Slick’s Hits: Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below

Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below released for the PlayStation 4 yesterday. While I cannot give it a full review as yet, I can tell you that as a fan of the series, I am both satisfied and surprised. I have never been a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, so this weekend has been full of firsts for me. I just happened to pick up One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 (review coming) and immediately saw similarities when I played Dragon Quest Heroes: In both games, you have a mini-map that shows you your location and destination and marks points of interest. You also are given tasks with pass/fail conditions and may need to protect certain characters. Aside from the astounding number of enemies that can be on screen at once, I feel that is where the similarities end. Dragon Quest Heroes has a much wider variety of enemies with various physical, elemental, melee and magical attacks to throw at you. As your characters level up, you develop abilities of your own to send the monsters packing. This is also the first time (that I know of) where you as the player have a name and a voice. Luceus and Aurora allow you to choose between a male and female lead. In either case, both characters will be with you throughout your journey. They are foils for one another as Luceus likes to plan things out while Aurora is more of a kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out type. In one scene, Luceus is actually trying to devise a plan as the monsters surround them and Aurora purposely interrupts him with “You’re still talking?” I anticipate that these two will be making fun of each other throughout the game. Joining the two Royal Guards is Healix, a healslime and the only monster in the entire world not trying to kill you. Healix is cute to the point of being annoying and will get himself into trouble but he works hard to keep his friends healthy during a fight (as healslimes always have). Your first mission is to get to the throne room where you meet King Doric. Unlike most Dragon Quest Kings that send you out to defend the crown, Doric is the “Mayor Mike Haggar” of Dragon Quest. A tall, physically imposing man that is not afraid to put his royal staff where the sun don’t shine. He keeps his two guards in order and gives support advice during fights. These four are your starting characters and aside from Isla (who I have not yet met), they are the only new characters to the Dragon Quest series. The remaining eight characters that will join you are favorites from Dragon Quest IV, V, VI and VIII. If you have ever enjoyed a Dragon Quest game, especially if it was one of the four titles I just mentioned, then you are going to want to pick this one up. The Day One Edition comes with slime weapons to power up your team from the start. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below is a PlayStation 4 exclusive and is in stores now!