This week I’ve been playing: Dragon Quest Smash/Grow.
And it was… Painful.
Even though I’m a Dragon Ball fan, its videogame sibling Dragon Quest never really got me.
So my starting point wasn’t the fan perspective, it was more on the side of: A new Dragon Ball looking game on a genre I like.
And I want to focus on that; the genre.
Auto-battler.
Those trailers immediatly made me think of Survivor.io with a Toriyama art-style.
I loved it.
But jumping into gameplay I found out I was wrong.
My favorite part of games like Survivor.io, Vampire Survivor and similars, its simplicity.
When playing your only thoughts are:
- Dodge enemies and projectiles.
- Attack enemies (by being close)
- Move around collecting resources to level up and get stronger
- Survive during x amount of time.
But DQ Smash/Grow decided to add on that formula by:
- Instead of surviving, progress on a dungeon-like environment.
- Change characters mid-battle to adapt to enemies weakness.
- Charge and use an ultimate skill.
- And do all those fast because a timer runs out.
Don’t get me wrong, this game is amazing, its meta systems are wonderful and I took more notes than usual on those. Even the monetization hybrid setting ads to duplicate rewards and to get daily rewards are definitely working on me.
But gameplay-wise, I can’t help but feel they didn’t understand it.
And the result is a half-baked Action RPG or a half-baked Auto-battler.