3D Dot Game Heroes

If I were to tell you this is a game where you go on an adventure through seven temples including a water temple, to save a princess and defeat an evil plaguing the land all the while getting helpful support from a fairy companion what might you think? Well thankfully this fairy’s name isn’t Tinkle and this game isn’t Zelda, it only acts like it is. 3D Dot Game Heroes is basically a nudge-wink to the great Zelda games and adventure games in general. The best part is the game is self aware of this and goes out of its way to throw it in your face. This fact only barely beats out its fantastically retro design as the game’s best quality and with the inclusion of a custom character editor, you are able to complete the Zelda façade with a quick trip to gamespy or just be a big sword wielding sack of money. Its 3D Dot Game Heroes!

First lets get the bad out of the way. I don’t know if this is the typical experience but I found that I died a lot. There is a nifty sword mechanic where if you have full health your sword is pretty much unstoppable. But get hit just once, and you are reduced to a far less impressive sword that makes it harder to get your life back to full. This is a weird paradox. When you have full health your sword is amazing. When you don’t you have to use the equivalent of a stick to attempt to get your health back. So, anyone else see how that doesn’t work so well? Even when you upgrade your sword you are only upgrading the awesome version, not the ordinary version. Well luckily there is a much easier way to get your sword of amazingness back, just get killed. You will repawn wherever your last recovery point was or at the beginning of any temple you were working on. So it’s really no big loss.

The controls are another low point. It is a neat idea to map the sword to the right analogue stick. When you press the x button to thrust your sword out, you can use the right analogue stick to swing it as well. This takes some practice and doesn’t work with all of the swords in the game, but when you get it going you can wipe out many enemies at once with a single swing. The problem is that you can’t swing it all the way around, its basically just 90 degrees. Sometimes you can get a 180 but that is rare. It is a neat idea, but it just doesn’t work very well and when you couple that with some camera woes, well you are left with some frustrating moments.

The camera angle can also be an issue. They let you slightly adjust the camera when you are on the world map but inside the buildings and temples it is a static position. This is an issue because whether you adjust the camera or not, there is always a blind area on the screen. In the temples, it is the bottom of the screen and the other side of walls. There are instances where enemies are directly on the other side of a wall and you can’t see them. Additionally you will lose where the enemies are at the bottom of the screen. This is especially annoying given that one hit reduces the sword to a stick.

At any rate, this is a first class adventure game in every respect. You have your hero, who I might add is completely customizable. (I made tetris pieces!) You have your princess who is in need of saving. You have her desperate father, the king, who begs you to help save his kingdom from the generic great evil that engulfs the land. You could refuse, literally, but that won’t advance the story any. So you go on an adventure across the land visiting temples, collecting items to help you get to new areas, and collecting money along the way to buy items. There are large scale boss battles in every temple culminating in the traditional multi stage final battle. In the end you will save the world as well as rescue the girl and maybe even befriend her if you know what I mean.

The charm of this game lies in its self awareness. The writing is very good and you will see a lot of trademark adventure game dialogue throughout your travels. The enemies are the traditional arrow throwing sort with a few jumping spiders and bunnies thrown in for good measure. I would normally knock a game for having such a limited number of different enemies to fight but I have to believe that in this instance it was intentional as part of the retro adventure game feel that is just oozing from this flashback title. There really isn’t a lot else to say on that. Have you ever played one of the original top down Zeldas? Did you like that? Then you will like this. Simple as that. And for that reason, I find it a refreshing effort to revive that nostalgic feeling for everyone who remembers the glory days of console past.