom) which is used to teleport between activated red crystals placed on the map, similar to how Hyrule Warriors Legends (the 3DS port-expansion of the original HW) also did later, pretty cool, yes, BUT it’s rarely used, mostly in secondary missions, almost never in story ones, which makes some sense since it’s not a story given/obtained ability, you need to do some secondary optional mission to even unlock Zoom.
In terms of playable roster, there’s the old JRPG quirk of having you choose the main chara (whom can’t be removed from the party) from either Lucyus or Aurora, not that stops you from using the one you don’t pick, and by design they are made to be interchangeable, to basically play the same, aside from some magic spells and special attacks, and this applies (mostly, i think it just changes one cutscenes) to the story too, since the two are already a knight duo and hence partecipate in story events together with the other DQ characters.
There’s no playable villains, but whatever, its called DQ Heroes, and it doesn’t really matter since as you progress you unlock a respectable roster of 13 playable characters (12 since Aurora and Lucyus are interchangeable, as discussed, but there is another playable character…. exclusive to the Japan only Switch rerelease of the game) that have a dystinctive playstile even when technically being “another sword using dude”, and are all honestly a lot of fun to use.
As said, there’s a lot of variety to the enemies and bosses, which is not the standard for a Musou title, same goes for how it can get quite challenging in some of the harder boss confrontations, though it avoid being frustrating since you’re also given 4 Yggdrasil Leaves every battle for resurrecting fallen allies, and you can spend magic gems to use special healing spells.
but even if you don’t feel quite challenged by some story missions, there are plenty of secondary missions to tackle, secrets places on the world map to discover by obtaining treasure maps, farming mission to grind for cash and ingredients, alongside a hub world and various shopts to make it feel even more like a proper JRPG, where you can buy/sell weapons and items, save your game at the church, distribute skill points, even fucking about with alchemy in the cauldron, maybe by using the recipes dropped by monsters, as there can be multiple recipes for the same final crafted item.
My only niggle is the game basically forcing you back to the hub after every mission, maybe after a decent chunk of dialogues, which is fine but can be a little absurd in the long run, even more so when character are discussing “making haste to save someone from the monsters”…. only to still go back to the airship to chillax about anyway. XD
It would have been nice to be able to choose if you wanted to go back to the airship/hub or do one more mission, it’s not an issue but its weird since it feels like a design choice borne from the game originally being designed for a handheld… when it wasn’t (even though the story missions themselves aren’t often very long anyway).
In terms of looks, Dragon Quest Heroes is a great looking game, proving once more than Omega Force can do good looking games…. even if most of the times it has to take a crossover with some already popular or estiblished IP (and their parent company money influx), but it does look very fuckin good, there’s such a great care for detail you can tell the developers had the utmost respect for Dragon Quest (surprising no one, with them also being Japanese and all), it runs smoothly, so i can’t really critique performance or TK (or TK and Square-Enix in this case) being a cheapskate.
Not this time.
I CAN be fairly indifferent to the character designs, provided by Bird Studio of Akira Toriyama fame (yes, the Superman monkey boy) as usual and expected, in time i warmed up to them a bit more than before, but i still prefer their monster designs over the human ones, i can see why DQ has such iconic monster designs that have been barely touched upon in decades, it’s indeed classic stuff, but regardless if you like or loathe the Toriyama art style, the game it’s indeed well presented, looks great and the feeling of going on a classic JRPG adventure it’s spot on, i feel fans of the series are gonna get the most out of it, as expected, but still, it looks the part as it should.
Even though the artstyle chosen this time around uses very little cel shading, compared to Pirate Warriors or the Arslan Musou, it would be reasonable to expect them to go hog with the cel shading, but they don’t, yet it still looks gorgeous, and runs perfectly as well, no real framerate issues to lament this time around, thankfully.
Since it’s not just Koei calling the shots and cutting the corners rounder, there’s both the original japanese and an english voice acting, an excellent dub job that retains the series penchant to give the characters specific accents-dialects (like Yangus having the stereotypical cockney accent), and them making an effort to keep the worldplay and puns in the text, often in spirit more than literally, given some just don’t “transfer” to other European languages, for example.
There’s also the expectedly awesome soundtrack by Sugiyama “What War Crimes?” Kobo, as the fuckin game won’t let you forget, not only via the unavoidable disclaimer that pops up when you boot up the game that points out the rights for the soundtrack are his (capturing screenshots with the PS4 built in feature watermarks not only the usual Koei Games rights, but also the music credits, it’s so fucking ridiculous), alongside those absurd guidelines for streaming that basically imply “do not buy our game or tell anyone you did. Thank you and fuck off.”.
Charming.
In terms of content, it’s also a fairly meaty game, as it takes about 21+ hours (24 if you also fuck about a bit with the secondary misisons and such) to finish, feels about as long as it needs to, thanks also to the aforementioned great enemy and obstacles variety, but there’s also a lot to do after that, with New Game +, challenge maps, completing the bestiary, doing all the side quests,
The only lamentation i have is that is a single player game only, a bit disappointing but also kinda odd as the set up lends itself even more than usual to co-op, which is absent, and there is some DLC…. but it’s just a couple of pre-order slime weapons including in the Day 1 edition, in a couple of hours of gameplay you’ll easily afford better weapons than those, so it’s “benign” vestigial DLC.
If the first beloved Zelda Musou did already go the extra mile compared to previous Warriors crossovers, Dragon Quest Heroes goes above and beyond in combinaning and translating elements from the Dragon Quest games into the Warriors formula, expading the RPG elements it already contained to also rebalance the experience better, and added a welcome layer of strategy by proposing an interesting mix of hack n slash with a tower defense spin to it using monster allies.
It’s a great little idea that works wonders also thanks to the great variety of enemies, bosses, obstacles and the map design that always introduces something new, staving off the usual feeling of repetivity that often affects musou games and offering some welcome challenge, while also giving the player a fun traditional story and the good JRPG features of shops, services, party composition, alchemy, some exploration of sorts, with a respectable number of playable characters that are all fun and have (mostly) a distinctive playstyle, sporting also a good amount of quality content.
It looks and sounds great, with my only real gripe being is that it’s a single player only experience, there’s not even local co-op, but otherwise i frikkin’ loved Dragon Quest Heroes, even with my non-existant knowledge of Dragon Quest overall, so i find absurdly easy to recommend to everyone.
It did fairly well in terms of sales, enough to warrant a sequel (that TK did crank out fast, as usual), simply titled Dragon Quest Heroes 2, which will cover later this month
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