It is fun, but the repetitiveness and shortness of the game stop it from being great.
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It's time for the Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors review! For the Wii!
This is the first Dragon Quest game I've ever played. I don't know why, but I was never really that interested in the series. However, watching this year's E3 of Dragon Quest IX, I got to say, it looked pretty good! Oh and also, if you guys would like to see an excellent review of Dragon Quest IX, check out TheShockSuspect's review of it. (Link at the top!) :) So anyway, on with this game.
Now I've read that this is a spinoff of the standard Dragon Quest games, but since I've never played any before this one, the same rules apply to this game as The Crystal Bearers did with the standard Final Fantasy games, and that is I will not be comparing this game to any other Dragon Quest game.
The story is about your character, how he has just turned 16 years old and is now declared a manly man, even though he looks like a scrawny little nothing. Because you have turned 16, you get a brand new car! No, not really. Instead, you have to go through a cave and defeat the boss inside to prove your worth. And, well, as to not to spoil anything, I'll just say completing it is basically the tutorial, and when you come back to town, mischief is brewing and you have to go on quests to figure out what is going on.
I found the genre of this game to be quite unique. I've never played one like it. It's a first-person, sword slashing real-time RPG. As you go through the wilderness, you will encounter enemies you have to fight to advance. To kill them off, you will use your sword, via the slashing and thrusting with the Wiimote.
To help you on your quest, three characters will join up with you. The thing is though, only one character will fight with you during a whole mission. I thought that was stupid, because throughout quite a bit of the game, all three of them are with you while the story is played out, but you can only have one fight with you during every mission. I also really didn't like the fact that you can't switch out a member for another during a battle! It would have been so helpful in some of the areas of the game, but no, the developers made a stupid decision and said no to that good idea!
Each member have spells which can either help you by giving you attribute bonuses, or healing you, or both. You don't have to worry about what weapons and armor each of them have. All you have to do is make sure they stay alive in battle!
As you go through each area and kill of enemies, you will acquire treasures, some of which can heal you, bring your partner back to life, and some of which are special items you can forge at the blacksmith into better weapons. You can also buy better armor and other items for your quest which are very helpful.
When you purchase certain swords, you will learn special techniques which do a lot of damage and just look plain awesome!
I thought the graphics were good. It's very cartoony which was fine. It's nothing amazing, but it's not an eyesore either.
I have mixed reactions with the controls. See when you're in town, you can walk freely anywhere, but when you're on a mission, you are completely on rails. Now, you would think that moving freely would be the better of the two right? Well, in my opinion, the on rails portions of the game were better. Why? Because moving around is done with the D-Pad, not the analog stick in the Nunchuck. Now the Wiimote is not held horizontally, but vertically. This method makes turning very awkward and a bit frustrating. However, when you're on a mission on rails, all you have to do press forward, and the game will just guide you. Now even though this method is nice and easy, if you know me, I don't like being on rails. I want to freely explore on my own. Yes, I know this game did not intend for me to do that, but…oh well.
Like I said before, you will slash and thrust the Wiimote to, of course, slash and thrust your sword to kill off your enemies. These controls are pretty good for the most part. Yes, there will be occasions where your intended vertical slash will become a diagonal slash, and vice versa, but overall I thought they worked pretty well. There's a lock-on system where you can point anywhere on the screen, press A, and that's where your sword will swing. If you don't lock onto any point on the screen, the sword will target the middle of the screen. You also have a shield, which you can block with B. Thing is though, after taking so many hits, your shield will start to crumble. There's an item which restores your shield back to normal, which I think gives this game a nice little twist.
I liked the art of the characters in this game, because they look like characters in Dragonball Z, for obvious reasons. Some characters were really hot, and some were really not. Uhh! (Link at the top!) :) And what's with this character! What the hell!? (Link at the top!) :) Oh, and hey look, it's Gohan! Sort of… (Link at the top!) :)
When you're on missions, there will be alternate paths you can take, giving this game replayability which is nice.
This game is fun, but the biggest problem with it is, the battle system. While interesting and fun, it becomes VERY monotonous and repetitious! So much so, that it just decreases the overall fun factor because of the lack of variety. Every mission is basically the same: Find your way through the level, fight off enemies, collect items, and battle the boss at the end. And I know, this is a very familiar routine, but this game, in my opinion, just dumbs it down. There was nothing surprising in this game after playing it for a few hours! It was just, the same thing, over and over…
Another downside was that you could only put so many items in your pockets. Like healing and MP items, stuff like that, was very limited in the amount you could carry. This was VERY annoying, as the game can become pretty difficult!
The boss fights were fun, but it was like fighting just a stronger and more powerful enemy while on the path to get to the boss. Good thing you can learn awesome attacks with your sword, otherwise the boss fights, and actually the whole game would not be as fun or interesting.
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors is a pretty good game. Good graphics, overall well done controls, cool weapons and special attacks, and it's actually pretty addicting.
However, the fun can be drowned out by the overall monotonous and repetitious battle system. And this is a big problem, because it's the main feature of the game! And also, I didn't like it that only one character would fight alongside you at a time, you could only carry a small amount of items, the story was kind of predictable, and the game is only about 8 hours long.
Now it's not a bad game, I definitely don't think it is, but there just needs to be more variety in the gameplay. It just feels like there was a lot of potential, and if there was more to it, this game would be great! Sadly, I don't think it is great, but I still had a really fun time with it!
This game gets a 3.5/5 with the title of Good.
Ratings:
0=COMPLETE AND ULTIMATE FAIL!!!!!
.25-.75=Total Crap!
1-1.5 = Horrible!
1.75-2.5=Bad
2.75-3.5=Good
3.75-4.25=Awesome!
4.5-4.75=EPIC!!!
5=MONUMENTALLY AND SUPREMELY PERFECT!!!!!