Why is there no thread on this yet?
It’s basically a nice throwback homage to Zelda and many other retro games, where you can create your own character, and go about the world, where everything is in 3D-Dot/Pixel Style.
Anyways, here’s a video I found where someone went and put the old LoZ Link into the game.
I wish I had a PS3 now…
I’ve seen previews for this and it looks highly intriguing, will pick it up if it comes out in Europe.
So who here isn’t going to make a Link avatar to play through this game?
That’s the best mix of the Zelda Theme I’ve heard yet. I may actually give a damn about SSBB now.
Heh, I saw some vids on it a few days back messing around with the character creator. You could literally play the game as a giant cube (or dice), a ball, or whatever the hell you can come up with within the predefined space. I could imagine trying to play the game as a dot Gundam or a 1-inch wide character…lol
Though I’m sure someone will make the inevitable penis and such.
So Zelda-ish!
Great! Now you’ve got me wanting to go through this game as a Gunball (the Earth Federation’s true secret weapon).
More people need to get this game, imo. I finished it yesterday, a bit over 30 hours after completing most of the sidequests, farming gold to upgrade swords and losing repeatedly at minigames. It is tons of fun! It has ridiculous dialogue, pretty graphics (the depth of field/blurry background is a nice touch) and a very catchy soundtrack. Gameplay is obviously like Zelda Nes/Snes, but with a gigantic sword and a few Dragon Warrior elements thrown in (and probably others I can’t think of right now). It works pretty well and there are plenty of things to do and explore. I haven’t spent time with the character editor yet, but I was satisfied with the choices already available (Blue dragon is the cutest <3).
It is, however, a little bit too old school sometimes (Flame Temple, some events/sidequests disappear if you don’t talk to the right person at the right moment and shakes fist at Dash Circuit minigame) and I wish I had known from the start that the Pierce sword upgrade was the most useful thing ever in dungeons. Still, very niiiice little game, well worth whatever its price tag is (I like gifts :D).
3D dot game heroes is definitely a neat game. More games like these need to be made. Despite the fire temple, the game isn’t very hard.
It’s very basic but hugely enjoyable, and as a parody with the little Easter Eggs is frickin’ hilarious in places. Well worth splashing out for. 
It’s pretty fun, I played it for about 4-5 hours, nothing groundbreaking in gameplay but a pleasant Zelda homage/clone/whatever.
Not sure I’ll go and design my own hero next, I might.
Screw FXIII. It’s games like this (and VC) that makes me wish I had a PS3. 
More people need to buy 3DDGH. This is the best Zelda game since LTTP.
Just finished it earlier tonight…I clandestinely played the game while my roommate who owns the game is at E3, haha. Here’s my review.
3D Dot Game Heroes is a pointless game. Seriously. I wouldn’t say that about just any game; even some of the worst games I’ve ever played nobly attempted something new or tried to improve upon a gameplay mechanic we’ve seen before, even if they ultimately failed. Those games, no matter how awful I find them to be, have earned my respect in that regard. On the other hand, we have games like 3D Dot Game Heroes, which try absolutely nothing new or interesting. In fact, this game takes it a step further by being up front about it.
So, just how pointless is the game? Let’s count the ways:
Aesthetically, this game goes for an art style that sort of looks like a 2D game forced into three dimensions. It’s cute, but it’s a gimmick which ultimately fails, mainly because it looks so damned ugly. The game also does little to take advantage of its unique design; the Paper Mario series, by contrast, took advantage of the paper-thin characters to do things that were interesting, amusing, and even amazing. All 3D DGH has to show for it are a few people that say “Oh man, things are different now that we live in 3D.” About the closest thing this game does to ‘taking advantage of the art style’ is its character creation mode. Players can choose a few different colors they want to use, and start making a character with little 3D blocks. Players can craft every part of the character’s animation, which is kind of neat. It doesn’t really make the game much more fun, though.
Otherwise, there’s also this obnoxious effect where the camera blurs on certain parts of the screen if your character is far away. I’m not sure what compelled them to do this, but all it did for me was induce a major headache. Thankfully, there’s the option to change the camera view from close up to bird’s eye view. I did that at the first opportunity and never looked back. The music and sound also borrow heavily from Zelda and the early Dragon Warrior games; everything from the world map theme to the sound effect when casting spells is a nod to those older games.
As far as the gameplay goes, it’s a bigtime ripoff of the Zelda series. …Okay, so I should probably call it a ‘loving satire’, but this game is deathly afraid to try anything original. To me, it seemed more like ‘an excuse to make a Zelda game.’ Players control a character which they choose at the start, either from a bunch of premade characters or their own custom character. They then run around on a map, killing monsters with swords, boomerangs, bombs, and magic spells.
