The distribution method for Sand Land is truly fascinating. The manga comes out in time for the anime, and the anime finishes just in time for the game, almost making all 3 companions to one another. And having seen all 3 for myself now, I can say this may be the first time in anime game history that an anime was adapted with the medium of video games in mind. I commend Ilca for their effort, and I honestly think that this should be the way to adapt short series into games going forward.

The game itself is pretty fun. This is not only the smoothest tank controls I've ever felt, but it also came with a cool story and lovable characters.

As for criticism, I can say that there should've been more banter, as the characters tend to repeat themselves frequently while you're driving around the map. And the hand to hand combat definitely could've used some work, since it's just hitting X and RT to dodge. There could've at least been Y for light attacks.

Either way, it's definitely one of Bamco and Ilca's better anime games. If you're a fan of Toriyama or anime games in general, this is absolutely worth playing.

Sand Land is a game that tries to do a little bit of everything, without really excelling. Its identity lies in being a tie-in game to Akira Toriyama's work of the same name, and as much as the attempts to create narratively novel content are appreciable, beyond a certain underlying hastiness in the storytelling it is from a gameplay standpoint that the game shows itself to be claudicant. Vehicles are the most appealing aspect, but due to bland environments and a real lack of variety in spite of the open maps that set it apart, their enhancement is rather low. If you are a fan of the late Toriyama and his works, which are brought to life here through excellent use of cel shading, you might close your eyes to some of the flaws that, in some cases, outweigh the merits; otherwise, ILCA's game proves to be an experience that unfortunately fails to be memorable.

Despite how much marketing this game seemed to have such as sponsored streams by people who aren't even in the anime space, a demo, and so many ads (unless I was targeted because I frequent the DBZ side of the internet), and this being a full multimedia event with an anime, this was probably the hardest time I've ever had finding a game on release day and not because I think the game is flying off the shelves. Amazon had the order delayed to the following Monday, I couldn't find a copy and any video game carrying department store like Wal Mart or Target within a 45 minute drive and even fuckin pawngamestop didn't have copies but Stellar Blade apparently is in abundance. I ended up double dipping and grabbing a digital copy (praise be to whatever god allowed this game to be only 20GB) while the amazon order got situated because goddamn it, I was looking forward to this. I think this is one of those underproduced copy situations but it gave me time to read the manga before getting into this.

Akira Toriyama's work was one of my main gateways into anime back in the day, with DBZ's ocean dub because I'm that fucking old. His artstyle is something I will always enjoy its why I played games like Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest that to this day I think is such a standout in the genre. I'm glad another of his works is getting adapted in game form. I think his artstyle translated well in game, especially in terms of the bots (the machines you use throughout the game). That man really loved drawing vehicles and machines and it shows, especially since Sand Land's inception was because he just wanted to draw an old man with a tank which grew into something he never intended it to. Yes some characters I could see the "building blocks" and traits shared from his other work (I will always see Mr. Satan when I see that long square jaw) but his creature designs are also in full effect with giant cats with sabre teeth, dinosaurs with weird tails and prominent back and head spines, large toothed Pteranodons etc, they stand out even if the designs in game get re-used quite a bit with as much as a pallet swap and maybe one slight addition like a head piece to differentiate unless its a boss. There was also a design that was outright used in OG Dragon Ball that I was happy to see. There isn't as much to say about the style of the environments other than they look good and accurately reflect what they're named, Sand Land is very much a land of sand but I am grateful that it is not the only type of scenery available all throughout the game.

