Dragon Quest Heroes (PS4): An homage of a different color.

I, like everyone else in the united states who owned an NES got their JRPG roots by playing a few franchises. Final Fantasy obviously needs no introduction and it paved the way for me, but there was another then competing title that went by Dragon Quest, or as we knew it in America Dragon Warrior. I really liked this series. I liked it a lot. Specifically Dragon Quest 4.

The problem is the original NES was a fickle mistress, and she would sometimes outright delete your games if she so chose. She chose often. Despite it all I have stuck with the series playing them off and on through its many iterations through the years. So when I heard they were doing a Dynasty Warriors style game featuring this universe I was intrigued. 

It had potential, but it also had some pitfalls. I love the idea of going back to visit some of these characters, but I'm not a huge fan of crossover games as their stories tend to suck. Also, I've never been a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors series as a whole. Would I be getting a re-skinned copy of that game? Guess we'll find out. 

DRAGON QUEST HEROES:

The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below (PS4)

The story in this iteration picks up in the Kingdom of Arba. Differing from most Dragon Quest worlds that the nature of this one is peaceful. Humans and monsters lived in harmony with each other and this has been the norm for a significant number of generations.

In Arba we meet our protagonists Aurora and Luceus, a pair of soldiers to the kingdom and clearly a set of longtime friends. Aurora is headstrong and impulsive young girl, Luceus is cautious and tactical and suffers from a horrible case of DBZ hair. They are out and about enjoying a festival with their friend Healix the healslime. As they engage in some cliche character banter the screen cuts to a dark robed figure doing what appears to be a similarly evil ritual. A wave of darkness spreads over the land and every monster it touches then goes berserk and starts attacking people.

Being knights in service to the king, our heroes rush to defend him with Healix in tow. Once they know he's safe they intend to find out why the monsters have gone violent and to see if there is any way to for them to be restored to their normal friendly selves while at the same time coming to the protection of the rest of the world around them.

As somewhat expected from a game that was developed by the same group who made Dynasty Warriors the story to start was pretty much non-existent and basically used was used to give a very brief justification for why it was time to wail on baddies. Pretty much from the word go they let you know that this is not a traditional and proper Dragon Quest title. This game is going to be more in the vein of Hyrule Warriors where you job is to kick ass and kick a lot of it. 

I expected this going into the game, which honestly is probably why I was more receptive to the game. Anyone who was expecting this to be like a proper Dragon Quest is more than likely going to be disappointed. What did surprise me however, is how much care the developers took to make this feel like a proper Dragon Quest game.  Almost every single little nuance to it made me think of the old NES Dragon Warrior titles. Black boxes with iconic white type, still needing to talk to the priest to save, hunting for small medals for top class items and so on. Everything is laid out in a way to homage the Dragon Quest games of old.

Although I will say, for reasons that I do not understand, a number of the monsters names were changed. This for whatever reason threw me completely off kilter and it actually took longer to adjust than I thought they would. I guess some of these changes happened in earlier iterations of the game and I'm just now getting them. Christo becoming Kiryl I can accept, but Liquid Metal Slime? Fuck you, it's a Metal Babble and that's all I will accept is as.

One thing this game can give you that the JRPG usually doesn't is a sense of scale
because now you get to see how big specific monsters are in relation to a human.

The music I feel deserves special recognition for both good and bad reasons. This was one of the many things carefully tailored to be new yet still feel classic. Although none of songs use chiptune, the short play of the notes some makes it feel like it does. a number of the most notable songs from the series make and appearance, and a lot of the 4 catalog specifically. Which is great because Dragon Quest IV was the best.

The problem is the thing that caused the biggest stink in the media, which is just another example of the game company that just doesn't get why people like streaming video game content. So Squenix said you can totally stream the game, you just cant stream the music. What the fuck? I get that there has to be some kind of licencing issue. But I mean what the hell. So instead of trying to figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do to make my game stream-able, I instead just opted not to. Swing and miss there Square.

