First Impressions: Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below

Being Dragon Quest fans and after first playing Hyrule Warriors and thoroughly enjoying that as well as seeing a 12cm Slime plushie in the rewards, we pre-ordered the Slime Collectors edition. So far, the game has equal charm and frustration in its massive branches and roots.
The first thing that struck me when playing was the graphics. The opening cutscene was bright and clear with recognisable monsters and avatars all around, ready and waiting to... Slaughter their apparent friends when the need arises. But, by the Goddess, does this slaughter look pretty with crystal clear content, luxurious lighting and vivid variation of voluminous (v)creatures. The size of the maps are great to and the camera view point could fit nicely into an RPG - *hint hint*.

The gameplay is similar to Hyrule Warriors of course, with combos abound. We chose the slick controls instead of quick so fingers were jumping all around the controls. While there are many combos to do, along with magic, you can get along by simply doing the same move over and over, although I expect this to change as I progress through the game. Summoning monsters is fun to do and adds some strategic elements to the game and allows the game to be a bit mean and let enemies to try and flank you.

The characters are stock and the jokes reused but fun all the same. It's nice to see returning characters from past series and I can't wait to meet Yangus and Jessica from Dragon Quest 8 (my favourite game from the series). The voice acting is very accent heavy, with the view of Square Enix being that everyone is a variation of stereotypical British or Russian (so far at least). However, they are enjoyable to listen too and have evoked a couple of laughs. All that is, except Healix. Healix is just annoying.

The final thing I will be talking about in this first impressions is the PS4 controller speaker. This is used in games like The Last of Us to great effect (in this case to project the Clicker sounds and recordings on voice diaries) and the use of it has been converted to this game, although not very well. During the battle, every sentence spoken is spoken via the controller, seemingly to give the impression of you being on the battlefield. However, the characters voices are also projected through the television and with no apparent way to turn it off this quickly becomes annoying. Especially with Healix's voice. *Shudders*.

Overall, I have enjoyed my experience with the game so far and have done numerous things from buying Scale Shields again and again to protecting a generator after we left it on the street. You will, however, have nightmares for weeks after thinking heavily on the motives of your characters and the apparent lack of guilt at cutting down their friends. Everything has its end. Except for Healix!!!

Thanks for reading, Satamer.