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November 3, 2006 - While Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors was originally expected to launch with the Wii in Japan on 12/2, Square Enix ended up avoiding the launch flood, pushing the game back to Spring 2007. Thankfully, the Nintendo World event in Nagoya today gave us a chance to get some hands-on time ahead of time.

If you played Dragon Quest VIII and now you find yourself looking to this new entry in the series as a Wii adventure of similar epic proportion, we've got some disappointing news. Dragon Quest Swords shares more in common with the Kenshin Dragon Quest game unit from Square Enix, a highly successful self-contained game that connects directly to the television and has players fight monsters using a sword-shaped controller.

You're not too far off if you're immediately picturing using the Wiimote in place of the sword in this Wii off-shoot of that title. When facing off against enemies, your Wiimote slashes translate to in-game sword attacks. The attacks don't appear to be mapped directly to your sword motions, but the basic feeling of swinging the Wiimote to achieve a sword slash is there. You can also thrust the Wiimote at on-screen enemies for a sword thrust. An on-screen pointer indicates where you're pointing, as is the case with many Wii titles.

The battle system wouldn't be all that fun with just sword attacks. You also have access to defensive moves, special attacks, and magic. To use magic, you press the B button. A magic spell fires off at the enemy to which you're currently pointing. To bring up a shield, you hold down A. A translucent image of a shield then appears on screen. To successfully defend, you have to move the shield around to align it with incoming attacks.

As you defeat enemies, you slowly build up a special move meter. Once full, you can perform your special move by pressing the one button. Your character appears on-screen, and you have to build up a charge by swinging the Wiimote around as fast as you can. Your character then performs the move; in the case of the Nintendo World demo, a powerful slash.

Dragon Quest uses only the Wiimote, without the nunchuck add-on. So how do you move? Well, the long and the short is, you don't. Your character moves on a fixed path through the world. You use A, B or the D-pad to move back and forth through the world, but you can't turn around or stray off your fixed path. You can press the minus button to bring up a menu, from which you access items and view stats, but that's all the activity we found in the demo today.

Obviously, the emphasis is on the battle system. The demo had two stages, one set in an open field not unlike the outer world of Dragon Quest VIII, and one set inside a cave. Both featured numerous enemy encounters, with the expected culprits (read, lots of Slime) being pretty common. As you move forward through the world, flocks of enemies appear and begin to attack. Your character pulls out his sword, and the game switches to battle mode.

With battles being everything in this game, it would be a shame if there weren't much in the way of strategy. That doesn't seem to be the case, thankfully. The first boss fight required that you block incoming attacks, then slash like crazy as the boss character recovered. Other battles feature near and far enemies, requiring combinations of magic and sword slashes.

It may seem like a simple gameplay system, but there's potential for greatness in Dragon Quest Swords. We can't wait to see what Square Enix puts together for the final version early next year.

quote em876n83tw45

^{Wow I never expected first person and the way you move around is very strange.}

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Eight new (double-sided) scans of Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and The Tower of Mirrors have been released in this month's edition of V-Jump magazine.

The game is due for release 7/12.

view scans

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Dragon Quest Swords was originally scheduled to be a launch title for Wii. Maybe Square Enix was just kidding all along, but it's probably for the best they're releasing it in two months' time rather than at launch -- the Wii needs new content, this is well-suited to the audience, and it's likely benefitted highly from the extra nine or so months of development time. I had a perma-grin plastered on my face playing Dragon Quest Swords. The demo, far from getting repetitive or tiring as you use the Wiimote as a sword to slash enemies, was challenging, well-paced, and had lots of variation.

In a nutshell, you're walking along a straight path in a 3D world by pressing Up on the Wiimote's D-pad. You can hold B to run, but you don't do much of anything until a group of enemies approaches. At this point, you stop moving forward and a battle begins. You can't target enemies until they move up to the front of the screen. At this point you can slash the Wiimote vertically to hit enemies in the middle of the screen, or horizontally to hit enemies in the middle of the X-axis. Slash perfectly and you can take out a whole row of enemies at once. But this only works when enemies are right in the center -- if they're scattered around the screen you can hold A to lock-on, and then your slash will be targeted in that direction.

This alone would be fun. Rather than force you into 1:1 sword movements, it's a simple gestural-based control system. And it works. But things quickly get even more complicated. Enemies start launching attacks at you, and you have to hold B to make your shield appear, then move it into position to block the attack. Soon, the enemies themselves start blocking your attacks and you have to wait for them to attack, parry, and then hit them during the opening.

The vibe I got from this was actually very similar to Punch-Out. Maybe it's because I've been playing Punch-Out recently, but at any rate that's how the anticipate/block/attack pattern felt. Especially when I was up against a Golem who was throwing punches at me.

You'll be able to buy different shields with different shapes, which will better help you block. Since my shield started to break apart as I used it, I imagine you'll have to replace them often. Maybe you'll be able to get shields that don't break very easily but are small, and shields that break like crazy but are huge? I'm speculating but that sounds like what they'd do.

At any time, you can open a menu and use healing items that you find in treasure chests as you move along. The zombie enemies in the demo vomited purple slime which poisoned you, a condition that saps your HP gradually just like in every other RPG ever. Antidotes will clear it right up. It's likely that you can buy these in towns as well, but the demo experience at the Party was limited to a battle road.

Dragon Quest Swords is out on July 12 in Japan and I am so there.

quote mcr fan321

The battle style is a dissapointment. So is the new graphics look. The creaters are taking a turn for the worst on this one.