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...

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 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.

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 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!!

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.

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.