Dragon Quest Heroes is part of the Musou (aka Warriors) series spin-off family of games with things like Hyrule Warriors and Dynasty Warriors Gundam, two games I very much enjoyed. I also quite like me some Dragon Quest, so I thought that this would be a perfect fit for me. While I wasn't exactly wrong, I will preface this review by saying that this is certainly nothing terribly special. If you aren't already a fan of the Musou games, this isn't gonna make you a believer.

On the good side, you have a level of presentation up there with its sister spin-off game of around the same time: Hyrule Warriors. You have an original cast of 4 fighters backed up by a collection of 9 fan favorites(?) from across Dragon Quests 4, 5, 6, and 8:
Four from DQ4: Alena, Kyril, Maya, and Psaro (the final boss of that game)
Two from DQ5: Nera and Bianca
One from DQ6: Terry
Two from DQ8: Yangus and Jessica

While most of the selection is very understandable, I put the '?' there because I genuinely had to look up who the guy they had from DQ6 was, and that's a game in the series I've beaten, while I knew immediately who the members from DQ8 were, and that's a game I've played maybe two hours of total. They're beautifully rendered in 3D though, and while the voice acting on them ranges from pretty good to noticeably bad, the English dub is totally serviceable. The sound track is also excellent, with many tracks from older games, although with how much DQ reuses music, that's more or less to be expected. The game also runs fantastically, and I never encountered a single bug otherwise.

On the bad side are how the characters actually play compared to something like Hyrule Warriors. Compared to Hyrule Warriors that came out four months prior to this, the move trees are seriously lacking in any kind of depth. Where HW has you constantly unlocking new combos and weapons for each character and their different weapons, every character in DQH has a combo tree that is mostly static the entire game. There are some extra bits and bobs you can get through the level-up skill tree, but it's nothing compared to HW's progression system. While they do try and make up for it with a little equipment system and a little crafting, if you look at the comparatively small, unbalanced character pool along with no option for co-op, and it ends up feeling like a noticeably lesser experience.

This is also probably one of the longer Musou games out there. Perhaps it's because I did almost all the side-quests, but those don't really add up to too much outside of the normal gameplay until right before the last chapter (where I spent like 8 hours doing them), as most of them are just collecting a certain amount of ingredients or killing a certain number of monsters. However, most of the "kill X number of monsters" quests ARE given after those monsters have more or less disappeared from your main-story quests, so those do add up to a fair bit of time wasting. On top of that, all of the non-story mission quests take place in the story-mode maps, so it really doesn't feel like anything that different anyways. I racked up a little over 30 hours on this game, but I certainly can't say that I was absolutely enjoying all of it.

Even for Dragon Quest, the story is really nothing special. Even just doing story missions, the game is going to take you at least 20 hours to beat (judging from HLTB), and the story is just so trite and predictable that it never grabbed me at all. You may say this is to be expected of a cross-over game, but I quite enjoyed the Hyrule Warriors and Gundam Warriors plots in comparison to this, if for any reason just because they were so much shorter. Omega Force has just not come up with the mission variety to make this series that compelling for so long, and no amount of new spell-casting or equipment systems can hide that. They really should have done something like Dynasty Warriors 8 (which came out 2 years earlier) where certain characters are required for certain missions to freshen up the combat a little bit, because with how few characters there are, combat starts to feel old REALLY fast. Even Hyrule Warriors acknowledged that staleness and drip-fed the new characters to you far better as well as encouraging you to play certain missions as different characters to earn them heart containers.

This is all on top of how DQH also has the very modern Omega-Force problem of a really inconsistent difficulty curve. Due to the certain enemy make-up and/or contours of a particular level, it may be vastly harder compared to ones around the same time, and this is especially true for side-quest missions. The other common Omega-Force problem this game has is fucking god-awful menu systems and UI. For all the hand-holding the tutorial does, it NEVER tells you how to level up, which is buried in the "Misc." part of your pause menu as "Allocate Skill Points". I went for like 8 or 10 hours at effectively level 1 just because I figured I hadn't unlocked the ability to level up yet, as I was so sure the game would tell me how given the precedent of instruction it had set so far.

Verdict: Not Recommended. As much as it pains me to say, this game just really not worth the price. With a sequel that, from what I hear, is much better (despite not having co-op) also on PS4 for a similar price, the far superior Hyrule Warriors in the same console era across (almost) three systems in counting, not to mention Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Complete Edition which is also on PS4 (and has co-op), there is no shortage of far better Musou games or even Dragon Quest Musou games to occupy your time with. This probably isn't a game you'll hate, but it's probably one you won't end up finishing (even for a Musou game).

