There were moments of that to be sure, but isolated to the instances of my trophy-hunting. The difficulty ramped up nicely creating an enjoyable challenge rarely did the game devolve into maddening frustration. Later dungeons were especially complex, requiring upwards of an hour and a half to complete. The game featured a wide variety of comically large and just comical swords.Īs in The Legend of Zelda, the dungeons I traversed in this game were often designed around a recently discovered weapon, tool, or concept. They were chockfull of single screen rooms and navigating to their depths required adeptness at combat and puzzle solving. The caves and dungeons I explored were designed in the vein of those from The Legend of Zelda. Eventually my avatar would have enough power to defeat the Dark King Onyx and the Dark Bishop Fuelle and save Dotnia from their clutches. With these magical orbs, the Sages of the land would be able to grant the hero greater magical power. That entailed recovering magical orbs hidden deep within caves and dungeons.
Regardless of who, or what, I was playing as, the kingdom needed saving. Since the protagonist is silent and the story is minimal I never found myself getting tied down to one character or a particular class, not that either was impactful. Every time the game is loaded from a previous save, players have the option of switching their character. I generally chose a traditional hero character but did rotate my avatar out to experience the different classes. This is seriously cool but not my cup of tea. Or, players can create their own avatar, customizing them down to specific animations. In a quest to save Dotnia Kingdom, players control a preset character with lightly nuanced class differences. It’s easy to tell this was a passion project for the studio and they delivered a quality video game in turn. The polish applied is evident on all fronts, from the gameplay and side quests to the visuals and audio. The developer’s love for Japanese RPGs from the 1980s/1990s exudes in the innumerable references and qualities this game shares with the genre. This is a classic 2D Zelda game through and through, although I’m hesitant to call it a clone as that implies a derisive reaction and I truly dig this game.
Outside of obtaining the branding, there’s little else Silicon Studio could’ve done to make 3D Dot Game Heroes more of a Zeldagame.