Terry's abilities allow him to constantly barrage attacks while healing himself
as he does, which makes him a great character to switch to in a pinch.

So my greatest concern going into this game was: "Would this play exactly like Dynasty Warriors?" and by that I mean would I pick a single character, be dropped into in giant map full of baddies, and then trudge through them to get to the one specifically harder enemy at the end. The short answer is no, because it does try to maintain some of its JRPG roots within it so instead of one grand scale battle you fight on a series of maps smaller in scope and usually with objectives.

Although I use the term objectives loosely, since they usually fall under the blanket goals of: "Beat all the enemies", "Defend this place from all the enemies", "Find and Defeat this specific enemy", or "defeat the boss". I appreciate that they took some effort to try to make the questing feel different but it kinda fails on that front since generally the objective is pretty much the same. But hey, there is also sidequesting to do too at least right?

Well sort of. There are tons of quests you can take but almost all of them are just re-defend this position, beat all the enemies, or grind them till they drop a specific item. This last one is exceptionally annoying because sometimes there are not an abundance of a specific monster type around and trying to grind them is hard enough, but then if you need like 5 of a specific RARE drop then you are just up fucked river and can expect to find yourself grinding for hours. Some teammates help with this more than others, so play around with everyone to find who you like best.

Because when I think timeless JRPG franchises, I think Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

I feel they went with a pretty strong line-up of selections for the cast list that spans over the extent of the game. Many of them where characters I knew, most of which I liked, and the ones that I didn't know all that well were still good additions. My problem with it, is it was VERY easy to lock into who stays with the party. For example, Alena is the first non-original character to appear in the game after the new characters have been introduced. And from the moment she introduced, she instantly becomes a party staple, (or she should, if you aren't an idiot).

Alena was known for being a physical powerhouse in Dragon Quest IV and when she appears here that mantle is immediately resumed. She fast moving short range combos, and her multifist smashes for several seconds of continuous damage. Which is them amplified as she can break into clones that widen her range and deal even more hits. If you take the time to build your stats right and boost her strength and defense, and give her abilities that restore MP with critical hits, she basically can't be stopped. She is totally broken.

Build Alena right, and no monster can stand against her nonstop barrage of fists.

There were points in the game where I felt I was just using the Dragon Quest IV cast, but by the end of the game I found the most solid team to be your hero (because you have to), Alena & Terry (for relentless offense), and then either Maya or Bianca (for magic or ranged). It gives you some massively damaging characters, 3 of them have a big area of effect skill, and if you are grinding items, Bianca's "rain of pain"  just mows down enemies like nobody's business.

Speaking of the combat, It is an absolute necessity to TURN OFF EASY MODE. It pitches it as a way to simplify the game so you can play easily and then enjoy the story for what it is. The problem is it turns the game into repeatedly mashing one button, and I won't lie it made me almost stop playing the game because it got repetitive and boring. Turning the game off forced me to learn how to use specific attacks and when to time them. Suddenly the combat became more engaging and skillful, and therefore way more fun to do. Eventually I got to the point where I was railing huge combos and thing switching to a new character on the fly to keep it up and then finishing with a massive Coup De Grace when you max out your tension gauge. It feels bad ass to mow down a massive crowd that way.

A number of Dragon Quest's signature monsters make an appearance in the game.
Some of them just as tough as you remember.

I am going to say something remarkably stupid here: I love the art, but hate the character design. Again, everything in this game goes to the painstaking detail of and old Dragon Quest title and monsters are no exception. Many of the most iconic and notable make an appearance and it always made me happy to see which new one got introduced that I recognized, and the maps are brightly colored and vibrant, which I always appreciate in a game more than a dark washed out pallet.

But I just can't look at these characters and not think Dragon Ball Z. It's 100% the most noticeable with Lucius because he suffers from Goku/Crono hair from the start, but then when you use his tension gauge to hit your Coup De Grace, lo and behold his hair does the dumb spiked up Super Saiyan thing. Because I couldn't take it seriously, Lucius rode the bench the whole game. Lucius sucks.

