Game Breaking Bug Made Me Quit
I just finished playing 3D Dot Game Heroes.
I played for three nights. The first night I just started the game and fooled around. The next night I got up to the Aqua temple (7/15ths through the game). The next night (tonight) I got to the end of the Aqua temple and the game crashed as I was leaving the temple and I lost all my progress for the night. I do not tolerate bugs like this, so I'm not interested in continuing the game.
There were some things I liked about this game: the quirky graphics are very fun, especially the way that modern particle, liquid, and reflection effects are used to accentuate the visuals; the gigantic sword is cool; the core Zelda 1 gameplay is fun.
However, there are a few things I did not like: the movement is not grid-based, so it is very easy to get slightly ajar from enemies (who do move in a grid) and miss them when not powered up despite standing in front of them; similarly, it is pretty easy to get stuck on a corner for the same reason; the world is large (it is the size of Zelda 3) but it feels really empty (there is a Zelda 1 amount of stuff); and, obviously, the game breaking bug.
Now that I've decided to drop it, I looked at the GameFAQs page. It talks a lot about side quests and extra swords, etc, that you can get. That sounds like it would be fun and add replayability, but these things seem really buried in the nose-to-the-grind-stone gameplay. I didn't notice many hooks during my play-through of half the game. I'm sure if the game wasn't broken, though, I'd want to stick around and do some of them.