The story of the first half of the game mostly follows the manga, two demons venture out with an old man in a tank to find water, but some parts have had their order changed or elongated and there were brand new things added to what I assume more organically bridge into the second half which is entirely new. As I said in the intro, I read the manga but I did not watch the anime which I'm sure this new stuff is covered there. One of the notable new things added to the first half is the new party member, Ann. Originally it was just Rao, Beelzebub (who you play as) and Thief but she joins as the resident gearhead and a more organic style reason why the characters can get more bots because the manga was ONLY the tank. Well that is technically not true. Rao had a car but in the manga when it gets ruined it doesn't get fixed unlike in the game. I did enjoy the main group and think Ann was a great addition, though I can't say they aren't predictable as characters. Aside from a couple of the villains, the ones you spend the most of the time fighting against, I can't say I share the same feelings towards. They are just as basic, not that its a bad thing but it leads to some disengaging of interest in the narrative when I can predict every single plot beat introduced in the post manga content. I'm not saying I was expecting some Yoko Taro or Kojima level narrative and Sand land's is by no means bad, it just didn't do enough to make the predictability engaging. What you think is going to happen after reading the synopsis, is more than likely what will happen. The voice acting is hit or miss with I think Rao having the worst of it which is bad because he is one of the main characters with more of the important lines. I feel like they were going for the "battle hardened, tired old man has seen some shit" route but he is mostly so monotone it comes off as disinterested and doesn't match the character's emotion that is portrayed by the model's animations a lot of the time. Most other named characters were either good or fine but outside of the actual cutscenes, the stilted line reading that is common in this style of game makes even VA's like Kira Buckland (Ann's VA) unable to reach the levels we know they can. The dialogue that occurred during traversal also repeated a lot, and I mean A LOT. The dialogue updates after story beats but I heard the same line of dialogue three times on average when exploring ruins or doing story based dungeons. Its not as if they're allergic to dead air because there's plenty of times without it but other times they talk like its some first party sony game giving you a hint every 10 seconds. "We could get up here, if we had a bot that could jump" Beelzebub says as I am JUMPING IN THE JUMP BOT. This happens every time. I was also surprised that I enjoyed the music. Make no mistake you get plenty of "Desert Music" but the tracks that play specifically in the dungeons and towns at night were pretty beautiful.

So how's the gameplay then? Does it carry it if the narrative is as standard as I say? Depends. Do you like driving around? Because you will be doing A LOT of that. I would say 75% of the game was me driving a bot across the maps and doing various activities. There's grotto's to explore, hills to jump up (the game calls them hills but they're more like tall rock formations), field bosses to fight, bases to raid where some are stealth based and others are combat, ruins to explore and radio towers to fix, bounties and races. Those radio towers are not something you have to climb don't worry, and their requirement to fix might as well be non existent with how little you need and how plentiful those resources are as never once did I have to take a leave and come back to fix it and yes it does populate the map with undiscovered activities in the area. The grottos are just these small single room caves that have chests or ore deposits, maybe an enemy or two inside and sometimes need rocks destroyed to access. The hills are these tall rock formations that usually have a group of enemies you should defeat before jumping to the top and getting the treasure or ore deposits. Treasure chests have either materials or parts for the bots in them with the latter being in the large variant of chests. Ruins are generally larger than the grottos and sometimes have multiple entrances. Going through them you'll run into enemies, platforming challenges, and destructible rocks while you look for chests and ore deposits where both tend to be exclusive materials which in my case was assorted coins and old variants of metals. Unless I was just being blind, which is possible, the ruins always seemed to just...end. There wasn't really a noticeable "end point" or even a boss outside of specific mission based circumstances. It made them feel pretty limp, I'll be honest. The field bosses are differently designed but larger versions of the dinosaurs, panthers and crocs who's movesets aren't much different from their grunt counterparts. The human bosses are strictly from missions and have a lot more going for them than their animal counterparts or underlings. They are not just palette swaps with basic gear on their bots like what you find in the field, they have unique or specific optional parts for their bots to make the fights a bit more interesting such as emp mines, large missile packs or a grapple that then shoves 4 drills in you for massive damage.

