N-Philes

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

Posted November 26th 2006 by Jared Thomas.

For perhaps the first time in history, the N-Philes Forums influenced my gaming habits and led me to play a title that otherwise I wouldn't have given a second thought – Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. Now, for starters, I should let the readers know that I've never played a Dragon Quest game. I don't even play RPGs very often, due to their uncanny ability to envelop my entire life for days or weeks, or sometimes months. And to cap it all off, I have no inherent interest in playing games starring wobbly ambulatory blobs, regardless of whether they operate gigantic tanks that bear their image or not. So you could say this game had an uphill battle in winning me over.

Rocket Slime is the stereotypical story of a peaceful kingdom coming under attack from a dark foreign force and one coming-of-age male rising to the challenge to defeat evil by harnessing a mysterious ancient power. The twist here is in the inherent light-hearted wackiness due to the game starring primarily Slimes that traditionally have been enemies in Dragon Quest games, along with jellyfish and other anthromorphic characters that could never be taken seriously. Some wiseguy duck(/squirrel?) organization known as the Plob rampaged the kingdom of Slimenia and imprisoned all 100 townspeople from the capital city of Boingburg other than Rocket, a young slime who just so happened to have come into possession of the magical Warrior Flute, which is of course the key to wrapping up the whole ugly situation. As the story progresses, it proves to be somewhat less humorous than that of Mario & Luigi adventures, and I was content to skip the lion's share of speech because if I was going to sit and read the drama of a rabble of blobs, I'd expect it to be side-splittingly funny rather than mildly charming.

Fortunately for Rocket, the gameplay synchs up perfectly with his inability to be the daring male lead in a more traditional story. For all his valor, Rocket's abilities are limited to hopping around, floating, and stretching his body out to slingshot himself as a rolling ball into things. Rocket gathers items and enemies by slingshotting into them, at which point they bounce into the air and he rushes over underneath their shadow so that they land on his head. He can then throw them at enemies to gather them or at items to pop them into the air and thus trade what he's carrying for what he just hit. These simple mechanics are Rocket's key to accomplishing practically everything in the game, and with what is presented, they work fairly well.

True to the RPG tradition, Rocket Slime did in fact occupy the larger part of a week or so for me, blurring out distractions like school, work, girlfriend, and even television. But unlike your typical RPG fare, this wasn't due to countless hours spent in a zombie-like state rhythmically selecting attacks during increasingly repetitious battles. Rather, the game's hook is in trying to figure out, and manage to gather, the perfect combination of ammunition for Rocket's tank, which is the core of most major battles in the game.

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Posted in: Reviews

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