When Dragon Quest Heroes hit the scene in 2015, it delivered a solid mashup of two very different genres: classic RPGs and hack-and-slash action. Now, Square Enix and Koei-Tecmo have teamed up again to deliver another monster-mashing, magic-slinging, army-crushing action-adventure in Dragon Quest Heroes 2

see deal Dragon Quest Heroes II - PlayStation4 $34.99 on Target

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The story’s not the only thing that’s seen an improvement. The flow of the moment-to-moment gameplay has been changed to more resemble the role-playing adventures that inspired it. Rather than just hopping from mission to mission from a hub or menu, there’s a semi-open world you can explore at your leisure, once you've unlocked each region. You also progress through areas like towns, forests, fields, and swamps much like you would in a traditional RPG, battling your way from destination to destination in a way that feels very natural. It helps that it looks good, too: the environments are distinct and lively, and both the characters and iconic Dragon Quest monster designs are lovingly rendered to look better than ever before.

“ It’s clear that inspiration was taken from traditional RPGs.

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The problem is that what might work in a slower-paced, menu-driven RPG doesn’t translate well to a hack-and-slash game built on fighting enemy hordes constantly. Things like teleporter puzzles and switch puzzles plopped in between fights bring the sense of action and tension to a screeching halt. One particularly egregious portion has you trotting across the whole of a town multiple times to identify a monster masquerading as a soldier, forcing you to run around and chat up a bunch of boring NPCs over and over until you finally get a few scraps of the fighting you crave. These numerous long stretches of non-action in the middle of action portions tested my patience more than even the tankiest beasts I went up against.

“ There’s little in combat that’s truly new and noteworthy.

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For starters, your two main characters eventually earn the ability to change classes, which gives them access to different weapons and fighting skills and allows you to choose how they fight. Earning skill points and improving weapon proficiency in different classes lets you customize character abilities, and additional skills and buffs can be learned through mastering weapons. You can stick with a class you really like throughout the whole of the 30 to 35-hour campaign, or spend some time doing sidequests to build up skills across a bunch of different classes and switch between them as needed.

“ The best medals are ones that let you transform into monsters.

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