Developer: Silicon
Studios
Publisher: From
Software (JPN), Atlus (NA)
Platforms: PS3
Release: 5/11/2010
(NA)
Genre:
Action-Adventure
Modes:
Single-Player
Availability:
Online Stores like Amazon ($30 New)
Disclaimer:
- I'm
not a professional reviewer.
- A Link to the Past was my first Zelda game.
- I enjoy classic style games like this.
Info:
“3D Dot Game Heroes” is made by Silicon Studios
who have developed; Operation: Darkness, Bravery Default 1 and 2,
FANTASICA, and other games.
Story:
The plot involves the player character being a descendent of the
legendary hero that stop evil from taking over Dotinia Kingdom. Years
latter the popularity of the kingdom wanes so the king decides to
make the world 3D in order to make the world more appealing.
Unfortunately, this strengthened evil and put the kingdom into peril
again. So it's up to you to save the Kingdom.
The writing is light hearted and silly with many tributes to classic
games like Dragon's Quest, Final Fantasy, and of course, Zelda. There
is plenty of 4th wall breaking references that
acknowledged the silly game-play and story tropes that appear in many
games. It's nether obnoxious or in your face, but subtle humor.
Graphics:
The game is rendered as millions of tiny cubed pixels known as
voxels. From the game world to the characters, it helps give it a
retro NES/SNES feeling to it. Looking at the character from a flat
perspective or from far away on an overhead view, they can almost be
mistaken for sprites. When you play for the first time, the colors
may look flat and muted. You will need to adjust the brightness and
color setting, in-game, to make it look it's best. Too much color and
brightness will hide the outlines of the voxels and blend some colors
together. You may also have to adjust it in the volcano and wind
valley sections where the HDR can make things hard to see. It's a
minor issue, but it's something that can be easily fixed.
Game-play:
“3D Dot Game Heroes”
plays as a tribute to the old 2D Legend of Zelda games where you
traverse an over-world to find dungeons and complete quests. The
over-world works in a grid system where screens are grouped into a
grid with the map being a 5x5 grid layout. Throughout the over-world
there are chests to find, hidden locations, and quests to do. These
quests typically involve talking to separate npc's, but sometimes
they involves finding items. The quest rewards can be, money,
life-shards, magic upgrades, but sometimes they are miscellaneous
items that contribute to a big reward. Your life is measured in a
meter of apples that can be increased by finding life-shards hidden
in the world. The magic bar works similarly except you only need to
find one hour glass in order to increase your magic meter.
The game has a character editor where you can ether edit an pre-made
character or build your own. Not only do you build the character, but
also design the animations for movement and the attacks. You're only
limited to your imagination to what you want to create. If you don't
want to create a character, you have over 50 pre-made character's to
chose, from Santa Claus to Tanks. Each character has a class that
determines the amount of health and magic you will start with. Royal
and Scholar classes give one extra health or magic at the cost of the
other while the hero class has an even amount. You can change you
character and it's class anytime you load your save file and the
health and magic amounts will adjust.
The game has 7 main dungeons, with 4 optional mini-dungeons. Each of
the main dungeons, has to be done in order as you need to get key
items and spells from completing the dungeons. The dungeons are
mostly linear with few to no shortcuts. This means in the longer
dungeons, you might have to spend 20 minutes to regain your progress
if you die. Each dungeon progressively gets longer and harder, with
the introduction of new elements and individual dungeon gimmicks. In
the longer dungeons, you more likely to get lost due to lots of
backtracking. For those that are experienced with games, the dungeons
won't be too hard. A flaw of the dungeons is that some of them only
use a gimmick once and ditch it for the rest of the dungeon. Another
flaw is the final dungeon is long and tedious to play through. There
is lots of backtracking and getting through it can take over 2 hours.
There are 34 swords to collect and upgrade through the game. The
sword vary from your standard sword, to a laser sword, and even a
fish. All the swords have different visuals and some have different
sound effects. These swords are ether acquired through completing
quests, finding them, or by buying the with the small blocks you find
or get through mini-games. The small blocks are the currency used to
buy swords from King Block. All swords purchased from King Block can
be carried over into a new game. You can upgrade your swords make
them longer, wider, stronger, pierce through objects, spin, shoot
beams, and special abilities. The upgrade costs money and these
upgrades will carry over when you acquire the sword again in new game
+. Unfortunately, while the swords look different, most of the
function similarly stat wise. Only about 11 of them are noticeably
different in abilities and stats, but most of those are acquired to
late to be of use. Luckily 3 of the useful ones can be carried over
to new game +.
Camera Modes:
 |
| Camera A |
 |
| Camera B |
 |
| Camera C |
 |
| Camera D |
The problems with camera B, ironically, come from the dungeons and
the mini games were you are stuck with that perspective. Camera B is
fine in the field where the terrain doesn’t obscure whats around
you, no precision targeting, and no enemies that require careful
defense. In the latter three dungeons, these issues crop up
occasionally. With the lack of shortcuts in a dungeon, this means
having to do everything all over again which means potentially
wasting 20 minutes or more. These issues wouldn't be a problem if you
could use camera C. It's a minor issue with the breakout mini-game,
but dash circuit is affected greatly by this among other issues when
your moving at lighting speeds.
