Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors - 7.4/10
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Casual but not mindless.
By Matt Kelly
I have this monumental cringe when I hear the term RPG applied to games that only called an RPG because you can change your weapon and there's a dragon involved. It's not that I don't like playing linear games and being told that there is epic peril that only I can stop providing I follow a cleverly mapped out series of plot points in order, it's when I get an RPG I expect choices. It's just the fact that RPG stands for Role Playing Game. You play a role, not the game plays your role and makes all the choices for you. The Legend of Zelda for example, is not an RPG, in that there are no choices what so ever you can make that will put you a position of true failure.
So why is this ramble relevant? This week, in between smacking my Wii around for constantly rejecting discs, I've been playing Dragon Quest: Swords. If you've played the others from this franchise you'll know they tend to fall into the same category as most Japanese RPG’s. You will be able to make a whole bunch of choices, only providing none of these choices have any impact on the plot whatsoever. Normally you'll have an open world in which you can choose where to go and what to beat up, and this will this slide by as RPG. The thing that keeps these in the RPG category is the fact that while your choices won't decide whether you save the princess or maim her with your sword when you meet her, they do affect your likelihood of actually succeeding and bringing 10,000 years of peace to the previously oppressed land. So when the casual of casual games that isn’t about riding ponies comes along calling itself an RPG I get very angsty with the same level of real world significance as getting rejected for a friend request on MySpace. It's not that it's a horribly bad game or anything, just very borderline in the RPG category.
Dragon Question: Swords is the Wii Sports of action adventure games. It's simple to control, very quick to pick up and it isn't going to hate you if you bail for a week and forget the details of the story. The thing that is going to strike you as different is for a 3D action game the controls are pretty minimal as you'll only be using the Wii Remote. While it's clever in design it's not quite the most comfortable thing to use. All your movement controls are done through the D pad and the B button, pushing both forwards and B to run. It's really cool but isn't comfortable. However, when you take into account that the vast majority of travel in the game will be a matter of holding forward without ever having to turn, it's not quite so bad. Your combat controls are a combination of IR and gesture based waggling. Providing you're holding the Wii Remote right (as instructed during a 'wise wisdom' type tutorial sequence about sword grip) it's actually pretty solid, though admittedly fairly easy. Slash with the remote to do a swing in a particular direction. There are four moves which basically govern the sword play, which is side to do side cuts, top to bottom, diagonal and also stabbing forwards with the Wii Remote. As with anything that doesn't have physical feedback (I don't mean rumble) or any real kind of depth perception, it can be a little hard to judge your swings sometimes. Thankfully there's a kind of lock on system, where you point and target a particular area and swipe and the attack will center on that point. You can also block attacks by raising your shield and pointing to block attacks. The combat is actually really good, just the difficulty is so low. Average reaction speeds will allow to clear most combat situations pretty quickly. Finally there's a series of powerful moves called Master Strokes, which ask you to perform various gestures to unleash ultimate power. This charges up over several combat instances but due to the difficulty of the game it makes them more a diversion from general combat.
It's worth reiterating though at this point that the game isn't bad, just very, very casual. While it's built on the franchises roots, it's certainly not an epic. The story is a pretty typical "good vs. evil" tale, and for the limited grandness of the plot the game doesn't quite have the number of NPC characters to back it up. What you'll find is a small selection of characters which you get very familiar with and a very linear progression.
The central location to the game is the city in the Kingdom of Avalonia. This is the only real free roaming location in the game, which will kinda make you quietly cry when you see how open and pretty some of the quest locations are, yet you are locked on a single path in these instances. You can move forward, backwards, and make the occasional choice what path you follow. One very strange thing is you cannot actually turn around and walk back, you can only move backwards. The central town itself contains shops and characters.
