3D Dot Game Heroes

Adventure games have definitely come a long way.  More specifically, Zelda has come a long way from the overhead 2D games on the NES, SNES and Gameboy to the 3D games on N64 and beyond.  Then Nintendo kinda tried to go back to their roots with the games on DS– except they threw in annoying gimmicks like sailing and a train.  There are still gamers out there that want the old school adventure game that Zelda used to be, but no one was answering our call… until now.  Atlus brings us 3D Dot Game Heroes.  A “love letter” of sorts to the old school Zelda games that brings some nostalgia as well as some freshness to the table.

The first thing you’ll notice when popping this game into your PS3 is the graphical style.  There’s no avoiding it.  It’s different, and you’ll either love it, or you’ll hate it.  Luckily, I love it.  It’s basically 3D pixel art with some additional special effects– mainly things like light sourcing and depth of the landscape that you’re on.  The light sourcing is nice, but the depth of field stuff is kind of annoying at times.  When I played the game I ended up adjusting the camera to minimize the blurring of surrounding areas.  However, that small negative washes away when you see the creativity in some of the characters and enemies that Silicon Studio came up with.

When you start the game you can choose one of the many characters already made in the game, or create your own!  Such a cool feature.  They give you a 16x16x16 cube that you can play with to create your own character or you can also  use one of the characters already made in the game as a template.  You map out 6 different poses for your character (2 walking, 2 attacks, standing and a “hooray” pose) and the game uses those poses to animate your character in game.

After creating, you can share your characters with others as well.  I decided to make Simon Belmont in his outfit from Simon’s Quest, which didn’t turn out that bad considering I have no artistic talent at all!  There is only one flaw with the way 3D Dot Game Heroes character creator works; no matter how big you make your character, your hit box still seems to be a 16x16x16 “dot” cube.  This will end up being noticeable, but not really in a way that will kill you all the time.  More often than not, I would notice this annoyance when I was trying to get around, for instance, an obstacle on the ground.  It may seem like Simon can get around it, but because he’s really a cube, he can’t.  Again, at its worst, this is merely an annoyance.

After you play around with the character creator for a few hours, starting the game will pretty much throw you right into the action, at which point you will see exactly how much like the old school Zelda games 3DDGH can be.  The game plays almost exactly like them.  Silicon Studio did throw in some slight changes to the game that are more than welcome though.  For instance, in Zelda, when you have full health, your sword shoots a beam.  In 3DDGH it can do that and much more.  Your main weapon will increase length, width and power as well as allow you to cut right through walls and obstacles and shoot a beam.

All of this is customizable at a blacksmith that you hit really early on in the game.  Each main weapon has a maximum potential and a maximum level for each trait.  The blacksmith will allow you to increase the level of the weapons’ traits.  Usually there will not be enough potential in the weapon to get all traits to their max levels, but that’s what makes it interesting.  It becomes a min and max system which you customize to your tastes.  However the stats you customize only show themselves when you are at max health, and the effects make enough of a difference in the difficulty of the game, you’ll find yourself repeatedly going into rooms with enemies that give health just so you can get back up to max health.

The difficulty of the game does fluctuate pretty suddenly at times.  In my experience with the game, I was breezing through and all of a sudden I got to a temple that had enemies that not only did 3 or 4 apples of damage (yes… this game uses apples to display health), but it also drained your magic.  Could be pretty devastating at times if you’re facing them with some of the beam turrets all at the same time.  The bosses, on the other hand, ramp up pretty evenly for the most part.  They all display very impressive design considering they are pretty much made of Legos.  There are patterns to the way most attack, but just because they have patterns to their attacks, that doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t difficult.  Some of the minions of evil are are pretty nasty.

Of course, throughout the game, you will be less worried about the “evil” in the story and more engaged in how light hearted the game is with its obscure retro gaming references and ability to not take itself too seriously.  The game takes place in a kingdom called Dotnia, a 2D world that was once saved by a great hero with a sacred sword.  The hero rescued 6 sages and sealed away the evil.  The king of Dotnia wants more attention on his kingdom so they go 3D.  Then evil returns and your hero is tasked with collecting the 6 sages’ orbs to once again seal away the evil which has returned.  But who cares?  The story is pretty throw away.  The great thing about the game is seeing the crazy references they make throughout it.  There’s an entire room dedicated to another FROM Software/Atlus title, Demon’s Souls, not to mention little tidbits to remind you of games like Gauntlet, Metal Gear, and of course Zelda.

Getting through the core game will take you 20 or so hours at least, but they have also thrown in a bunch of side quests that range from finding particular people for a town, to destroying difficult enemies in the over world.  There are also minigames that you can play that resemble favorites you know. For instance; a block breaking game resembling Arkanoid and a Tower defense minigame.  All of these little sidequests add to the replayability of the game, however they are also part of one of the few complaints I have about the game.  I know they were going for old school, but there are some modern touches that 3D Dot Game Heroes can benefit from– like a quest log of some sort.  It would make it easier to track them, and for me, if I see a quest in a quest log, I tend to try to complete it.

There’s really not much else to complain about when it comes to 3D Dot Game Heroes.  It’s a solid Zelda clone that has it’s own flair and a visual style that gamers from the 8-bit era will mostly likely love.  The game will feel familiar and some people may find it feels a little too familiar, but most that just want to have fun will enjoy it.  Finally, if you’re an artistic gamer, get ready to spend a lot of time in the character creation tool, because that can be truly addicting. Atlus, you localized another winner, congratulations!