Stupid. Fuck Lucius on his hair alone. 

I will say that there is a significant amount of fully rendered and voice acted cutscenes which somewhat caught me by surprise because I didn't remember Dynasty Warriors having all that many of them. It was here I noticed they did a very cool thing by giving each of the cast members different accents to sort of represent the differences between then. The main cast of this game are primarily European English, Alena and Kiryl come from land with a Tsar so naturally they a more Russian sounding accent, Maya is a darker skinned character who is dancer (of the seemingly belly variety) so she has a more Indian/Punjabi style accent to go with it, and I'm going to mess this up but I believe that Nera and more specifically Bianca have Irish accents.

I sort of brushed it off at first but as I played through, it really did find it added some originality to all the characters. If I had any complaints about it, it would be that Alena's voice is incredibly high pitched and doofy sounding, she sounds way better in the original Japanese vocals. And King Doric.... ugh, this guys voice. Ok I get that he's supposed to a boisterous and good spirited medieval king but this guy seriously hams it up for every single line he delivers, even when he's supposed to be emoting sadness or grief, he's still loud and boisterous. It's incredibly annoying and even more so when he has a significant amount of lines in the story.

Almost as if she knows she's not dressed for battle, Maya has a series of Area of Effect
dance spells that push enemies away. She was my magical powerhouse on the team.

And while this game has the cliche story arc of "Dark Lord summons Dark Monster, hero of light must fight them" I have to say that I was actually pleasantly surprised with how the story actually unfolded. Mash up games have a pretty common track record for having generally garbage story lines. There are only a few games where they mix characters and the story generally works well.

This is one where everything felt natural together. I think the reason for this is they don't really focus on WHY all these characters from other worlds are here. The characters explain things about the game they came from and reference story points that occur in them, but the overall narrative focuses on things happening in this game and characters respond as if it is their problem as well. It holds together surprisingly well and even manages to tug at the heartstrings at pivotal moments. I was pleasantly surprised with how it all unfolded.

Psaro was a bad ass villain ruining shit for the human race
long before Sephiroth was even grown in a a test tube.

Once you develop a rhythm for the controls, I wouldn't say this is a very difficult game. The majority of the levels don't much change in strategy, so it can be paced by running the maps as you normally would with some occasional side questing. The levels really only started to challenge me near the very end of the game when I would have some protection missions and a very stubborn set of enemies would hunt the target down. It was hard to keep them off of my ward.

There is a New Game+ but honestly by the time I finished the game I was feeling pretty fatigued with it. Perhaps there was extra post game to do but when I finally brought the story to a close I was ready to move onto something different. If there is any one pro-tip I can give you, its save your medals until you can get Alena's best weapon in the medal shop. It will run you about 70 medals but if you do sidequests and kill hordes, it shouldn't take you too long to do. It just makes her even more unstoppable.

Seriously, eat a dick Dragon Quest. This cutscene was so sad for literally no reason.
Poor little happy looking Healslimes should not allowed to be so sad.

There is also a crafting mechanic in the game that I used maybe twice. I didn't use most of them because it seems like the things I was able to craft were only situationally useful, not useful at all, or only had a marginal effect. It just seemed like the resources I was gathering were put to better use outfitting my characters. Which honestly I was probably wasting my time doing it, there are a handful of character specific quests you have to do to finish the game, but ultimately you can roll with the same party for most of it.

I ended up grinding the game for close to 70 something hours so I can certainly say I got my money's worth out of it. If you are fan of Dragon Quest's lore and stories then this is a fun little homage to their entire series. But if you are looking for a game that's a proper Dragon Quest this more than likely is not going to be it. However, It manages to shine well as merging of two different genres of game to put together a competent and enjoyable experience. I liked Dragon Quest: Heroes way more than I thought I would and I can give it a recommendation.

Seriously Alena, You have to ditch that awful hat.