Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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Dragon Quest Heroes: the World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below (PS4)

The first entry in the Warriors/Musou style spinoff of the long running Dragon Quest JRPG franchise.

Gameplay:

• Like most Warriors style games, it is a mission based action game where you take a party of 1-4 characters into battle against hundreds of foes. While most other Warriors titles have you taking control of a battlefield by completing various tasks (such as capturing forts, defeating important named foes, etc.) DQH tends to be a much more singularly focused experience. Maps (particularly in story mode) tend to be smaller in scope compared to it's contemporaries, and while you sometimes get a pretty basic objective (such as "defeat all monsters"), the game largely has a "tower defence" style bent to it, and you'll more often than not be tasked with protecting a specific location (such as a gate or statue) or an NPC (escort mission style) from waves of enemies as your sole objective in a mission.
  
  Escort mission the game, pretty much.
• Maps tend to be more maze-like, where you have to figure out the best way to stem the incoming tide of enemies so you can safely venture out to slay the "Mawkeepers" (tougher enemies that guard the portals mooks endlessly spawn from). To do this you'll need to summon your own monsters to the battlefield (which you can do after picking up dropped "monster medals" from defeated monsters) in key defensive positions, as well as take advantage of other strategic elements, such as stones dotted across a map you can warp to (they need to be activated first, but only once, so it's completely viable to leave your main objective unprotected your first go around as you go around activating all the stones, that way you can make use of them from the start on future attempts) or map specific elements such as cannons or switches that open & close gates.
• I'll be honest & admit I really didn't care for the general gameplay loop in this. Don't get me wrong, mowing down hundreds of mooks can be as fun as ever (and it was kinda a relief whenever I didn't have to protect something), but general character control felt a little more heavy & not as snappy as other Warriors titles, and whenever you had to protect an NPC that has their own weapon they have a tendency to bum rush the strongest enemy that's currently in their "zone", even if they only have a sliver of health left, which makes for many a failed mission. Plus, I encountered at least one bug during a story mission where I had to protect a barricade, and the game considered it a failed mission whenever it reached half health (I've since watched a couple gameplay vids of people completing the mission with much lower barricade health, so it had to have been a bug, and not that isolated as I found a thread discussing the issue on the Steam forums). Luckily, you keep all EXP, Gold, & enemy drops you obtain in failed missions, so at least there's always some level of growth.
• I will concede that I enjoyed the boss battles that closed out each chapter, and while they have nothing on the boss encounters seen in something like FFVII Remake, they do tend to be more involved than your typical Warriors bosses, and were nice & challenging IMO (though it has a tendency to reuse bosses, or at least pallet swapped versions of them, as regular enemies later on, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine).
• Each character has a series of combos they can execute with various combinations of the Square (light attack) & Triangle (heavy attack) buttons, Cross is used to jump, and Circle activates Tension mode whenever it's guage is built up (think the "Musou" mode from other games. you'll get a brief all around stat boost & status effect immunity, followed up by a screen filling super attack once the guage empties, or if you pull it off early by pressing Circle again). By pressing one of the shoulder buttons you'll bring up the special attack (these attacks use MP) & Healstone (these heal everyone in your party, though not any NPCs you're protecting) menues, another shoulder button makes you guard, another is dodge, and the last one switches between characters.
• In terms of powering up your characters, they level up (general stat boosts) upon earning enough EXP (characters not in use earn EXP, but at a slower rate), by spending skill points on upgrades (you earn skill points every time you level up, and can learn/upgrade special attacks, upgrade combos, obtain extra stat boosts, and unlock other boons), by equipping new weapons/orbs (you buy these at the shop back at base, and the new items that appear at the start of each chapter are universally better than what came before, though a few characters have super weapons earned through late/post game side quests), and by equipping accessories (you synthesize these back at base with monster drops, and they offer boons non-stat related, such as protection against status effects or damaging terrain).
• From my experience there are only 13 playable characters in the game (outside of any potential DLC, which I haven't checked), and while this means the scope of the franchise that it represents is quite small, the characters it does have are well realized & play very uniquely. It has a whopping 4 OC's (Luceus, Aurora, King Doric, & Isla), 4 reps from DQIV (Alena, Kyril, Maya, & a secret character), 2 reps from DQV (Bianca & Nera), 2 reps from DQVIII (Jessica & Yangus), & 1 rep from DQVI (Terry, who is also the protag of the Dragon Quest Monsters spinoff series). Barring Terry, all the characters present are from titles I've actually played, so lucky me.
• In between missions you'll spend time at your base of operations which houses the world map (which you select to set out on missions), the aforementioned weapon & orb shops, the aforementioned synthesis shop, the Mini Medal shop (rare collectables you obtain from a variety of sources that you can trade for synthesis recipes, monster drops, & a special selection of weapons), the side quest counter (more on these next), accolade counter (earn Mini Medals for earning achievements & defeating certain numbers of enemies), the mail counter (mostly just goofy letters awarded upon completing a sidequest, but certain sidequest rewards are obtained here as well), a Church (saving & refilling Healstones), & a Tavern (swap out party members here).
• A fresh group of sidequests become available at the start of each chapter (and in post game), and while there are a number of them that offer a bespoke mission, the majority just ask you to defeat "X" number of this enemy type or collect "Y" number of this enemy drop. The problem with this is that, as far as I could tell, there's absolutely no way to replay missions (story or otherwise). Instead, when you select a certain location on the world map (unless there's a new mission to play) you're only option is to take on an endless wave of enemies at one of three difficulties (which determine which monster types spawn, which you can check by pressing the touch pad). This makes grinding out the "Kill X enemies, or collect Y items" type quests (or heck, grinding in general) the absolute worst kind of rote grinding imaginable. You'll be roped into doing quite a bit of them too, as worthwhile upgrades are locked behind them (like expanding the number of enemy drops you can hold, number of total Healstones, and number of monsters you can call to your side in battle), and story mission difficulty ramps up quickly enough that you'll need to do most of them to stay properly leveled, in my experience.
• The only missions not completely pulled from availability after completing them are the boss fights, as souped up versions of them get their own map locations (appearing as caves) after you clear their associated chapter.
• Oh, each character also has a couple of alternate costumes to unlock (via sidequests...), but they're all pallet swaps, so nothing too interesting, and kind of disappointing considering DQVIII & DQXI both offer actual alternate costumes (like armor sets, bunny outfits, etc.) for party members. Apparently there are a couple of interesting armor sets available as DLC, but this only applies to Luceus & Aurora (the player character OC's).