If you aren't doing those then your time is spent driving around in whatever bot of your choice (until you need to swap for a specific feature one has), grabbing materials so you can upgrade your bots, finding fast travel points, shooting enemies and doing side quests whose contents aren't all that engaging outside of what worldbuilding they do and what they reward. The traversal gets a lot better once you get the first "traversal oriented bot" as early on it is pretty brutal with how slow the tank is even with boost. It was a good design choice to have the boost feature of bots be infinite outside of combat but I'd be lying if I said traversal didn't wear on me when those objectives where nowhere near the fast travel points. There is also a water mechanic. NO WAIT ITS NOT WHAT YOU THINK! It is not for thirst, its actually a heal and if your water bottle is full then its a revive should you die outside of your bot. A bot reaching 0 hp is game over though, no matter how many others you have on your person. The water can be refilled at the various water tanks around the map which is one of your discoverable fast travel point options. There were not many frame drops that I ran into while playing either. I only ever saw them when destroying rocks that blocked grottos, though this game does to the "low framerate mobs when far away" thing which never really bothered me to be honest.

Speaking of side quests, I won't call it a meta game but there's this hub you get early on called Spino. This town starts out with nothing, but as you do side quests they usually end with you telling someone "Hey, this town need people. Why don't you come on down?". This gets the town to grow and become more developed, get more facilities and upgrade said facilities so you can in turn upgrade your bots and just give people with nowhere to go a nice place to live in this harsh sandy land. It reminds me of building up colony 9 in Xenoblade Chronicles. Most side quests leading to "Come to Brazil Spino!" however is part of the reason why they aren't so engaging, the other being their standard side quests gameplay of "get this thing" or "find this person" or "kill this dinosaur" which is also not very captivating. I was doing them for what I got out it not because it was more game to play. You also gain access to a customizable room that you can decorate with furnishings you either buy, craft or find and can even put your bots in them which can also be expanded in size. I am not someone who really cares about interior design so I didn't spend much time on it and can't tell you if its good or bad. If you played Yakuza 8, its similar to the room you have on Dondoko Island.

Combat is generally pretty simple but it also tests your threat assessment abilities and if you've been keeping your bots of choice up to snuff. Generally though it boils down to driving around the encounter and taking shots at the enemy bots and using secondary weapons to pick off the foot soldiers as well as shooting down their missiles. You also need to suspend your disbelief because this game does the whole "The MCs don't kill, everyone they ever fought survived being shot by a tank cannon at point blank range and/or survived their bot exploding into a ball of fire". I'll give the game this though, you see the foot soldier enemies either have the dizzy stars or run away after to take down their hp fully (animals seems to actually die though, fuck their lives I guess) but I call bullshit on the ones in the bots. This also makes the times when the game talks about death to hit a lot more than it should which took me aback each time. Story based boss fights are different story as they have their phases the go in and out of and as you would expect, require a bit more actual ability to lead your shots than an normal encounter as they can be very mobile because yes this game asks that as well as having bullet drop for things like the tank cannon. There is also out of bot combat and Beelzebub is no slouch in that regard. He has his light and heavy attacks which as you should expect and the latter can be charged. Pressing heavy after a light will change the combo ender plus he can do ariel combos and the previous combo rules apply. My favorite was the 5 hit with the heavy ender which makes Beelzebub do that Chun Li super move, Tenshokyaku. Not only that, he can dodge cancel attacks even in the air. I LOVE DODGE CANCELING! Him along with the party have abilities they can use with Beelzebub having a meter and his party having cooldowns but otherwise your party will be fighting on their own. Rao has some moves for an old man, I gotta say.

I've brought up bots a lot so I'll get into them now. There are many different bots although there is some overlap between their unique function and those that overlap seem to have one lean more towards combat and the other traversal. If I wasn't doing every side quest as they appeared they would have been gotten in a reasonable flow. The tank is well, a tank. It is slow but has a lot of health, does fantastic damage with its main cannon and will be your bread and butter more than likely though my personal favorite is the Battle Armor and its goofy style punches. Other bots are made to jump high, traverse over unsolid ground, move items or just be a fast traversal bot among other things but can be used in battle with no issues. That doesn't sound like a lot sure but coupled with the overlap, you're coming up close to 20 different bots you can build and upgrade. Yes this does mean this is a game where you're better off engaging in every encounter if you can as not all materials can be found, some must be crafted with what you have on your person (or I guess demon). I am not someone who upgrades anything and everything, only what I use, so I never had an issue with not having materials unless they physically were not obtainable yet at that point in the game. It seems to be the game's way of limiting your power, though it feels like anything that is under your level scales to you (everything in the first Sand Land map was level 18 like I was when I went back for cleanup) while things that were set above stay that way until you out level them (I ran into level 20's when I wanted to go to a previously unexplored map section when I was level 15).

