Sands of Disappointment
By Hailinel 9 Comments
Some of you may recall the blog post I wrote a while back in which I shared my favorable opinions of the DS RPG Sands of Destruction. Well, I thought I should give an update on my experience with it.
Frankly, the game is a big disappointment. While the early hours of the game show a lot of promise, the game ultimately falls apart in terms of both gameplay and story. The combat, while fun in the early going, quickly grows more and more unbalanced as the player's party grows in power until ultimately nearly every battle in the game is a mere joke. Instead of evoking challenge in its Xenogears-inspired battle system, it evokes a strong sense of tedium as you repeatedly destroy everything in your path with strings of ludicrously long combos.
And the plot, while interesting in its initial set up, ultimately goes nowhere. Between the dull storyline and boring combat, I lent it to a friend, who remarked that the story is very much like Xenogears, if you remove all of the even remotely controversial bits and replace them with a by-the-numbers approach to RPG plotting. Simply put, it gets dull, and the idea of a group of adventurers out to destroy the world is beset with characters who turn out to be unlikable with a plot twist taken right out of Chrono Trigger.
If any of you bought the game based on my previously posted impressions, I apologize for not playing deeper into the game before writing that up. I just had no idea that the game would ultimately go downhill that quickly to that extent. I really wanted to like Sands of Destruction, but as RPGs go, there are much better alternatives on the DS.
9 Comments