Possible Purchase, help appreciated.

^ How about some 3D Dot Game Music? ^

Developer: Silicon Studio

Publisher: From Software

Genre: Action Role Playing Game

Console: PlayStation ®3

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1

Save Size: 1,024kb

Install Size: None

North America: TBD

Europe: TBD

Japan: November 5th, 2009

3D Dot Game Heroes Homepage

From Software

http://www.fromsoftware.jp/

Silicon Studio

3D Dot Game Heroes on 1UP

3D Dot Game Heroes on IGN

3D Dot Game Heroes on Destructoid

3D Dot Game Heroes on N4G

Japan

America

*To be determined*

Europe

*To be determined*

3D Dot Game Heroes takes place in the peaceful Kingdom of Dotnia, a world not unlike a 2D 16-bit era sprite-based RPG.

Long ago, the Kingdom was protected by six wise men and six orbs which contained the power of God. However, the Devil Demon Onikis, seeking their power, stole the orbs and captured the wise men. Demons began to flood the Kingdom, whose end was thought to be near.

It was at that time that a young warrior appeared from seemingly nowhere, saved the wise men and returned the orbs to their rightful place. Following a great battle, the warrior and the wise men combined the orbs into one and sealed Onikis away.

The Kingdom prospered for some time after that. However, as time passed, the story of the young warrior became a legend and visitors stopped coming to the Kingdom. It was then that the King made the decision: "From now on, it will be the 3D era." Under orders from the King, the Kingdom was changed from 2D to 3D, and began progressing towards a restoration of past grandeur. Just as people began to get used to their new life however, something happened.

You play as a descendant of the hero who saved the Kingdom and are now tasked with saving the world, as the orbs have gone missing...

Other characters in the game include Princess Iris, a highly friendly princess who's become lost, King Dottonia, a sensible and good-natured king who transformed the Kingdom and the Priest of Darkness, the official priest of the Kingdom who's been possessed by evil and has hidden the orbs that sealed away Onikis.

Apart from it’s unique visual style - the game is promised to be a lengthy experience for up to 20 - 30 hours excluding the hidden and optional stuff which can lead up to 40-50 hours of gameplay.

The game will let you control swappable characters - a Hero and a Prince or a female Hero and a Princess along with a Traveling Scholar, who is also of male or female variety. Also amongst these three, the Ancient Warrior, who you begin the game with as you need to bring the sword to the Holy Forest to the north of the castle and place it there for future generations. You can swap between these characters and when you do so you get to keep all your items and parameters and apparently there appears to be some differences between the character types, with some being better with swords and others with magic, so there is the chance that character changes will play into the game. Along with all of this, you seem to get a spunky little fairy companion, at first this fairy will serve as a guide for the game's tutorial, although, in the main menu there are slots for multiple fairies, outside of just this initial one. This presumably means that the fairies do more than just serve as a tutorial for the game.

Now to the game's combat system. You press circle to swing your sword, X to use your sub weapon (including, a boomerang, bomb, and bow and arrow), hold square to dash and use R1 to raise your shield. It's possible to make your character do a rotating slash as well. When you attack with your sword you can direct your slash with the D-Pad or analog stick (depending on which your controlling your character with). This allows you to take out surrounding enemies. Initial impressions say that the combat system seems to be more skill based than your typical RPG.

Also note that as the hero progresses, he'll be able to use "Shader Magic". Shader Magic spells have rendering-themed names like Parallax Map, Reflection, Normal Map and Frozen Shader. You'll have to use these both to combat enemies and as a means of solving puzzles.

You can also lock your character into facing one direction, allowing you to strafe around and block incoming attacks with your shield. The game also lets you cycle through subweapons and magic quickly, without going into the main menu, allowing you to easily switch off between boomerangs to stun enemies, bombs to blast holes in walls, and arrows to strike at distant foes.

The 3D Dot Game Heroes' world, known as Dotnia Kingdom, is shown on the game's World Map below.

The locations highlighted on the map are: Poleto Forest, Arudo Wasteland, Sadoran Cemetary, Lajak Village, Cornelia Village, Dark Tower, Batalua Field, Gilga Beach, Kai Crater, Visclo Volcano and Nuntora Desert.

There are also four different view modes for this title, as showcased below. My personal favorite is the 3/4 top down view.

Outside of the main menu, there's a system menu. This lets you save (at any time), load, view your photo album, take a picture of the current scene, and change the camera angle (As seen above).

Regarding the photo mode, one option you have is to switch the game into a first person viewing mode. Here, you can move the camera freely around the world. It's like an FPS, except your character doesn't move. This is presumably designed to allow you to put your character in your shots.

You can choose to toggle an option for "grid." When set to on, the blocks that make up the game world and its characters are marked with clear borders. When off, the world appears to flow together.

The game also has a large font option, which should make reading that pixely 8-bit text a bit easier.

This game also features a very powerful character editor feature.

You can create your very own main character using a block level editor with maximum dimensions of 16 x 16 x 16. In addition to creating your character from scratch, you can use one of the preset character classes as a base.

In the above edit screen shot, the controls are listed as follows:

L2/R2: Change pose
L1/R1: Bring up the menu
D-pad: Move the pointer
Circle: place a block
X: I think this lets you clear a block
L: move camera/rotate
R: Zoom in/out
Circle + D-pad: Change pointer size
R2 + D-pad: Move blocks
SELECT: Clear all

At the top, you can select a pose for your creation: standing, walk 1, walk 2, "banzai," and sword out.

You're not limited to the presets in the palette. Pressing square lets you adjust the colors.

3D Dot Game... Rorona?

What's interesting about character creation is not only that you can create anything you want, like Link, but if you want to share it, you can export the character onto whatever form of portable memory (USB stick, Memory Stick Pro Duo) and extract it onto another PlayStation3!.

3D Dot Game... Zelda!!

You can also customize your character's weapon as you progress. Gold that you earn from defeating enemies can be used at the town's blacksmith to customize your weapon in seven areas, including length, size, attack strength, long distance attack strength, rotation degree, and piercing strength.

The result of extended customization is some ridiculously large weapons:

Worth noting is that your weapon is only in it's ridiculously large size when your hero's health meter is at full strength. Anything less than that will result in your weapon being at default size.

Remember how From Software announced that Irem's Spelunker character would be used to promote the game? If you didn't, well now you do. In addition to his promotional activities, Spelunker will appear in the game in playable form. Once you've helped him out in the main quest, you'll be able to use Spelunker in the extremely difficult Spelunker Mode, where you can end up dying after even the smallest of falls.

Also amongst the Spelunker mode From Software has announced the following (2) minigame modes in 3D Dot Game Heroes.

Dash Race

Use your character's dash move to race through a course. Get the fastest time and you'll earn rewards.

Block DefenseA 3D Dot Game Heroes twist on Tower Defense. You position blocks of such form as "Arrow Block", "Air Block", "Missile Block", and "Fire Block". These blocks attack incoming enemies formations. It seems like you can also lend a helping hand and directly attack the enemy.

The game will also feature a very difficult mode called "From Mode". This becomes selectable once you've cleared certain unspecified conditions in the game's standard difficulty mode. Also note that characters in the game will be conscious about the tougher mode of play, and some will praise you for your bravery.

Thanks to Andriasang