Even with knowing going in that the bots were a large part of the game, I was still surprised with just how much you could do with the upgrading and customization. Each bot has a different amount of parts they can equip and each individual part can be upgraded but using the tank as an example you can change and upgrade the primary and secondary weapons, body, suspension, engine, option (bonus feature, in the tanks case something like extra armor) and then 2 chip slots for bonuses. Each one of these will change the visuals for that part of the tank, not all are unique but there's several different looks you will see. Not only will they change physically, and stats wise, which should be a given, but after a certain point in the game you can customize the paint on your bots and depending on your bot you can have a lot of things to paint as some weapons have multiple color sections you can adjust. There are also several slots for decals with rotation and size options and you can adjust the metallic and glossy finishes on each individual parts. I gave my tank the angry face with sharp teeth look, some Pteranodon emblems and made it black and white. This does cost paint to do each time so its not free, and you can unlock more colors by doing some side quests. I did not see any way to transmog parts so those of you weirdos who put aesthetics above stats will need to either deal with being underpowered, hope you find a stronger version of that part you like or upgrade that part with materials.

This was honestly a type of game that on paper I should not have enjoyed as I am pretty staunch in my stance of "traversal is generally the worst part of large map/open world games". Until the first traversal style bot is build, going around the map was a chore and I recommend not trying to do too much exploring until you get one. Combat while simple is still engaging enough due to the customizable builds of the bots and ability to make them your own with colors and decals, along with out of bot combat being fun as well. The activities could use more variety to them with more worthwhile rewards other than materials 99% of the time but at least fast travel points are plentiful once discovered. The story is by the numbers at every turn and even with enjoying the main cast, it was really Toriyama's art that did the lifting for me which is how I felt after reading the manga. I don't know why this game was giving me such a hard time to track down but I think it was worth the effort. Rest In Peace, Akira Toriyama. I'm glad more of your work is finally getting attention.

Temos aqui um joguinho que veio diretamente pelo nosso querido Akira, e sinceramente guys, foi um game que, no início, fica chato muito rápido. Tenho certeza de que vai ter muita gente que vai dropar dele já no início, pois em 95% do game você está dentro de um tanque, andando pra lá e pra cá, enfrentando os mesmos inimigos, cenários e situações.

Mas, olhando com outros olhos, esse game pode ser muito incrível. Eu sou muito fã de Akira Toriyama e amei todo o conceito visual que está presente aqui no jogo, que foi feito pelo próprio antes de morrer, e realmente é muito gratificante ver uma nova história desenhada no estilo através desse jogo. O design dos personagens, os gráficos e a história são ótimos! Porém, na gameplay, na minha opinião, ele peca demais.

Eu estava muito na dúvida se deveria ou não comprar esse game e, no fim, eu comprei. Para mim, não foi um arrependimento, porém tenho certeza de que para alguns vai ser de se pesar. Eu particularmente estou muito feliz por ter jogado ele. A jogabilidade dele de RPG é diferente dos outros jogos da Bandai, porém ainda puxa muito daquela fórmula de vai e vem dos RPGs mais tradicionais da distribuidora. A história é uma obra-prima absoluta, simples e direta, tornando-a fácil de entender, com algumas reviravoltas, o que me manteve totalmente focado na história e sempre querendo ver o que vem a seguir, e isso, na real, foi o que mais me prendeu no game, mais até mesmo que a própria gameplay. Os gráficos, como dito antes, são lindos. Deste ano, eu acho que foram os melhores que já vi em um jogo de estilo anime, com muitos detalhes, mas na quantidade certa, elevando a arte de Toriyama a outro nível.

