Member the games you used to play? We member. The basement at the Hardcore Gamer office has a section known as the Crust Room, with an old grey couch and a big old CRT TV. All the classic systems are down there collecting dust, so in an effort to improve the cleanliness of our work space, we dust off these old consoles every so often and put an old game through its paces, just to make sure everything stays in working order. We even have a beige computer with a floppy disk drive.

When someone brings up Dragon Quest, traditional JRPGs with turn-based combat is typically what springs to mind. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy were most NES players' introduction to the genre and over the past few decades mainline Dragon Quest games have more or less followed the same general template. But Dragon Quest has also had several spin off that took characters and monsters from the series and put them in contexts with very different gameplay mechanics. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woes and the Blight Below took Dragon Quest into a new direction in 2015 as it is essentially what would happen if the Dragonlord injected a Dynasty Warriors game with slime DNA.

Dragon Quest Heroes takes place in the Kingdom of Arba which is a land that happens to be populated with all the traditional Dragon Quest monsters. The players can choose between Luceus or Aurora for their main character, who play similarly to each other except Luceus is affiliated with fire for his special attacks and Aurora freezes her foes with ice attacks. Antagonist Velasco plots to plunge the world into darkness by turning all the monsters hostile so he can release the dragon Shadroth: Lord of the Night. In the process of doing this, portals to other Dragon Quest worlds open up, bringing in numerous characters from other Dragon Quest games.

Dragon Quest Heroes features a roster of original characters with many guest characters that should be familiar to longtime fans of the series. In addition to Aurora and Luceus, the warrior king Doric takes up arms to fight against Velasco along with chief "ingeneer" Isla. Joining these Arba citizens we have the magic-wielding dancer Maya along with brawler princess Alena and her spear-wielding cleric companion Kiryl from Dragon Quest IV. Magic-wielding Nera and the archer Bianca visit from Dragon Quest V, while the swordsman Terry is the lone combatant from Dragon Quest VI. Dragon Quest VII remains unrepresented, but Yangus and Jessica from Dragon Quest VIII make an appearance. Dragon Quest IV also provides the secret recruitable character later in the game, the villain Psaro in his humanoid form.

The styles of gameplay from musou games and traditional Dragon Quest games couldn't be more different. On paper converting Dragon Quest into an action-oriented hack and slash game that maintains the qualities to feel like a Dragon Quest seems like a daunting task, but the end result is a hybrid design that tries to caters to fans of both types of games. Certain elements that were important to maintain were the party system along with the use of spells and character specific special abilities, which was done to make this play more like an action RPG than simple hack and slash.

Players assemble a party of four in their base of operations and heads to the desired location on the world map. Once in the fray, players control one character while the other three are handled by AI. True to the original games, each character has different strengths and weaknesses along with their own special attacks. Yangus and Alena for example are powerful melee fighters while Nera and Kiryl's strengths lie in their magic. Players can freely switch between any of the four characters. In addition to the party members, monsters will sometimes drop medal where they can be summoned to assist you. The additional firepower they provide is always helpful, but in stages where an object or location needs to be protected, strategic placement of the monsters is crucial to ensuring victory.

Even though Dragon Quest Heroes takes place in a world that is unique from other Dragon Quest games, Omega Force did their homework to make this world appealing to long time fans. The inclusion of traditional monsters across all Dragon Quest games is apparent from looking at a few screenshots, which even includes some boss characters like Bjorn the Behemoose, but it goes further than that. The soundtrack is largely a collection of new renditions of familiar tunes from previous games, and the characters speak in the different regional accents that had become a staple over the series. The talking monsters maintain their specific speech patterns and the game frequently oozes slime puns. It wouldn't feel like Dragon Quest without having to collect Mini Medals and there's no shortage of them here.

To people who are fans of Dynasty Warriors and Dragon Quest, this game is a match made in heaven. The gameplay clearly has more in common with the former, but despite that still manages to capture the essence of the latter. As the story unfolds new areas to explore open up as new party members are gradually introduced as would happen in the traditional RPGs. The story gradually reveals who the main villain is and what his objectives are. The heroes' base and means of traversal, the Stonecloud, serves as the role of town where players can save their game with the priestess, purchase weapons and armor, take on side quests from villagers among other things to blend the familiar RPG elements with a hack and slash action game.

Dragon Quest Heroes is a title that's highly-regarded personally, though the appeal may not be as apparent to those that aren't huge fans of both Dynasty Warriors and Dragon Quest. Even with as much as personal enjoyment was had with this title, it still isn't perfect. One of the things that makes musou games great is couch co-op, and even online co-op to a lesser degree. The party management system and different skills make the gameplay more involved than some of the typical musou games and the RPG elements lead to a satisfying single player experience, but that still doesn't mean that a co-op mode wouldn't have improved things. There are a few other minor gripes like there may have been too many instances of tower defense mentality where a specific location needed to be protected to pass a level. There's one particular thing of a trivial nature that bothers me much more than it should and that is the title, Dragon Quest Heroes. Dragon Quest was retitled Dragon Warrior in the States up until the eight entry was released. The style of games that Omega Force is known for developing are called Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Hyrule Warriors and so on. Dragon Quest Warriors would have been the perfect title for these reasons and calling it Heroes seems like a missed opportunity.

Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below successful merged the world of Dragon Quest with the gameplay of Dynasty Warriors and similar titles. The blending of two starkly different styles may not have universal appeal, but this was an endlessly entertaining game for fans of both. A sequel, Dragon Quest Heroes II, was released that added online co-op and made a few other minor improvements but didn't otherwise stray to far from this template. Dragon Quest Heroes is available for PC and PlayStation 4, though there is a Japan-only collection of both games for Nintendo Switch.

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