 Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime for the Nintendo DS. It's a game many people tell me they like a lot. It came out the year after I discovered Dragon Quest 8 on the PlayStation 2. This is the second DQ I played. Me and my siblings originally discovered it and went through the campaign together. DQ Heroes Rocket Slime is a modern masterpiece and I mean that wholeheartedly. This game is the greatest game known to man. I never knew a good game until I played this masterful masterpiece. It is a spin off of the Dragon Quest series. Only this time it's not a turn based RPG. Rocket Slime is an action of intro game in what you play as a slime with the default name Rocket. Although you have the option of changing his name. Now Rocket may look cute and bouncy but really he's the biggest asshole in the game and we'll talk about that soon. I see a lot of people call this a Zelda style game and I can understand comparisons. However Rocket Slime is so unique with its core gameplay mechanics that I don't really know what to compare it to. It is one of those games where there is nothing out there like it and what an experience it is. A little background before we really get into why I think this game is a modern masterpiece. The game that we got Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime is actually the second game in the Slime Mori Mori series for Nintendo handhelds. The original game was on Game Boy Advance and has nearly the same plot. The DS version takes all of the same characters and almost reboots the game with updated mechanics. So I don't actually see a lot of reason to play the first game in the series. It also has a third game for the 3DS that we never got officially but was translated by a group of fans. Regardless it's this game Rocket Slime which is the strongest entry in the series. The game was originally thought up by series creator Yuji Horii and Dragon Quest 8 producer Yoshiki Watabe when they discussed making a spin-off for children starring the slime. Playing the game it's clearly a game for kids but it's still a gem of a game. The usual dark themes found in the Dragon Quest series are noticeably absent and the game is consistently humorous and light-hearted. Despite being for kids that's not to say that the game is easy and we'll talk about that in a second as well. DQ Heroes Rocket Slime takes place in the Kingdom of Slime Mania a place without any human adventurers where monsters roam the land and have societies. Here we find our hero Rocket and his three friends Uli, Swatzi and his sister Bo in the capital of Boingburg. Uli is the troublemaker of the group and he brings his friends the warrior flute that he snatched from the king, his royal wobbliness. Suddenly out of nowhere the town is attacked by a huge group of platypunks known as the Plob who are after the warriors flute. Unfortunately for them Rocket sort of ate it to hide the flute from his father Big Daddy a very moustachioed warrior slime who seems to have left his caps lock on. Big Daddy also looks suspiciously like a certain DQ hero from a previous game. Big Daddy tries his best to fight off the Plob but they bring out their secret weapon a massive monster tank appears and overwhelms the city destroying many of the buildings with iron spike balls and kidnapping all 100 citizens of Boingburg. The only person who got away is Rocket. So this game is different than its predecessor because it introduces these monster tanks that look more like giant robot battle fortresses than tanks to be honest. It's a first for the series to break tradition like this and introduce futuristic technology like this and it works amazingly and it's here where a good idea was vastly proved upon and changed by its sequel. The original slime Mori Mori was a decent action adventure game where you can roam the maps and use your slimes abilities and Rocket slime has the same gameplay mechanics minus the monster tanks. Really there's one button for everything. The combat is simple but has a layer of complexity to it. Rocket can bounce around the map jump float like a parachute pull and stretch and if you hold it long enough send them flying in a move called an elasto blast. The longer you hold them the faster he'll elasto blast and you can use this great ability for good or you can beat up your friends like a real champ. Look at that smug expression. The main objective of this game is to rescue all 100 kidnapped slimes across the land who are trapped in chest by the Plob before the lack of oxygen kills them. For some reason the King thinks this is a suitable task for a child to do and Rocket can additionally carry three different things on top of himself at a time and throw them. You can carry items, slimes and even enemies which you can send back to Boingberg on these little railroad carts that appear all over the place. Or you could throw them at enemies it's up to you. Already there's a lot to take in and this game is quite unlike anything I've ever seen before. You can send back items and materials for use later and enemies you send back will become citizens of Boingberg. The slimes you rescue in the game all have completely unique appearances, distinct personalities and gradually populate the empty town as you save them. You go from there being no one to eventually having slimes occupy various areas, open different shops and services and overall the town gradually becomes alive again full of different characters all over. The characters are all so unique there's slimes that know you, slimes that want to bang you, there's a slime that wants to bang the slime none who saves your progress, there's a slime that likes reading books, it's a fat princess slime who keeps stuffing her face and her name is Princess Glattonella. You can interact with these characters and and you can be an asshole and hit each and every one of them if you want and it'll have something to say to you. You can even assault the king. Amazing. There's so much personality crammed into this game I can't even begin to scratch the surface about charming and funny the dialogue is all the puns and all of the references to other Square Enix games. I mean there are a lot of references to Square Enix games. There's a librarian dude named the Crystal Chronicler. When cacti balls get squashed they look like the cactus