Dragon Quest Swords needed more polish.
Dragon Quest Swords was a bit rough around the edges at times, but overall it was a nice game. I think it had a few very good ideas, but it just wasn't fleshed out enough. For example, I hated the main town. I wish the story was a bit more.. original. I think most of the NPC were recycled, along with ALL the enemies in the game. Heck, even the music was recycled. However, I didn't hate the game. I thought the combat was fun. It was a bit frustrating at first but I eventually realized how accurate you had to be to pull off perfect slashes.
Heck, I never once groaned at the game, but I said, it was a bit rough and they could have easily spent more time fleshing things out. I still say give it a shot if you find it for cheap.
----------Battle System----------
Dragon Quest Swords is an Rail Slasher / RPG. Within the down, you have free range, 100% control of your character, but you can only control him with your D-pad, which sucks. It's like playing the original Doom with your keyboard exclusively. When you jump into a dungeon, it's a complete rail slasher. You move forward, and occasionally a group of monsters will attack you. The monsters are no random, and attack you in certain spots of the dungeon. You will notice this if you replay them.
Some monsters line up in ways where you can slash them in bunches. You can slash vertical, horizontal or diagonal, across the entire screen. You can also stab by thrusting the Wiimote towards the screen. To make things easier, you can assign a place holder for your slashing with the A button. For example, if a Slime is standing to the left of the screen, then you can point directly at the Slime, tap A, and then slash. The slash will be more accurate that way. You can block incoming attacks by monsters with your shield. The more damage your shield takes, the more it starts to deteriorate. You can also deflect missile/fireball attacks back at enemies aswell with slashing.
Your main character doesn't use magic, but he has a power bar. With each successful attack, the more power he gains. Once the power bar is at 100%, he can then perform a one of many Special attacks. You gain new attacks by forging new weapons. When you perform the attack, you are given a few seconds to initiate the attack, for example, you will need to Raise your Sword for 3 seconds, or shake the sword until the power gauge is up. Once the attack is ready, you can then finally perform it, draining your Power Gauge.
Within your quest, you gain 3 party members. Each party member only uses magic (but they have weapons equipped, not sure what the point in that is). They gain levels and experience just like you do. You can only take one at a time with you though. Once they get enough levels, they can gain new spells. They have unique skills among them, so it's nice to have an option.
You gain experience and gold after each monster you kill. You can even level up while in the middle of battle, which is nice. You can only set the equipment of your main hero. He can equip a sword, shield, helmet, piece of armor and an accessory.
After you beat a dungeon, you are graded on how well you did. You get points for various tasks, and can even earn bonus points for doing secret tasks. If you find a "Lucky Bag" within the dungeon, will a random item. You also gain "Renown" points, and gain new titles once you gain enough Renown points. This is alot like Soul Calibur Legends in a way. Except, when you gain new titles in Dragon Quest Swords, they give you status boosts. So you feel like you're actually earning something with a new title.
The main town is kinda small, but at the main gate, there is an item shop and your home. If you to the center of the town, you can enter the Castle. To the right of the first area is a weapon shop, where you can forge new weapons, and an armor shop. To the right of that is a Bar, where you can track your high scores for dungeons. Within this same area you can also find a mini-game booth, an extra entrance to the castle, a grave, and a cave where you can spend Mini-Medals. The area beside the Mini-game booth is where the Church is to save your game, and another grave behind it. The town is kinda small, but it's broken up into a quite a few areas, so it's annoying to load each area up when you just want to rush somewhere.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as a nameless, silent protagonist. You are a young, upcoming Knight in training and the son of the former Knight, Claymore. Five years earlier, Claymore and his men fought against the evil demon lord Xiphos. Funny things are happening around the land, so the hero, along with his father Claymore, his friend the Prince Anlace and ex-nun Fleurette investigate the problem by going out on a quest.
The story is rather generic and predictable. I wasn't expecting a great story out of this, it's enough to get you through the game, it's hardly insulting, but nothing about it will blow your socks off. I think Prince Anlace is kinda dull, but Fleurrette and Claymore are pretty cool characters, better suited in a more epic game.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics were ok at best. I liked the character models, but some were better than others. The town looked a bit like crude, but the dungeons were nice to look at. The enemy models are great, with very fluent movement, which is a big improvement over Dragon Quest 8. However, most enemy models were completely recycled Dragon Quest fodder. I can't think of an original enemy in this game, outside of the final Boss.
They could have easily made this game look better, but it wasn't bad to look at in the least.
----------Sound----------
All the main characters have voice work, but only during the most important cutscenes. The voice work is solid, nothing to complain about, I just wish there was more of it. The music is classic Dragon Quest. I don't think there is an original song, but luckily, Dragon Quest music is awesome.
----------World Map----------
The map is a standard menu map. Once you beat a dungeon, you can return to it as many times as you want. The dungeons are very basic and straight forward. You can only walk forward or backwards, and occasionally tilt the camera, but rarely. Sometimes you can check the ground for items, like bushes or rocks. You will even find treasure chests, but alot of the time they're trick treasure chests like Mimics.
There are only 8 stages in all. They do offer a decent amount of replayablity though because each dungeon gives you branching paths. Sometimes they lead to dead ends (with Treasure) or other times they offer a different route, but they all end up the same way. Dungeons only take about 10-15 minutes to run through, so it's not a difficult task.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
12:41
Not a very long game. I probably could have beat this at 8 hours, but I ran through the dungeons multiple times. I'm pretty sure you can continue playing the game after you beat it, which is nice.
