The game
I love Dragon Ball and Toriyama’s works. I picked up Blue Dragon in time, the only true turn-based JRPG on Xbox 360 together with Lost Odyssey, and obviously I’ve now thrown myself headlong into this new Sand Land, which instead veers towards classic third-person action-RPG gameplay. The world in which the game is set is called Sand Land, and as the word itself suggests it is a completely desert world devastated by a distant war between humans and a humanoid race that is now believed to be extinct. Rao, a human sheriff with a dark past, travels to the city of demons seeking help on a mission: to find the Legendary Spring and bring water back to this world, while at the same time overthrowing the hegemony of the King, who enriched himself by selling the water to the thirsty population. Two demons respond to the man’s desperate request: Beelzebub and Thief, who join the caravan. They are indeed the three protagonists of Sand Land, in particular Beelzebub who is the character we control. In the second part of the adventure, Ann, a girl looking for her parents, will also actively join.
MX Video – Sand Land
The game, therefore, is a third-person action game with some RPG elements such as the level system and character progression. The commands are the classics: powerful attack, weak attack, dodge, jump and a special move capable of causing a large amount of damage but which needs to be loaded through a special bar that fills by landing hits or using a particular bonus that can be purchased from sellers. The progression system is quite classic, based on experience points: each level reached allows you to purchase a perk in the skill tree. The most powerful perks require spending more than one skill point.
From the very beginning, it is clear that vehicles and their customizations are central to the game. In Sand Land the game world is vast and rather monochrome, so moving only on foot would have quickly bored even the most experienced player. However, there is a fast travel system that allows you to instantly reach all the places you have already visited, with many and well-distributed fast travel points. However, despite this, vehicles are the primary way you travel short distances and fight enemies. The tank is the first vehicle that can be obtained, and until the second part of the game it is also the most powerful and maneuverable vehicle of all. Later, it will be possible to unlock the Jump-Bot, a sort of Metal Gear that allows you to jump and reach very high platforms; I think the car and the motorbike do not need further explanation, while the hovercraft and the powerful battle armor are interesting. All vehicles can then be customized in a myriad of ways, from changing the color, possible through a specific vendor later in the game, to modifying the various components to increase their power or speed or defense. The components can be found as game loot by defeating enemies, or they can be created through materials that can be collected from crates scattered throughout the environments.
Another central element in Sand Land it is the city of Spino, closely linked to the development of the plot. Spino serves as the party’s headquarters, starting out as little more than a pile of rubble and developing over the course of the game as side quests are completed. Through these missions it is possible, in fact, to recover various characters who will become the new inhabitants of the city and will open new shops that increase the services available. In this way it is possible to purchase everything needed to complete the game without looking for it in the landfill cities scattered here and there.
The secondary missions related to Spino, however, are not the only thing that can be done in the world of Sand Land. In fact, there are random missions that are encountered during a journey on foot/with a vehicle and can, for example, be the rescue of a seller hunted by raiders or raptors. There are a large number of treasure caves to discover and raid, and some special structures such as ruins or junkyards that contain the most powerful parts to upgrade vehicles. In the ruins, by raiding the chests scattered inside them, we can recover ancient gold coins which can be exchanged with the cat Lassi to obtain maps with the location of all the treasure chests.
Finally, honorable mention goes to the video and audio sectors. In particular the first: the game is in cel shading as per the tradition of games based on anime/manga. In Sand Land however it achieves a degree of cleanliness and detail that I have rarely seen in other similar productions. The game is 99% third-person with a view over the shoulder from above, but in some sections of a couple of dungeons, the view switches to platform-style side-scrolling. The audio sector is also very well looked after, with compelling music that is well suited to the situation it intends to accompany. The game can finally be completed in about thirty hours, without going excessively fast. The game is fully dubbed in English or Japanese, with Italian subtitles.
Amore
The most beautiful cel shading in a video game
– Sand Land it is technically wonderful, it has a graphic and stylistic component that borders on perfection. Even comparing it to the anime, the game is practically indistinguishable, if not even better in some parts. All topped off with a granitic frame-rate that never misses a beat under any circumstances. Certainly, at least as far as I’m concerned, it’s the best cel shading I’ve ever seen.
A light game, which doesn’t get boring and with an enjoyable plot
– Let’s be clear, we are not faced with the new Howl’s Moving Castle, but the story flows pleasantly and is interesting. Furthermore, the game has a whole series of goodies that make the experience always engaging: the part that I appreciated most is the development system of the city of Spino linked to the secondary quests. I found it to be a nice way to encourage the player to continue with the game without making it seem overly forced.
The first part of the plot
– The first story, the one that talks about the region that gives its name to Sand Land, is by far my favorite. You can sense that Toriyama’s hand is there because it is the part taken directly from the original comic, while the second half is only an external collaboration. This whole section reminded me a lot of the original Dragon Ball, the one with Goku as a child so to speak. Both in terms of humor and in terms of narrative pace.
I hate it
The second part of the plot
– At a certain point, as in every game, the key objective is reached. I reached this point in more or less 16 hours playing normally, without doing all the side missions but without even continuing on. I thought I had finished the game, but immediately afterwards a new story starts, completely unrelated to the main one and independent. This second part is set in a new map called Forest Land, and is nothing more than the second unpublished part (it does not exist in the manga) included in the animation series. Well, that left me quite disoriented. Also because there are numerous aspects that are abandoned and are no longer mentioned. I would have preferred they had given the possibility to choose which campaign to play from a specific menu. Furthermore, in terms of story, I found it very banal and predictable.
Extremely simple even on the highest difficulty
– The game is really very very simple. I chose to tackle the first run on “Normal” difficulty for fear of encountering excessively difficult phases; instead the fights only put me in difficulty towards the end of the game. And by difficult I mean I had to replay a couple of bosses twice. On “Hard” the fights always remain very simple, what changes is the fact that the character inflicts less damage and suffers some more, simply making them a little longer. The main problem of Sand Land it’s that the AI is really overly stupid. Many enemies can be avoided by simply walking past them. The way I’ve understood video games for a few years now, for me this isn’t a big problem, but I’m aware that for some it could make the difference between buying the game or not.
Let’s sum it up
Although not a masterpiece that will remain in the annals, Sand Land manages to keep us glued from start to finish, with top graphics and always stimulating gameplay. The most hardened players, however, will only be able to turn up their noses at an excessively low difficulty. The game is certainly more suitable for a very young and inexperienced audience, both in terms of themes covered and gameplay. However, if you are a fan of Toriyama’s works, it is definitely worth considering. 7.5