Nerd Mentality

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

Posted November 26th 2006 by Jared Thomas.

Page 2

The Schleimann Tank, a legendary battle station of Slime lore that is called into action when Rocket toots the Warrior Flute, elevates the game's major battles out of RPG monotony and into a strategic mini-game. Everything from rockets to shields to swords to statues can be launched toward the enemy, and the point is to figure out the best time to launch which item.

The tank is equipped with two cannons: one fires directly at the opponent and one launches ammo high into the sky. When something is tossed into the loading bay of either cannon, it's automatically fired at the opponent, and after about a ten second hangtime (give or take depending on which type of missle is launched), it smashes into the opponent's tank. For instance, arrows and rockets are useful in that they fly through the air quickly, whereas harder-hitting spiked balls or defensive items like shields can take much longer to make the journey.

The strategy comes in deciding which cannon to use and which item to use in it, to effectively block any incoming missles whether they be high shots or direct shots, and at the same time sneaking your missles through before your enemy can launch something to deflect them. In essence, it's a clever high-hit/low-hit fighting system, made more strategic by the delay of items and the wide array of them. Later in the game Rocket can employ townsfolk he saved (up to two of them) into helping him gather ammo, and set them to either using primarily the high cannon or the low cannon, or to carry out some other objective. Other than tank HP upgrades, there's really no standard increasing numbers to gauge your progress, so getting more powerful in this game means getting a snazzy new crew member or discovering a spanking new item that deals more devestation than what you're currently packing.

There's a little depth to be had here in that rather than simply selecting a missle and where to load it, tank battles work the same as the real game, where Rocket has to slingshot himself into items as they drop from his ammunition tubes and then carry them over to his cannons and toss them in. He can carry up to three items at a time, and this is where the battles become more than just a game of high-hit/low-hit. Because you're going to want to gather items that correspond to incoming missles in a way that gives you an advantage (shields for hard-hitting items, holy water for ghost bombs, high-damage items if nothing is incoming) you're constantly having to swap what you're carrying for what you want. And since the only method of picking up items is to barrel into them and then catch them as they fall, oftentimes you'll barrel into about five items and then have to toss anything you don't want at what you do want and hope that anything else it hits doesn't bounce up as well.

When there are bombs involved, which explode if they hit the ground before you can catch them, it can be a major headache not being able to specifically pick up items at ease. If you wanted to, you could just say that this heightens the difficultly of otherwise fairly simple tank battles, but for me it felt limiting. Saving certain items for later use is a strategy that almost always falls flat, as either your teammates will grab the ammo and toss it in or you'll end up not having enough time to go grab that item once the time comes.

In incredibly close battles, sometimes I'd opt to just leave the ammo loading to my crew, and take advantage of one of the more rewarding aspects of tank battles, which is storming and sabotaging the enemy tank. You can always just walk out your door and break into the enemy tank by force and patience, but for the bold and daring there's always the option to just jump into a cannon and hope you make it all the way across before being blasted out of the air. And then you can smash generic-looking control boards that slow the release of ammunition through the tubes, steal items, or even smash into the enemies arming the cannons and prevent them from launching anything. I had a great deal of fun just tossing them into their own cannons and ridding myself of them until they were either blasted out of the sky or they landed in my tank at which point I of course screwed myself over. Overall storming their tank is a pretty cheap tactic, but it saved me from destruction many times, and the enemies infiltrate your tank plenty, so all's fair as they say.

I spent roughly 20 hours with Rocket Slime and short of completing a collection of enemy statues (collecting 30 of any type of enemy yields a statue in their honor in the town museum, and their compliance in helping you man the Schliemann) I pretty much cleared all goals in the game. It's not bad for a handheld game, especially given that any replay-extending calisthenics the game puts you through are entirely optional. A plus in my book, especially given the quality of gameplay that occupies that 20 hours.

Heartstopper - A nobloble effort with incredibloble results.

For a simplistic, alternative take on the RPG genre, Rocket Slime delivers big time. I can honestly say that in terms of pure gameplay, this is the most fun Square-Enix game I've ever played. Which really only means it's more fun than Final Fantasy IV Advance and Super Mario RPG, but being more fun than Super Mario RPG is something to be proud of. It may not satisfy the cold, calulated RPG fiend within, but the industry will never be at a loss of more boring games for that kind of thing. What Rocket Slime amounts to is the kind of game that, were you to suffer from long-term memory loss, you might attribute to being a classic of the SNES era. The secret ingredient is FUN.

Previous Page

1 | 2

Posted in: Reviews

Comments (0) | Permalink | Digg | Reddit