As far as all your party based game play goes you don't have the traditional thing of jumping between five characters. Instead you'll have a few characters that quietly sit there in the back ground until they need to unleash eternal hellfire on all that oppose you. They'll jump, let lose and jump back out of shot. Considering the nature of everything else in the game, this is probably a much better system than any kind of character changing or menu commands. You'll be able to assign them levels of unruly carnage to let lose with or just tell them to hang back and chill out. They also level up and through all of this provide a way for the plot to progress without destroying the simplicity of the game.
The thing that makes DQ: Swords fall way side of the traditional RPG genre is that while there are upgrades paths for weapons and gear in the game, it's really not an impacting part of the game. You can get through the campaign quite happily on your upgraded original gear without ever really being pushed to go up a tier in equipment. Again this comes back to the difficulty of combat, while you may be facing off against the evil horrible thing from hell if you have even semi decent skill with the controls you can just slash the heck out of everything in your way. You'll find moments which are a tad hard but there's never quite the push to stop the main plot quests and just level up or get better gear. Two ways this could have been dealt with is have the combat free moving thus making a creepy slimy thing thunking you in the head a possibility, or just plain raising the difficulty.
The visuals of DQ: Swords are a mixed bag. Some of its done really nicely, and others not so much. A lot of the grander visual effects in the game such as the Master Stroke cut scenes are nicely done and are pretty vivid to watch but on the flip side you've also got a mix on really uninspired indoor environments. Outdoors tends to be done a lot nicer but generally, there is a reduced level of detail compared to some stuff we've seen. The life you encounter in game also has a similar mix and a lot of the enemies you fight are pretty interesting, detailed and move well, but this is against a cast of humans that are just a few steps of animation above a nut cracker. There's also a spattering of CG FMVs to tie things together.
Audio is a synth fest of DQ callbacks which all in all is pretty nice. While yes the soundtrack does seem incredibly synthetic it does also does manage to pull off a quasi grandness akin to the quasi epic plot line. It probably won't move you to tears or put you in the heat of battle but then again DQ: Swords isn't meant to do that. The voice acting is decently enough done to move the plot along and for all the camera waving around jumping between characters Square-Enix hasn't felt the need to wait for camera to perfectly align its shot before continuing the dialogue so what there is actually flows pretty well. The entire game isn't voice however, as beyond the core plot talk a lot will be done through text. Depending on what angle you attack this from it's either a blessing or totally against the design. For any hardcore RPG player they'll probably welcome not having to hear the voices repeatedly but then again the target audience of the game probably will.
Summary:
Once again DQ: Swords doesn't actually fail in what it sets out to do, it's just got a different target in mind compared to the rest of the franchise. You could call this a casual game and get away with it but the reality of it is the DQ: Swords is perfect for someone that manages to totally take everyone to down with Wii Sports and has now developed the need to be a hero and unleash blood lust. It's simple and fun with minimalistic but decent controls controls and decent presentation. While a hard core gamer isn't going to find the depth that they hope for out of this title, it really is worth checking out because it's one of the few casual games out there that isn't a broken piece of rubbish with puppies thrown into it for marketing purposes.
Gameplay - 7.2
Controls can be a little iffy but the fact is you've got a really fluid yet minimal control system. Ultimately the game is targeted as casual players and not core, but is still worth at least a rental from the latter.
Graphics - 7.3
A mixed affair going from highs to mediums. Environments could have been a bit more lush in some cases.
Sound - 7.8
An aural array of Dragon Quest call backs. Voice acting is decent enough to keep you interested.
Replay - 6.0
Casuals may go back for another round with this but due to the structure of the game and plot this is less likely to get a second play from core gamers. However there are enough score beating and upgrades to do that those who love that stuff to have a second crack.
Overall 7.4
A completely different tact from the rest of the franchise but a good example of how casual games don't have to be mindless affairs.
Submitted by Robtot
06/06/2008
658
11
Join MyWii to vote for your favourite story!
More Info:
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Other Reviews:
Related News:
Related Videos: