Dragon Quest Heroes 2 PS4 Demo

Going into this demo with no prior knowledge as to what I was going to be playing was perhaps a misjudgement on my part. However, stepping into the rather frantic and crazy world of Dragon Quest Heroes 2 was surprising. Despite being a very short demo (no longer than around 20 minutes or so), I still came out of it feeling relatively chipper. If you don’t know, this game is a single player, action RPG and has a very similar sort of style to something like Final Fantasy. Which was a surprise to me as a lot of these types of games have that look. But, what did surprise me was how much fun I had in that short amount of time.

Characters and Combat

So far, from what the demo promises, you are part of a team of four in which you can freely switch characters in combat. This was one of the more exciting features of the game. Each is a different class and you can use power attacks that use up your MP. As you would expect in this sort of game, everything has a very anime feel to it. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it certainly makes for some interesting creatures. I suppose that later on in the game, you will get more choice of characters; at least that is my hope. The demo only gave us three missions, all of which included combat. This was perhaps to show off the different types of battle you would encounter in the main game.

The final “boss” battle of the demo was definitely tough but was fairly generic. Giant monster with three different attacks that are pretty easy to dodge. But, it was still fun switching between the different character play styles in order to take him down. It would be nice to see more variety but I don’t expect much from this game.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics for me were quite appealing. Yes, it was very cartoon-like with the character and mob designs in particular. But, that fits with the rest of the aesthetic to the game. I have to admit, I was not impressed with the voice acting and it grated on me after a short while. Having said that, there is an option to have either English or Japanese voices. For this type of game, I think having the Japanese option is going to be preferable for a lot of people. The music was annoying and catchy as you would probably expect and it is now stuck in my head. Damn composers.

Final thoughts

Like I have said, it was a very short demo and I don’t feel like it really gave you the time to get to know the game. Although I quite enjoyed taking down the bigger monsters and the final boss, I’m not sure I’d want to spend £50 just to see if it got any better. The mob designs were perhaps the strangest part for me. A lot of them seemed to resemble Pokemon or in some cases emoijis. But, to be fair, I would expect this from this type of game. Dragon Quest Heroes 2 looks like it is going to be an epic adventure, even if it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. I have to admit, there is something rather fun about beating up large quantities of jelly monsters.  You can check out the demo now on PS4.

Dragon Quest Heroes 2 is set to be released on the 28th April 2017.