"Too Punny for its own Good."

7 - Graphics
7 - Sound
6 - Gameplay
7 - Replay Value
8 - Humour
6 - Tilt

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is the sequel to the Japan-only release of "Slime Morimori Dragon Quest: Shougeki No Shippo Dan". It shares the same music, the same characters, the same gameplay, the same interface, the same everything; so essentially what we have here is the next episode in the continuing adventures of this familiar little blue slime ball.

Much unlike the main Dragon Quest (DQ) series, which are stat-reliant turn-based RPGs, Rocket Slime (RS) is a spin-off at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, providing pure action-based gameplay without a single statistic in sight. Now I was irked somewhat by the strictness of the DQ games, but RS is way too simple for its own good, primarily due to its inherent GBA origins.

Sliming the world one stretch at a time
The controls are simple and effective; it is easy to move your slime around the world with the Zelda-esque scheme. Your main weapon is yourself, and through the use of your patented "Elasto Blast" you can breeze through all enemies, all obstacles, and disappointingly all bosses too. The game is much too easy and is clearly aimed at the younger audience. For the most part you are just wandering around some nicely animated backgrounds, collecting all enemies and items in sight, making your way aimlessly around the area until you reach a boss, or one of the many tank fights. With the former it is sad to see only 5 of them throughout the entire game, and none are remotely challenging especially given your high life meter resulting in most of them being easily beat by haphazard rebounding.

Like a shadow I have infiltrated the enemy tank
The tank battles are interesting and strategic (especially in real-life multiplay), but it does wear thin. You play as your slime with a handful of chosen teammates to aid you. Basically the point is to destroy the oppositions tank by throwing all sorts of ammo (gathered and synthesised in the main game) into your 2 cannons. Once their HP is reduced to 0 you then have to infiltrate their tank and destroy the core within. A simple premise, but it can get very hectic with early sabotages, ammo stealing, etc. It is nice that you are afforded some control over what your teammates' priorities are, but it really could have done with a bigger crew, more abilities, and more ways of destruction. There is a large selection of tanks, but it is mainly cosmetic differences.

Wandering Aimlessly
RS is not a very long game, it is doable in under 10 hours of play, including rescuing all 100 slimes. But of those 10 hours, apart the the INSANE use of puns throughout the entire dialogue (Chrono Twigger, Roboglop, Harvest Loon, Wee!), there really is nothing interesting going on. You enter a new area, rescue some slimes, collect-collect-collect stuff, fight a tank battle, fight a boss. The story is practically non-existent, as are any scenarios, and so at times there is no drive to keep things going.

For those who do like collecting lots of useless stuff in hopes of synthesising less-useless stuff, there is a lot for you here. The game is artificially long: as I have already mentioned, you are looking at a sub-10-hour quest here, but there is a tank-battle tournament which can last for a good while. In addition to that, obtaining new monster teammates requires you to capture 30 of the corresponding monster type - a chore to be sure.

The slime: a lower class creature
Spin-offs can be a great thing for franchises which are starting to lose their appeal. With the release of DQ8 there is no doubt that a surge of revival has been brought about. Square-Enix seemed to have taken good note that some people just don't like stat-heavy adventures. But with RS, I wish there were more interesting things to do, worthwhile unlockables, and more complexity to pretty much everything. It has awesome presentation values, addictive (GBA+) music and a nice artistic style courtesy of the revered Akira Toriyama, but the premise is just way too dumbed down for my own tastes. As it stands, RS can be a good laugh, but generic blue slime falls flat one too many times.

6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/06