Story:

• It takes place in a kingdom where humanity & monsters have lived in peace for as long as can be remembered, however strange events are afoot & monster kind turns against humanity. After securing Arba (the capital city), King Doric and his head knights Luceus & Aurora (the two player character choices) head out to protect the troubled kingdom & find out what's going on with their monster friends (which happens to involve slaughtering them by the hundreds, lol), and along the way they team up with iconic DQ personalities, who've been mysteriously transported to this realm.
• It's a simple story with legendary heroes of light & dark lords awaking from slumber, but it works, especially since such simple tropes are what set up most DQ games proper. The strength of DQ's stories has always been the games' eclectic casts, and as an all star crossover, you'll get your fill here (I especially enjoyed Alena, Kyril, Jessica, & Yangus).
  
  Most of the time the cast hangs out at the tavern back at base, where they'll usually have something new to say after every mission or so.
• DQ tends to have a way with wordplay & puns, and this holds true here as well. Even the iconic "Puff-Puff" gag makes it's return here, though I'm not sure what exactly triggers it (every once in awhile a party member at the tavern will treat you to a "Puff-Puff" of a various kind, though this only happened to me twice. Once from Kyril, & once I think from Bianca. From what I understand there's one from each party member though?).
  
  Writing is always in top form.
• Oh, the game also makes liberal use of one of the DS4's unique features, the built in speaker! All spoken dialogue is fed through the TV and the DS4 at the same time. While this is kind of neat during the heat of battle (character chatter from the controller will be louder or quieter depending on how close you are to the speaker on the battlefield), it gets kind of tiring back at base, where you'll have NPCs blaring the same lines at you at full volume everytime you want to save, visit the shop, etc.

Graphics:

• I will say it's a nice looking game that nails the vibe of the DQ franchise, and has all the typical environmental locations.
  
  
  
  There'll be a lot of various particle effects going on, and many marble & stone floors are plenty shiny.
• Likewise all the iconic DQ sound effects, music, and various voice accents & speaking patterns are here and accounted for, for better or worse.
• There's no performance issues as far as I could tell, other than the aforementioned barricade bug.

Conclusion:

• As someone who has really enjoyed the other licensed Musou games I've played such as Hyrule Warriors DE, Fire Emblem Warriors, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 (might be my favorite, and I'm not even a big OP fan), and even Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, I was looking forward to this as someone who likes the DQ games, and while there are aspects of it I do like, in the end I found it to be a slog to finish, and chose not to bother with any of the post game stuff (which apparently includes a total of 3 superbosses). To be honest the experience will likely put me off trying out the new Hyrule Warriors for awhile, and especially the second DQH game (which I hear is a lot better, apparently).
  Bye, we're off to return to more enjoyable games!