"A new JRPG developed by a dream team."

Sands of Destruction is a JRPG that has been very high on my watch list for awhile now. The reason for this is the people involved with the game. My personal favorite composer, Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Xenogears), is responsible for the soundtrack, Masato Kato (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears) is the game’s scenario writer, and Kunihiko Tanaka (Xenogears) is the character designer. Each of these people have several renowned JRPGs already under their belt, so it’s needless to say that the game is created by a dream team.

Unfortunately, a short demo in a crowded and noisy room is a terrible way to experience an RPG. To make matters worse, I only had a single party member when I jumped into the demo which appeared to be close to the beginning of the game. In spite of this, I gathered what info I could in my short time with it.

My first reaction to this game was how much it reminded me of a ps1-era RPG, both in aesthetic and other areas. I say this not as a complaint, but with fondness, as it felt like an homage to one of the best eras for the genre.

Sadly, the DS speakers couldn’t compete with all the noise around me, causing me to miss out on the game’s sound. The graphics were a mix of styles. All of the characters (including enemies) were 2D sprites while all the environments were in 3D. This was a good choice since other DS RPGs, such as the Final Fantasy remakes, have had a lot of trouble successfully conveying the art direction with the low-poly character models the hardware forces them to use. The only minor aesthetic complaint I had with the game was that the menus, while entirely functional, didn’t seem particularly attractive.

When traveling through dungeons, you will have random encounters resulting in good ‘ol fashioned, turn-based battles. After getting into a battle, you will see the turn order displayed on screen, much like it was in Final Fantasy X.

Rather than using your cursor to scroll through options, each action is assigned to a different button. Interestingly, both the “X” and “Y” buttons were assigned to different physical attacks. To further mix things up, those two attacks will change depending on whether you’re attacking an enemy on the ground (bottom screen) or in the air (top screen). This means that characters actually have four standard physical attacks that can be executed.

The rest of the battle options seemed pretty normal. You can use items and perform special skills. Skills are divided into two groups. Blood skills are offensive and Life skills are support. I only had one of each in the demo. My blood skill allowed me to do an extra powerful attack while my life skill restored a portion of my HP.

It’s hard to judge an RPG on the show floor. I can’t help but feel that I missed out on some of the game’s features from jumping into the middle of the demo with no tutorials. Even still, what I played definitely seemed interesting. If you like classic JRPGs from the SNES or PS1 eras, Sands of Destruction looks to be a game worth having on your radar.

Tags: DS, hands-on impressions, Imageepoch, JRPG, PAX '09, PAX 2009 COVERAGE, rpg, Sands of Destruction, Sega, World Destruction

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 1:42 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.