As I’ve stated before, I’ve never really been a huge fan of the Musou, or Dynasty Warriors, series of games until fairly recently with Hyrule Warriors. Hyrule Warriors had a good amount of polish and fan service. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below aims to combine the Musou series with popular RPG series Dragon Quest. The game’s been out in Japan for a few months, but we finally get the game in North America later this year. I played two missions from the English version, and I walked away pretty happy.
There were two missions that were available for me to play. The first was a simple “kill all monsters” goal. It was a small map with a few twists and turns. The monsters got progressively more difficult in the level. Starting with the usual slimes, going up to some armored knights. The Dragon Quest games lend themselves to having a varied enemy and monster roster. Something I feel that helps out the Dynasty Warriors games as some levels can feel a little monotonous by fighting the same enemies over several maps. The second mission I played was a little different, I had to take out a Gigantes as quickly as possible. Regular attacks didn’t do much damage to him, so I had to use Spellcasters which were turrets located on platforms. It took me a lot longer to realize what it was referring to when the game said to use a “spellcaster.” I thought it meant to switch to a mage/wizard character. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take down the Gigantes in time by the end of the level.
The game is exactly what I would want out of a Dragon Quest/Warriors hybrid; colorful enemies, wonderful environments, and fast gameplay. There were special elemental attacks which were a joy to use. There’s just something about attacking a horde of enemies and then finishing them off with a flame sword attack. Switching between characters was a great way to try out different play styles and the different special attacks. Plus if you get a little too aggressive with one character, you can easily switch to another to restore that character. There’s also a special ability wheel that allows you to select which special attack to use.
Overall, I had a great time with the game. There are several additions to this game over a traditional Warriors game that makes Dragon Quest Heroes a must get for fans of the Dragon Quest games that aren’t necessarily a fan of the Musou styled games.
Dragon Quest Heroes comes out for Playstation 4 and Playstation 3 on October 13th, 2015.
