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Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below
PlayStation 4
A Good Merge of A Beat 'Em Up With A RPG Series
4/5 stars
Dragon Quest Heroes successfully blends a beat 'em up game with the Dragon Quest RPG formula to create a game that's enjoyable if not a little repetitive from time to time.
I'll get this out out of the way right now. I'm a big Dragon Quest fan. As such, I understand that this review might be slightly biased. Perhaps my score of this game is slightly inflated because of it. But, I will also say I'm a big Legend of Zelda fan and I only gave Hyrule Warriors a 3/5.
Dragon Quest Heroes' story is unique in the sense that the monsters in this world are friendly. Think of this as a Dragon Quest alternate universe. At the beginning of the game an evil force casts a spell on all the monsters of the world and they become violent. The main characters Luceus and Aurora then get dragged into a journey to save the monsters and the world.
Even though it's just a beat 'em up, the game play is better than I expected. You don't just hack enemies with a sword. I mean, you can, but it can be more refined than that. Much like a RPG, you also have MP. With MP, you can do different attacks that can hit a lot more enemies. As you level up your characters, you receive points that you can put towards a variety of abilities. Maybe you want your MP to regenerate faster so you can cast more spells. Or, maybe you want higher strength and defense for melee attacks. Maybe you want your tension to rise faster. As you progress you can customize the characters so they are best at what you like to do. There is a tension meter that builds and once it's full you have a certain amount of time to unleash this special attack that will normally help you out significantly. Not only that, but you can change which character in your party you're controlling so you can really have more strategy than you'd think in this game.
This is not an open world type of game. You have a center base if you will. Eventually you'll be on a ship. There, you decide what mission to take on. As the story progresses you recruit more members to your party. If you've played a lot of Dragon Quest you'll see a lot of familiar faces. During the story it almost forces you to use all these characters at least once so you have a chance to see what they're like in combat. This is nice because I became accustomed to having the same party just because they were at a higher level.
This game really blended the RPG aspects of it well. It's not just leveling up your character. You can buy weapons, armor, and orbs that increase your stats as well. Not only that, but there's a crafting system where you can take materials you obtain in levels to make items as well. This added an element that created more depth to the game. However, I was annoyed at times when I had to kill 50 of a certain enemy to get that one material I needed to finish out a recipe.
The beginning of this game is shockingly easy. You don't really have to have any strategy or care too much about your health. You can just run up an attack. It takes a long time, but eventually you will encounter levels where you will have to care. How and when you attack becomes important and that's when it gets fun. If you decide to 100 percent the game the challenge goes way up and that was the most fun I had was at the end.
Personally, I enjoyed this game far more than the Zelda equivalent Hyrule Warriors. There are a variety of levels and environments. Some levels were big and others were small with just a boss. The story was good enough and as a fan of the Dragon Quest universe I really enjoyed the music, characters and enemies. I obtained the platinum trophy for this game which was a pretty big investment so that should show you how much I enjoyed this game.
This game was better than I thought it would be which was a nice surprise.
4/5
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