Purchase 3D Dot Game Heroes now from Amazon

(Playing a trade copy of the game which does not have trophies enabled.)

There is a saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That is definitely the case with 3D Dot Game Heroes as it pays its respects to the classic 2D role playing masterpieces that shaped so many gamers of my generation.

3D Dot Game Heroes is a brilliant adventure game styled after the most famous 2D adventure RPG of all time: Legend of Zelda. A tale of a reluctant hero summoned by the King to retrieve six magical orbs and defeat an evil sorcerer, the only thing missing from this story is a princess in distress. Throw in a few dashes of humour, and a 3-D environment, and you have yourself an entertaining jaunt through the vast land of Dotnia.

After a brief cinematic where the King of Dotnia pleads with you to save the kingdom, you collect the Ancient Sword and begin your journey across the vast plains, forests and deserts of Dotnia. You’ll want to start out wandering the fields close to Dotnia and its neighbouring village in search of some coin to purchase a nifty shield and some other supplies, not to mention start a couple of side quests moving along. Now you are on your way to becoming a grade A hero.

Your destiny includes listening to smart-ass comments from old men in temples

I believe I wasted a good three or four hours traveling the countryside and talking with villagers, slashing up enemies and tufts of grass for coins in order to enhance my sword. While the basic sword is fine and you don’t have to upgrade or use any other sword, I felt that beefing up my sword was best for getting through the later temples. The extra length and width allowed me to move more quickly through rooms that I had been struggling in and dying too soon for my liking. Exploring the countryside early on proved a bit of a mistake as I soon found myself far off on pathways that I was not prepared for with no means to defend myself. Nothing like getting hit with projectiles and not having a shield to defend with.

Along the way you will acquire the rest of the weapons for your arsenal. It wouldn’t be right if this game didn’t include a boomerang, trusty bombs, and special foot gear. The boomerang is perfect for hitting those just out of reach red buttons. Hidden passages and caves can be discovered with a well-placed bomb in front of cracked walls or stones. Yes, there are even fairy caverns where you can replenish your health at no cost. My favourite cave is From Cave, where there are plenty of in-jokes regarding From Software’s games, including Demon’s Souls.

Now, I was never a big fan of Zelda games. Link never seemed to question why Princess Zelda was always getting herself in trouble. The top-down view of the original games just didn’t appeal to me. I even attempted to play one of the Nintendo 64 versions hoping that I would enjoy it, but it only took a few hours to remind me that I just cannot get into the Zelda groove. This may be due to the lack of proper direction that seems to plague me. 3D Dot Heroes suffers from the same lack of direction, or extremely vague directions, at various points throughout the game. Armed with nothing more than “head west” and a flashing marker on your world map, there are times when you just have to wander around and pray you are going in the right direction.

Once I got past that minor hurdle, the game progressed much more smoothly. Within a few short hours I had made my way through three caves, solved a couple puzzles, delivered mail (a fun little side quest that netted me another Life Shard) and even located a bow for long range attacks. All I needed was to get into a rhythm and I was flying through the main storyline. All told, the main quest doesn’t take too long to complete; a little over a dozen or so hours if you run through the basics. Dungeons can be revisited and new rooms discovered with coloured keys for added bonuses. You can also replay any of the bosses if you wish.

Dotnia's #1 Mini-Game: Block Defense

In between temple and cave spelunking, there are oodles of side quests and some very addicting mini-games your hero can enjoy. Everyone needs to take a break once in a while, so why not do it playing a fun game and maybe pocket some free money or prizes in the process? My personal favourite is Blockout, a brick breaking game which you can find in Ortego Village on your way to the third temple. You can also put your fancy Dash Boots to use by running laps in Dash Circuit, where the goal is to complete three laps without bumping into obstacles which will slow you down. The third mini-game, very popular with Dotnians of all ages, is Block Defense and it plays exactly like you think it would. Like any tower defense game, you must build defenses along a path to stop oncoming waves of enemies from reaching and destroying your castle.

By far the best selling point of 3D Dot Game Heroes is the character creation tool. Hours can be lovingly wasted on building all sorts of people, animals, mecha and just plain random objects to become your avatar as you slay the beasts of Dotnia. Using the in-game tool or the online version, you can save your heroes to a USB stick and upload them to the Hall of Heroes. At the Hall, you can also browse through other submitted Heroes and download them to use in your own game. 3D Dot Game Heroes has a great community of creators Atlus is committed to nurturing and assisting it in any way that it can. Atlus has always been great to its fans, and this is just one more notch on their belt of awesome.

Bringing back the Pompadour

Overall Opinion

If you are looking to relive your gamer roots, give 3D Dot Game Heroes a spin in your PS3. Not only will you remember everything you loved and hated way back when, you’ll also get a good kick out of the several load screen images featuring all kinds of RPG game covers remade in 3D Dot style. Since the text is pretty limited in most cases and fairly easy to understand, you can introduce your kids to the sometimes frustratingly good, clean fun that was our childhood. And at $40 for a brand new copy, including all the things that were once DLC in Japan, 3D Dot Game Heroes won’t hurt your wallet too much.

Review product was provided by Atlus, and does not affect the outcome of this review.