Sand Land é um jogo de anime competente e ocasionalmente excelente. Ele é um game que pode ser um pouco fácil demais para jogadores mais hardcore, mas para jogadores mais jovens, parece ser uma ótima introdução ao jogo de mundo aberto, RPG no estilo de anime.

Pontos Positivos:
- História e personagens

Pontos Negativos:
- Gameplay repetitivo
- Mundo aberto vazio
- Jogo fácil demais

Versão utilizada para análise: XBOX

Pacing Land

I caught Sand Land at the 2023 Summer Games Fest, an event I always try to catch in the postmortem of the once monumental E3. Despite being largely indifferent and avoidant of Bandai-Namco's arsenal of seemingly endless anime video games, something about Sand Land caught my eye. In the end it was reminiscing to my youth and those late nights spent watching Toonami when I was supposed to be asleep. Night after night I'd stay up and catch what I could understand about Japanese anime, something I was largely unfamiliar with and unsure about how to follow, but was enthralled nonetheless. There was one anime at the time that seemed to interject itself the most into the zeitgeist of my childhood, and that was Akira Toriyama's magnum opus: Dragonball Z. Despite this game clearly not being Dragonball, I gave that little preamble as a sort of introduction and reasoning as to why I became interested in the game Sand Land. I'd never read the manga, only ever having read maybe three manga in my entire life, but because it felt familiar. Watching gameplay of obviously Akira Toriyama created characters running around and engaging in general buffoonery felt familiar, and thus I was interested.

Now if you've read my reviews and looked at the score, you'll notice that the beginning monologue is almost always followed with a "but" in detraction to how "fun" the game was... and yeah here that is. Though it was nice to experience simple Saturday morning cartoon vibes in a fully voice acted anime game, I actually had to play it. I liked the cast, thought the game had some charming dialogue, loved the character art (re: familiarity with Dragonball,) and liked the general lightheartedness of the story, however the gameplay loop got tired eventually and the game itself was ultimately far too long.

The story revolves around the Prince of Darkness and Company running around on (initially) a quest for water what leads them to astounding secrets, betrayal, and a war against systematic power they could not have predicted. The first arc, taking place over maybe fifteen or so hours of the game's ~twenty-four hour runtime, was pretty fun and well paced. Your crew goes from one area to the next with a decent speed and the scale of enemies and power makes sense... mostly. It's once this first arc is finished and Forest Land becomes involved that things slow down to a shuttering halt and the pacing becomes pretty poor. You engage in many repetitive quests, dungeons, fights (re-used bossfights... yay!) and the ending quest itself lasts about three hours too long.

Gameplay in Sand Land is about 70% tank/vehicle based, which was a pretty nice 180 from the last few games I've played which largely ignore vehicle combat/interaction (minus Rebirth I guess.) The Prince utilizes a growing roster of Bots, Tanks, and Hoverboards that each carry their own use. The Tank is a great all-around damage dealer, the Jump Bot allows you to gain verticality in traversal in fights, the bike gets you from Point A to Point B in a reasonable amount of time, and so on. Sand Land does a pretty good job of allowing you to pick what you want for combat while making traversal a little bit of a gimmick, which is okay. Upkeep of the bots isn't too hard, and I found that levelling and upgrading was a natural progression of materials I was already finding in the world. Outside of the vehicles you engage in a hefty deal of hand-to-hand combat, which leaves a LOT to be desired mechanically, and also sneaking missions... because who doesn't love one button combat sneaking missions??? Playing the game outside of what is advertised and plastered in the marketing was a real snoozefest and adds just about nothing to playing the game.

While it was fun to get a mostly humorous fun adventure out of Sand Land, it was largely a nothing burger and definitely not worth full price. I don't recommend Sand Land.