First Impressions: 3D Dot Game Heroes

When nearly every title that comes out nowadays is boasting about how realistic its graphics are, it’s extremely refreshing to have one come along that bucks the trend completely. 3D Dot Game Heroes is a wonderful, retro-styled adventure RPG where everything is constructed out of little blocks, all in glorious HD. There is one slight issue, however, which you may have heard of by now: it’s almost exactly the same as the old Zelda titles. Before you start making assumptions, that’s not a bad thing.

The game plays as you would expect, with old-fashioned adventure, collection, questing and monster slaying at its core. Your journey takes you through differently-themed parts of the map looking for temples, or, rather, what’s within the temples. For anyone familiar with the Zelda series this is probably all starting to sound eerily familiar. Whilst I won’t list all aspects that are similar (it would take me a long, long time), I will say this: If game developing was an exam, From Software and Silicon Studio would have been told off for copying Nintendo’s test paper.

Anyway, obvious Zelda references aside, what’s the game actually like? Well, it’s extremely good, you’ll be pleased to know. It has played flawless so far and it’s full of humour, too, of many different forms. There’s tongue-in-cheek weapon design with the sword (anyone that’s seen a trailer will know what I’m talking about) alongside obvious mickey-taking of retro games, specifically RPG adventures. Fans of the 8-bit adventure games will no doubt chuckle at these, although they might go straight over the head of the newer gamers out there.

I’m currently in the third temple and it’s been a blast to play so far. I would explain the faults I’ve found up to this point but I can’t; 3DDGH seems to have been polished until the development team could see their blocky faces in it. There are some great effects to be seen here too, such as how things break into individual blocks when you hit them with your sword. The music and audio is Zelda-styled and fits in fantastically. Yes, we’ve seen the basic gameplay before, but not made out of blocks and not in brilliant HD. It’s great.