Reviewed: October 23, 2006
Reviewed by: Roger Cox
Publisher
Square Enix
Developer
Tose
Released: September 19, 2006
Genre: RPG
Players: 1-4
ESRB: Everyone
7
8
7
8
7.5
Supported Features:
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is actually called Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 2 in Japan. Much like Final Fantasy’s popular Chocobo character, Dragon Quests popular character is a blob of slime. The slime has appeared in every Dragon Quest game ever made and is beloved by all. In this adventure the slime’s name is Rocket and he’s on a journey to save the citizen’s of his hometown Boingburg.
This game features a full fledge twenty plus hour adventure that’s full of puzzles and tank battles set in a silly fantasy world. Tanks can be upgraded, customized, and used in fun multiplayer battles. Get ready to save over 100 of your friends, family, and citizen’s of Boingbur, welcome to Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime.
The game begins as you taking the role of Rocket, a young slime (like those in every Dragon Quest game). You are hanging out with your friends in the capital city of Boinburg when a group of creatures show up looking for an artifact. When they don’t get the artifact, they practically destroy Rocket’s hometown using their huge tank and kidnap nearly everyone in it. This is where you (Rocket) come in. It is your job to rescue your friends and the town’s people.
The way you go about this is by hoping around several levels over and over. Each time you journey through the level you’ll discover new paths to explore, enemies to battle, and people to save. Rocket doesn’t have any weapons to use except himself and the Schleiman tank which you unlock after about an hour and a half through the game. Rocket’s Primary attack is stretching his body out and slinging it at enemies. This is also how you toss items and the people you save onto your head.
The items you hit and carry can be used as weapons directly and indirectly. What I mean is that you can throw the objects at enemies in the level or use the items later in tank battles by sending the items back to town. The way you send them back to town is by throwing the objects onto moving carts that are headed to town.
Going back to town is good for talking to the people you save, progressing through the story, and saving your progress. You can even upgrade your Schleiman tank there. This tank is used throughout each level when you come across an enemy standing on a platform. When you see this you know he wants to do battle, tank style. Tank battles are the highlight of this otherwise extremely boring and repetitive game.
The battles aren’t necessarily boss battles per say, they are more like secondary boss battles that have you scrambling around your tank, picking up ammunition, throwing it into one of the two cannons that fires it at the enemy tank. What gives this some strategy is that the top screen displays both tanks facing each other. It also displays the projectiles that are being fired at one-another. This allows you to fire ammunition to offset the enemy’s bullets from hitting you and vise versa. It also displays each tanks health meter. Once the health meter is depleted completely you must get out of your tank, run over to and infiltrate the other tank, then break the tanks heart (engine). After doing that you will be victorious.
For those of you keen on playing games using the touch screen exclusively this isn’t the game for you. In fact, the touch screen doesn’t and isn’t used in the game at all. Your main controls are the D-pad as well as the A and B buttons. This could be considered a downside to the game when in fact it doesn’t negate anything.
This is a very colorful and bright game. The art direction they took is very pleasant and cute creating a wonderful fantasy slime world. Each of the 100 characters you must save and the enemies you battle with are uniquely animated. The levels are unique and fun with various small puzzles to solve. Overall the graphics, with their cute visuals give this game a innocent feel and fun personality.
The sound is very disappointing and annoying. During each of the major story point in the game an annoying song plays that sounds like someone singing “Oh-ahh.” Other than that the background music is cute, but repetitive. Most of the time I played without the sound on. The sound effects are all there and its obvious Square Enix didn’t skimp on anything.
The game isn’t hard. It’s a simple game that’s designed for everyone, thus the “E” ESRB rating. The game is repetitive as it could possibly be and this causes the game to lose a lot of value. I was looking forward to this game and it let me down. Sure, the game will take around twenty hours to beat, but I had a hard time playing over five hours.
Besides the story mode there’s also a multiplayer feature that allows you to create and customize your own tanks. Then you can battle it out against your friends in wireless multi-card action. This game only has value to kids between the ages of 7 and 15 if they play it in short spurts. I personally found this game hard to stomach in large doses.
This is one game that is primarily suited for children. Only if you are a hard and I mean a hardcore Dragon Quest fan, should you get this game. I found it to be very repetitive, but delightfully fun at the same time. It is a simple game that’s style, presentation, and humor gives it an edge over most other DS titles this fall.
If you are looking for happy slimes, easy, addicting tank battles, and repetitive gameplay that gets old after five hours then look no further than Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime.