I’d like to say at this point that the player uses all of his cool tools and magic to solve a variety of interesting puzzles, as he navigates the labyrinthine temples in search for the Magic Orbs he needs to vanquish the ultimate evil. Of course, if I did, I’d be lying; particularly, at the part where I said “a variety of interesting puzzles.” What was truly fun about the old Zelda games was exploration; it was exciting to go visit new places, and see different caves, lakes, castles, etc. that we can’t reach at first. But maybe later, after we got a Hookshot and a Power Glove, we could go see what was beyond our reach for so long.
No such luck. Any time our hero gets a new item, it’s pretty much just to let him navigate farther into the next dungeon while simultaneously allowing him to go where he needs to go to find the next Magic Orb. The actual items we get are pretty scarce, and very rarely do we wind up using them to find new exciting places off the beaten path. Instead, when players arrive at a new part of the world, they’re asked to do lots of fetch quests. Even worse, there are quite a few optional side quests - big and small - which are time-sensitive. When were these ever an exciting part of the Zelda experience?
Otherwise, combat is functional, but extremely obnoxious. Just like in other Zelda games, when the hero has full life, he’s able to do cool, special things with his sword. Perhaps the coolest thing about 3D DGH is that there’s a variety of swords, which can be upgraded in a variety of ways. We can pay money to make the sword hit harder, give it the ability to Spin Slash, shoot Beams out of the tip, or even Pierce through walls. We can also upgrade the length and width of the sword, to absurd proportions. Here’s the problem, though; all of those upgrades only take effect when your hero has full life.
Thus, the gameplay shifts from two different phases. It’s either absurdly boring, because we have full life and our sword kills everything in one hit, goes through walls, and can go all the way across any room; or, it’s equally frustrating, cos once you get hit, your sword is really weak, gets stuck on every single wall, and just isn’t long enough to fight bosses safely. Here’s another random thing that’s obnoxious; in every room of a dungeon, the enemies are randomly placed. Combine this with the fact that our hero can’t attack or cast any magic when he’s in a doorway, and this makes dungeons doubly annoying. If the enemies are all placed in front of the door, we can’t walk in to attack or they’ll bum rush us (and if we take even one hit, the game gets that much harder), and we can’t attack from the doorway, because…well, we literally CAN’T. What gives?
Lastly, the dialogue (I’d say the narrative, but 3D DGH ‘lovingly satirizes’ the early Zelda and Dragon Warrior games, which are pretty threadbare in that aspect to begin with). Most of it is very stock dialogue, but you’ll run into a ton of nods to older games. Most of them refer to the old Dragon Warrior and Zelda games, but there are some nods to older Final Fantasies and even Mega Man. I never got the point of doing this. In my review of Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, I said that it’s not funny to simply copy a line from an old game into a new game, and 3D DGH does this pretty much all the time. If the game made fun of some of the things we saw in earlier games, that would be one thing, but simply saying “Don’t get knocked down at Lake Garland, hahaha” is an entirely different, not-funny thing.
These elements come together to make 3D Dot Game Heroes, a game which does absolutely nothing in a way you haven’t seen done in a more fun, interesting, new, or unique way. Hell, it doesn’t even do the best job of ripping off a bunch of old gameplay ideas, either. While it’s not a chore to play (and admittedly more fun than I’m making it out to be), it’s one of the first times I’ve played a game in a long time where I really wish I could get that time back. If I had to describe it to a Zelda fan, I’d tell them to imagine if Zelda 2 wound up being a bird’s-eye-view Adventure game; it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the original’s ‘bomb random trees to find a dungeon’ gameplay, but it’s far more unrefined and unsophisticated than the entries which followed.
I’d like to see you review the Zelda games because I don’t understand how people can say Zelda is any different for its complete lack of innovation (or utter aggravation when it does).
Probably because the earlier Zelda games (the ones I was referring to) were at the forefront of innovation back in their time. I dunno, it’s like…why make a game that mimicks the style of the old Zelda games if you’re not going to try and do it better?
You mean like all the new Zelda games are doing?
Sure, I stopped playing Zelda games after Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker were way too boring for me. In any case, I wasn’t really referring to the newer ones, anyways; 3D DGH clearly aspires to be like the older ones.
My point is that people (like yourself) will bitch that 3ddgh is not innovative enough while glorifying the Zelda series without acknowledging a) that Zelda only has its brand name to rely on since it has 0 innovation and b) that there has barely been anything like the old school LTTP style zeldas, ever.
I loved the graphical style and the gameplay was fun without being irritating, fire temple aside. Their game over mechanic was pleasant in how it didn’t fuck you , old school style. The game can take 20 + hours if you try to get extra goodies and the game cost only 40$ new. Its a better deal than a lot of the shit we’ve been fed by a lot of companies.
