In the Square Enix Plays 2022 Held this week in London, the event that had a few video games from the company available at the Tokyo Game Show 2022, has left me with one lime and one sand. On the one hand, I have come across titles that I had not paid special attention to and have ended up being a hit (The DioField Chronicle or Valkyrie Elysium), but also with other proposals that have fallen far short of what was expected.
In this last group, Star Ocean: The Divine Force could be perfectly included. However, he is not the only one, because Dragon Quest Treasures It has also stayed halfway to getting motivated enough to make me feel like getting back in the driver’s seat. Having said that, here you have the impressions that it has left me the new installment of the exclusive Nintendo Switch saga.
Setting out on an adventure with some very familiar protagonists
First of all, those who have played the outstanding Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of a Lost Past will be in for a pleasant surprise right from the start, because the couple of protagonists are Erik and Mia, who already made an appearance for the first time in the eleventh installment of the series. So, on this occasion they will be the ones we will control from start to finish and on top of that they will be younger versions of both in order to know their stories.
The adventure begins on a Viking ship where this little brother and sister are working as servants. However, their purpose in life is to travel on their own in search of highly prized treasures, so it will not take long for them to find a way to sneak out of this place, although along the way they will run into a couple of of the strangest creatures in the form of a flying pig and cat.
At least the fact of saving them has its reward, because thanks to that they will guide us to a most mysterious island where we will find two very special daggers. So much so that by tearing them from their respective pedestals they generate a portal through which our heroes are sucked into another world. It is from this moment that the odyssey that awaits them really begins, which promises to be very exciting, but in truth it stops halfway.
The reason is that in the trial version that I had in my hands it lasted about 40 minutes and most of the time I had to swallow one conversation after another that in the long run turned out to be somewhat tedious, with an excessively slow pace that caused that little by little the interest in moving forward was fading by leaps and bounds. Especially since new characters constantly appeared and began to tell you things that, I’m not going to deny you, weren’t too interesting for the plot.
When you arrive in this new world you begin to take control of Mia, who is searching for Erik who has disappeared without a trace, so the first 20 minutes consist of going from one place to another gathering information about his whereabouts until you reach to give him. From that moment we will continue playing with both characters, being able to alternate between any of the two that they only have the ability to jump, crouch and shoot with a slingshot when they move through the scenes.
Searching for treasures and fighting with the help of monsters
As I have previously pointed out, the idea of our protagonists is to search for all the loot they can, so it seems that this is one of the main premises of the title. Of course, to carry out this task they will have the help of monsters that will join our group as if it were Ni no Kuni, because they will also give us a cable during the fights, something I will talk about later.
Finding hidden chests or items that are requested looks like it will be a very simple task, at least with the first two that I had to locate. In both cases, they gave me a photograph with the location where they were, and on top of that, being close to the place where they were buried, the ground began to shine so brightly that it was impossible not to notice where they were hidden, so that It subtracts a bit of mystery from wanting to find them.
The truth is that I have been wanting to check if this function will be one of the most important in the game or if it will actually be relegated to the background, because it has not been clear to me if the gameplay is based more on locating treasures or fight against enemies, because in this demo I only faced a single enemy, nothing more, in 40 minutes.
In any case, the monsters that we recruit will also have special abilities that will be very useful to us during the trip. For example, the slimes will allow us to jump on them to reach high-altitude areas, but there will also be other creatures that we can climb on to move quickly or with which we can fly through the air. At least that’s what the tutorial indicated, because in this demo I only got to try the slime thing.
As for the combat system, these confrontations take place in real time and with any of our pair of protagonists we can only attack with their daggers, dodge or shoot with the slingshot, while the allied monsters will unfold on their own without us let’s do nothing It looks like they will know how to fight without any problem, in the absence of discovering if these battles offer greater depth or to what extent it affects taking one or the other on the team.
Therefore, Dragon Quest Treasures does not finish showing its cards well enough during this first contact. Endless conversations, an unchallenging treasure hunt and battles that have left me with more questions than answers are some of the points that have stood out the most in this demo. Instead, the franchise’s brilliant and iconic visuals are present in this game as well, so it’s easy to catch your eyes, along with a wonderful soundtrack.
It will be Dragon Quest Treasures one of those Nintendo Switch video games that you have to keep track of? At the moment it doesn’t give the impression, but I want to believe that this slow and slow pace is a matter of the beginning of the adventure and then it will improve considerably. Above all, I cross my fingers so that the set of mechanics develops perfectly and does not end up being a mix that ends up halfway in all of them for wanting to cover too much.
- platforms: Nintendo Switch
- multiplayer: No
- developer: Square Enix
- Company: Square Enix
- Launch: December 9, 2022