Original First Look from GamingAngels (March 2010)

Once upon a time, in an 8-bit land not so very far away, the 8-bit people and their 8-bit pets, 8-bit grannies and 8-bit monsters came to the realization that 8-bit worlds didn’t have the market value they once did. The money stopped pouring in and life became pretty stagnant. It was around this time they sold their story to the fine creative minds at Atlus, at a reduced rate of course, and proclaimed that they would try this “3-D” craze all the kids have been talking about. (Plus, the King had seen James Cameron’s Avatar, and he knew that 3-D meant billion dollar sales, so he figured it couldn’t hurt.)

Coming May 2010 – 3D Dot Game Heroes: The Game

Dotnia is a land of many classic dungeons and colour coded keys. And swords. Like the giant one the greatest Hero of them all used to wield, until he stuck it into the ground. His sword was so great that it was nearly three times his size and could go through trees. No other sword can do that, just his uber special “yeah that’s not really a glitch” sword. And there are orbs. Because the people of Dotnia have seen countless fantasy movies at the 8-bit drive in and they know that magical orbs don’t get enough love these days.

Oh the humority!

So the King gets up from his throne and declares they are going to upgrade from a 3D 8-bit existence to a 3D one. Now everyone is excited. There is purpose again to their mundane lives. Something is going to happen! And you are chosen to be the new Hero. Aren’t you just happy?

Here we are in 2010 and we are talking about an 8-bit game that isn’t pre-1990s. Why? Because 8-bit games have universal appeal, they are fun and charming, and 3D Dot Heroes is probably the best flattery for the classic 2D action adventure genre that ever will be.

Everybody wants to play a game that is fun. 3D Dot Heroes has all the in-humour and basic yet not-so-basic familiarity of games such as Legend of Zelda or Castlevania way back in the day. From what I have seen via the live web demo I attended last week and through various clips online, I have determined that this game is going to have copious amounts of fun wrapped inside a candy coating of awesome. It’s up to you just how much fun you want to have. Journeying in seven expansive dungeons and exploring the vast lands of Dotnia will probably take about 15 hours for a basic start to finish with a bit of dabbling adventure. Increased difficulties can be unlocked for those who want more of a hardcore “I grew up in the 80s!” experience. (And for those of you out there, just because we grew up with these games in the 80s doesn’t mean they didn’t kick our bumbs back then.)

The majestic beaches of Dotnia

You can choose from one of three various alignments for your Hero – Royal Heir (balanced), Scholar (one of those nerdy book loving… I mean more magically inclined) or Hero (the slightly more I’m going to bash you with this club type). Instead of leveling up your character, all health and magic points are attached to your sword. So make sure you keep an eye out for red (healing) and green (magic) apples if you see you are about to die. And play smart! If you see a monster with a golden crown symbol over his head, that means he’s going to be a bit tougher than an ordinary one of his kind. Don’t think you can take him on? There is no shame in running from a battle if it means you will live to see another dungeon.

And how about mini-games? During the demo I was able to check out two of the three mini-games that are included at NO EXTRA CHARGE! Block Defense is a tower defense mini game in which you will try to stop the bad guys from getting to Point B from Point A, setting up towers (Ha!) along the way in hopes to kill them D-E-D dead. You can also use your custom made character to help if you want, or you can make your towers do all the work (boy, you really are a lazy Hero!). The second game Blockout challenges you to clear out all of the offending blocks in your way with just a few balls at your disposal.

Sword make blocks go SMASH!

Now, the Japanese were able to get an awesome version of 3D Dot Heroes a few months ago, which is cool and all, but they had to wait for some things to be released as download content and we North Americans don’t. Neener neener neener! There are bonus Block Defense levels that we get on the disc, as well as some added pre-made characters to choose from, the option to install the game to the PS3 hard drive (yes, I said “option”-you don’t have to, but the game will load faster if you do) and the best part of it all – the Loading Screen Gallery.

I could spend hours just watching the Loading Screen Gallery. Our 8-bit inhabitants spent hours posing themselves against white backdrops to look like our favourite game box art just to get our attention. Part of the fun is trying to guess them all.

So what do the people of Dotnia ask in return for all the awesome fun they are bundling up for us?

$39.99 US

Yup, for all that stuff I talked about and the epic in-game soundtrack that I am mentioning now, $39.99 will buy you a ginormous good time. There will be several hours of creating amazing characters that you can save to USB and share online with friends and strangers, all of which will be supported by Atlus. Can’t forget about all those cool trophies you’ll want to collect, which will mean more than one play through, not like you won’t play it over and over again to see if you can find all the swords and easter eggs without cheating. You also get a handy camera option, so you can take snapshots of your character taking down hordes of beasts and then use that as a desktop or PS3 background and brag to your friends or impress that boy/girl in your life with your “skillz”.

If you start saving 20 cents a day right now, you will be able to buy 3D Dot Game Heroes on May 11th and bring some financial stability back to Dotnia. What are you waiting for? Check your couches, your car and your linty pockets and pre-order it now!

(No editors were harmed during the writing of this article, however you are urged have a tall latte instead of a grande one and use that 20 cents you save everyday to help the Dotnians clothe and feed their pet dragons. And if you do that, they just might let Yukino out of the Flame Temple. It’s pretty hot in here. There’s fire in the Flame Temple, you know.)