Well, it boasted a rather impressive cast of characters, featuring both beloved veterans and fresh faces (visually, all of them looked stunning). However, the game tends to become a bit tedious at times. Particularly, the protect-the-flag stages stand out as the least enjoyable, and their frequency becomes a hindrance. Nonetheless, I did manage to find enjoyment in it; after all, Dragon Quest has always held a special place in my heart. Despite these shortcomings, I can't be overly critical of the game. Characters like Yangus and Healix are simply too endearing to overlook

Musou padrão situado no universo de Dragon Quest, trazendo personagens originais e conhecidos da franquia em um único título, jogo celebrativo.

A gameplay segue aquele combate contra exércitos de inimigos em uma única fase, os objetivos alternam entre defender uma base ou simplesmente chegar em algum ponto do mapa. O diferencial desse é que podemos recrutar monstros como aliados em campo, dessa forma eles nos auxiliam durante as missões, protegendo certos territórios e derrotando inimigos menores. Nossos heróis além de atacarem normalmente realizando combo de 4 acertos, ataque aéreo e a famosa ultimate, ainda possuem uma paleta de skills, no entanto, nada é customizável, as habilidades e magias são pré-definidas por personagem.

A história por incrível que pareça é legalzinha, a narrativa mostra muita coisa em forma de cinemática de alta qualidade, então conseguiu me manter engajado. De personagens só consigo elogiar Luceus e Aurora, justamente por serem protagonistas com muito mais personalidade do que da party inteira.

A trilha sonora é Dragon Quest, os caras são tão tradicionalistas que reaproveitam faixas de jogos passados em jogos futuros, (vale lembrar do DQXI) pessoalmente não sou muito chegado nas soundtracks dessa franquia, então não gostei da maioria, mas isso é totalmente subjetivo.

A direção de arte continua bonita como sempre e o gráfico em cell shading é decente.

De problemas gerais esse jogo possui muitos, pra começar, temos a terrível qualidade de vida: não podemos correr no cenário; existe uma limitação de aceitação de missões secundárias; a distribuição de XP é bizarra, parece que depois do nível 30 você mal ganha experiência direito e fica dependente de slimes metálicos pra passar de nível; o ganho de dinheiro é mínimo, naturalmente você consegue ouro derrotando inimigos, mas é tipo 20 moedas pra cada mob, lá pro late game tem equipamento custando 40k pra cada personagem; o sistema de craft é ridículo pelo farm desgraçado que o jogador precisa fazer e etc.

Por fim, Dragon Quest Heroes no máximo é mediano, apresenta uma história bacana de encher os olhos com sua apresentação visual, é descontraído com sua fórmula musou de esmaga-botão, mas erra o básico tentando mesclar esse gênero com elementos de RPG, criando problemas gravíssimos que mancharam minha experiência com esse game, portanto, não recomendo.

ps: na real, só zerei mesmo por causa da Aurora.

I had some pretty high hopes for this one. Given how much quirky charm that the monsters of Dragon Quest have, I figured a musou game where you smash them by the hundreds would be a match made in heaven.

It's...well, not. There is a good variety of well liked characters, the world is colorful and vibrant, but for some reason, the sum feels lesser than its parts. I had a much better time with other musou spinoffs (Hyrule Warriors in particular), and other DQ spinoffs (Builders in particular).

Playstyle variety between characters is nice, and the coup de grace feels impactful and epic everytime, except maybe in the post-game content where the enemies are massive damage sponges(I did very little of it because of this). Story is very bare bones but it tells you to beat monsters and go to places, which is all it needs to do really.
Movement speed is a bit too slow, and no dashing of any kind hurts a lot. Some of the side quests' grinding can be lame due to low drop rates for certain items.
Overall quite fun, despite the flaws.

Gameplay:
This game has a lot of ideas that makes it stand out from other Warriors games like being able to zoom across the map very quickly in a instant although the movement speed feels slow compared to those other Warriors games (not too much of a problem once you get used to it). One weird thing that makes this game stand out from those others the most is a lot of levels are more tower defense like. You will often have to guard a area or summon monsters to guard the area while U go elsewhere. Overall I'd say the gameplay is goodish but far from the best. Lots of room to grow.

Roster:
It's amazing to see characters form different mainline games interact. If you like DQ4, 5, 6, or 8 you'll likely enjoy part of this game's cast. 4 feels very well represented with Alena, Kiryl, Maya, and my personal favorite character in the series Psaro (although he's hard to unlock). 5 has Nera and Bianca. 6 only has Terry so it feels slightly left out. 8 has Yangus and Jessica. No characters from other games are playable but a few like Patty do appear. The game has 4 unique playable characters which are good enough.

Story:
It's alright. Nothing too crazy but it works.