Sunday 1 November 2015

Dragon Quest Heroes Review - Hack and Slash Fun!


By Sam Coles:

I don’t know if this is a new thing at the moment but the guys who make the Dynasty Warriors series seem to be making games with their formula with different skins of other existing game franchises. First they did The Legend of Zelda with Hyrule Warriors and now we have Dragon Quest Heroes. Does it work? In short yes!





The story of Dragon Quest Heroes is set in the world of Arba where monsters and humans both co-exist and get along with each other. Until a mysterious spell suddenly turns them against humans and begin to attack the humans for no reason. So you must journey through the land and fight your way through hordes of monsters and destroying them in the most outrageous and over the top way possible. It’s what you would expect from a Dynasty Warriors style game. You can pick between two heroes that you’ll primarily control, however you can assume direct control of the other characters during a battle as it has the classic party system.



The gameplay if you haven’t guessed already is a hack and slash game in the same vein as Dynasty Warriors as it is made by same guys. Like Hyrule Warriors you’ll travel to locales that you know from the Dragon Quest universe, as well as getting into big scale battles with waves and waves of enemies from the games even those deceivingly adorable slimes.



How it generally works you enter an area where you take down a wave of enemies until the game tells you to stop, but portals will appear which keeps you on your toes and you have to kill the portal keepers. This makes you think about how you tackle a battle especially when you’re defending an object or person because the portals are generally at the back of the map far away, so you have to leave objective vulnerable for a small amount of time. You’re not always stuck in small spaces fighting these monsters you get to explore large rolling green hills exploring and fighting monsters to gain XP and unlock new weapons. Now and again you’ll fight large bosses which will require different strategies such as using ballista’s etc. Each boss fight is fresh and varied which will not leave you bored.

It’s not just a hack and slash game it acts like an RPG like the other Dragon Quest games. What I mean by this is that you gain XP which is standard fair in most action games these days, but you have to assign points to each of your party members to keep them powered up. You also have to check their items and weapons to make sure they’re up to par with you and the enemies you’ll encounter next. After each mission you’ll be transported back to camp which is a hub area where you can interact with other characters, learn more about the world, buy new equipment and assign skill points to your party members when it’s quiet.



The graphics are bright and colourful with a beautiful cartoon style which will help it age better in the coming years. The characters visual styles are all unique and different with their own funny personality traits for each. The game runs at a buttery smooth frame rate of 60 frames per second during gameplay sections which is key for this sort of game because you need that quick reaction time.


Dragon Quest Heroes is a wonderful spin off to an already fantastic game series which has great action and doesn’t take itself seriously which is nice to play a game that is not serious in a sea of games that are gritty and violent. If you have a PS4 grab this game you won’t regret it.

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