POSTED 26/10/15


DRAGON QUEST HEROES: THE WORLD TREE'S WOE AND THE BLIGHT BELOW

Omega Force/Square Enix

People types and monster types, live together in perfect har-mo... YIPES!!!

They’ve turned! One minute it’s festival time, where they’re handy out balloons all friendly-like, the next a wind sweeps through Arba and transforms them all into, well, monsters!

Then the portals open up, spewing forth bloodlusting grotesquery of all kinds. We guess this means we won’t get to ride the merry-go-round. Pout!

Anyway, luckily the Royal Guard are on the case, specifically those of default names Luceus and Aurora, who we quickly renamed Arnold Rimmer and Kate Winslet. The former’s the prickly by-the-book type, the latter a delightfully just-get-to-the point warrior. You pick one as your initial playable being, before teaming up with King Doric to nut out WTF’s going on – and to stop the not-so-friendly-anymore monsters from uprooting the World Tree.

If you’re expecting a typical Dragon Quest game of endless dialogue and turn-based RPGing then you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re expecting a fun game then you won’t be. The ungainly titled DQH:TWTWATBB (c’mon, we’ve only got ~300 words to play with) takes characters from Dragon Quests past and inserts them into the Dynasty Warriors engine.

RPG-lite elements remain – as does mucho text that too often interrupts the flow - but with a healthy injection of hack and slash. Monsters can almost completely inundate you, and it’s glorious picking them off with the simple but effective controls, which house all manner of combos if you take time to learn them. After a while you’ll need to, too. You can also deploy monster medals, allowing you to use them pretty much as cannons when being assailed from several sides.

Often amusing and always brimming with finger-twitchy action – and some gargantuan beasties - it’s a bit weird killing off your former friends in order to save them. Don’t think, do though and maybe you'll be amazed...

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