I remember being at the Square-Enix press conference in 2006, when the Wii was unveiled. This resulted in a strange moment in the conference when Dragon Quest Swords was announced and it got a huge pop-- far huger than anything else related to Dragon Quest. "Wait," I thought to myself, "this is just because it's a Wii sword-slashing game, isn't it?"
Dragon Quest Swords shipped in Japan back in July. Reviews of the import in Play Magazine and NGamer UK were... uh, not positive, to say the least. (Bear in mind that in order for Play to be negative about a product, it needs to cause some sort of terminal illness or lingering injury.) Famitsu, on the other hand, gave it a 33/40, but those jerks thought Blue Dragon was a good game, too. Regardless, Square-Enix is hyping up new features for the American release on February 26 (and I bet an overhaul of the difficulty level).
So the US version might be better... or not, it can be hard to tell when Square-Enix opts to give a game a facelift during localization. Check behind the cut for some footage from the Japanese game and judge for yourself.
So is it just me, or is Toriyama's design work a lot more inspired than usual in these character designs? There's a little less "So which Dragon Ball character is he redrawing in fantasy clothes?" going on here.