Camera C is exactly like the old Legend of Zelda games. It's a pure
top down perspective that works great. This is the other camera
perspective I would recommend. You can't see the distance on the
edges of the screen though. The last one is Camera D which is Camera
A, but extremely close to the player. It's a barely functional
perspective that seam pointless to have.
Mini-games:
The dash circuit mini-game is infamous among players. Save for one
or two people, many loath this mini game due to how ridiculously hard
it is. The mini-game involves press the dash button to rush around
the track as your speed increases. While wining the money is a
reasonable challenge, beating the track record is insanely hard if
you want to get the sword. This is due to the fast speeds you need to
be moving at while maneuvering through hairpin turns. The game
controls don't work well for that and the perspective makes this hard
to do especially with hit-boxes being larger then the models. It's
completely optional and not required to beat the game, but it's worth
noting the serious issues to it compared to the rest of the game.
The second mini-game is Block Defense. This game is a tower defense
type game where you set up turrets to take out the enemies that march
along a path to what you are protecting. In this case, you are
protecting the exit from the enemies. Enemies come in a set waves
that get progressively harder with different enemy types and health
amounts. Killing enemies gets you money to buy new towers. You have
variety of turrets that are effective for a variety of situations
from land based enemies to flying enemies. At the end of certain
waves, a knight with a large amount of health will appear. When you
kill it, you will get a crystal to buy new types of towers or
increasing reward bonuses at the end of each.
An interesting twist to Block Defense is you can participate in
killing the enemies or collecting money, but by standing still, you
gain experience to become much stronger. There are five regular block
defense levels plus 10 bonus levels that become increasingly
difficult in layouts and waves. The 10 bonus levels were free DLC
that came with the North American and European versions of the game.
These bonus levels have different rules and conditions for winning.
The extra levels are not required for 100% completion or for getting
any trophies. Each block defense level can last up 20 minutes or
more.
The last mini-game is Brickout that is a clone of the old arcade
game known as Breakout. You launch your ball with the shield and use
what sword you have equipped or the shield, to bounce the ball around
to break the blocks. There are five levels in total with a sword you
can get if you don't lose any lives. The only fault being the
perspective that can make it hard to judge the distance of the ball
coming toward you.
Technical:
One significant flaw in the game-play is the shield system. While it
isn't a big deal for causally playing; going for the boss trophies
and playing spelunker mode makes this noticeable. The problem
revolves around the player's hit-box, which is the size limit of how
big they can make their character. So this means that the hit-box is
larger then the character that it surrounds. You may notice this when
trying to block attacks at the corners of your character or take
damage despite the enemies attack not touching the character model.
Enemies don't have this issue.
Another factor in this issue is that the character's shield only
protects about 75% of the character's front. Unlike the knights which
can block any attack that touches the front, the player doesn't get
the full benefit of this. Any attack that connects with the player or
enemies hit-box first will causes them to receive damage regardless
of the shield.
The last factor to the issue is the animations. Animations are
slower then the hit-boxes. So while you may think you blocked a slow
attack, you didn't. This is noticeable when fighting the dark knight
boss. Some attacks like the Golum's laser beams, and the Dark
Knight's sword seam to lay the hit-box down instantly around you,
causing the game to treat it like you were hit despite defending.
It also player's a part in the shield bug where defending while
up-close to an enemy causes a rapid amount of shield hit noises.
Doing this for to long can sometimes cause your character to be
turned around or thrown around, and possibly take damage. It seams
that the game is rapidly checking to see if the attack connects with
the hit-box or the shield, and sometimes it will decide the player
takes damage despite visually looking like it shouldn't.
The game is also prone to major slowdown which tends to be common in
dungeons. Destroying too many models on screen causes lots of little
voxels to spew across the screen. Two factors exclusively cause frame
drops in the dungeons is the lighting and the water. It isn't
consistent, but it generally happens in the aqua and flame dungeons.
Other minor issues include the sword not fully extending despite
nothing being in the way, sword not swinging in tight area's, enemies
instantly turning when performing an attack, and mage's AI not
working properly. You will only notice all the issues in the dungeons
.
Audio:
The soundtrack is retro style theme with many of the songs provoke
memories of old classic games. They have have a chip tune style while
not being restrained by the technical limitations of the era's the
songs give tribute to. A lot of the music does pay tribute to the
SNES and NES Zelda games.
Thoughts:
“3D Dot Game Heroes” is a fun
tribute to the Legend of Zelda and other classic games. I know I
reference Zelda a lot, but it's hard not to make comparisons to what
it primary tributes. It's a great throwback to classic games and a
reminder that the style can still be made today. The game has plenty
of content to keep you busy for quiet awhile. It's not perfect
though. The latter 4 dungeons o f the game start to take an hour or
two to complete and if don't access the boss teleporter before you
die, you will have to do it all again. They also have plenty of
backtracking, especially the final dungeon. The dungeons aren't
horrible, but they can be tiring to play through. Regardless of it's
faults, it is an accessible game that I would recommend to all
gamers.
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