Dragon Quest Heroes II review: Beautiful but repetitive hack and slasher

£35.00 - PS4 (reviewed) - Square Enix

Dragon Quest Heroes II once again combines the high-octane action of Dynasty Warriors with the immersive and beautiful universe of SquareEnix's Dragon Quest. However, whereas Dynasty Warriors has players fight through battlefields of enemies, Heroes borrows more RPG elements, a welcome change to the tried and tested formula.

Instead of slaughtering entire populations, you make your way through various levels of picturesque greenery, featuring all the cutesy enemies from the Dragon Quest series. These are interlocked with some mundane gathering quests, making the game feel like another standalone Dragon Quest title.

You assume the role of either Lazarel or Teresa, cousins who are swept up in a burgeoning conflict. As you progress, a large cast of characters that you can interchange becomes playable, each of whom grows individually. Further, you can swap between your party of four during battle, leading to some more tactical gameplay.

While the first few hours are fun, after a while the game starts relying far too much on the novelty of nostalgia; you get hit with just how repetitive the gameplay is and begin to feel the diminishing returns. Heroes tries to account for with the admittedly great RPG elements - for example, learning skills and upping your weapon proficiency - but it's not enough.

Another problem is the graphical glitches. For instance, during cutscenes your character has scabbard on their hip; in-game, your sword (or swords) magically float beside you. There's also a lack of split-screen mode, something that made Dynasty Warriors so fun and a dearly missed feature.

Dragon Quest Heroes II may have a beautiful world and fantastic characters, being so entirely repetitive is a huge problem that the game never overcomes. It doesn’t matter what the setting is, there’s only so many times you can defeat a cute blue slime until you notice you’re just beating palette swapped enemies.