enemies from Final Fantasy. There's a tank called Chrono Twigger. They went so all out in referencing other games. There's definitely something I haven't seen yet. There's so much to do in collecting this game. It goes way beyond what I expect from a kids game and we haven't even gotten to the main event yet. The one thing that makes Rocket Slimes special and truly sets it apart from any game I've ever played. The monster tank battles. Rocket eventually makes his way to the Tomb of Toot and Slime Man. With a plob we're trying to excavate some sort of treasure. Here he meets a member of the plob who gets trapped under a pile of sand. Of course we're a nice guy so we decided to help him out and as thanks he introduced himself to us as Dr. Sid. The best planted punk mechanic there is. That's another Final Fantasy reference. He even goes ahead and repairs the warrior flute that got broken during the plob's assault on the city. Now that we have the flute we blow a tune on it which some of the Slime Man tank. A giant robot that looks like a giant smiling blob of goo. And because he helped us Sid gets fired from the plob that we seem to get over pretty quickly and even reveals his thick German accent. Bringing him back to Boingburg he quickly sets up a mechanic shop where he helps manage your tanks crew and ammunition. With the Slime Man tank on our side there's finally a way to fight against the plob's tanks. Now monster tank battles are the most amazing feature in this game. They're called tanks but really they're just giant robot fortresses. The way tank battles work is you find an enemy to challenge in various levels and blow in the warrior flute to summon your tank. The tanks stand apart from each other and your battle begins. Each tank has two floors and a bunch of ammo dispensers scattered across the tank. Now you may be wondering where you get all this ammo. Well remember how I said you can send anything back to Boingburg on those carts? Well everything that goes back goes into your stock pile and you can have Sid load it all up as ammo. You can launch literally any item into the cannon. Chests, rock bombs, swords, even your own teammates. I mean you can be a real jerk to your own allies in this game. You can hit them and accidentally kill them if you aren't careful. You can even launch yourself into the cannon and board the enemy's tank or block a projectile with your own body. And while you and the enemy are firing ammo rapidly the items you launch are constantly clashing in the air and you can monitor the entire thing on the top screen of the DS. Essentially the DSS2 screens are what makes the tank battles possible and there's so much going on at a time during tank battles. You have your own team made up of various slimes you rescued and they all have different commands they can execute. Eventually when you send back 30 of any monster back to Boingburg a statue will be made of them and they'll choose to fight with you opening up tons of possibilities for crew members. In the early half of the game though you're going to want to stick with Huli, Swazian, Baron, Blubba. These guys will consistently launch as much as possible into the cannons while Huli can launch himself at a tank like an idiot or infiltrate their defenses. So while things are being shot into the air you can be an asshole to the enemies, infiltrate their defenses and beat the shit out of them to prevent them from firing. You can even steal their high level ammunition, take it back to your own tank and launch it at them. The game rewards being an asshole actually. As the game progresses the enemy tanks get stronger and stronger to the point that unless you really have an upgraded tank with crazy good ammunition you can easily lose a tank battles in seconds. I found myself being an asshole to their team almost every time I play the game and the game just lets you do that. The possibilities are really so limitless which is why I think the tank battles in Rocket Slime make this game a modern masterpiece and the best game in the slime series. After bringing your enemy tanks health down to zero it's time to storm into their tank and destroy the heart which is now exposed winning you the battle. This does not get old. I never got tired of smashing through a tanks defenses to deal the finishing blow. It's honestly addicting doing these fights. The tank battles pop up all over the place so it's never a boring time because of how dynamic and different the battles can get based on your strategy and equipment. And I told you these tank battles get very difficult later on. The enemies are throwing lots of ammunition at you and you constantly have to be moving. It's a kids game sure but it's not easy. They accidentally created the perfect battle simulation for more experienced players. So the game has the exploration part in which you're basically trying to make your tank stronger and progress through the story and the tank battles in which you apply everything you've collected to the test. The two parts of the game complement each other so well. The exploration has fun combat and puzzles as well as loads of collectibles and boss fights. Eventually you unlock the alchemy pot from Dragon Quest VIII in a tomb that has a lot of carvings of King Trode. With alchemy the game's mechanics expand even more as slimes you save give you recipes for stronger ammo that does more damage against enemy tanks. Encouraging players to explore and bring as much loot back to Boingburg as possible. Nothing feels useless in the game. There's a reward for literally everything you do and it shows. SIDS assistants bring another element into the game where the slime board can upgrade your health to keep up with stronger and stronger tanks you encounter and is even a multiplayer option to have tank battles against your friends who own Rocket Slime and try to destroy their tanks they've spent so much time building up. The various ways you could go about tank battles makes it such an ideal multiplayer experience. They can honestly make a whole new game nowadays with the same tank mechanics and give it an online mode and it would be a huge hit if you ask me. It's absolutely insane how deep the game can be and how much replayability there is. Rocket Slime is by far the most unique and ambitious deck you spin off. Along the journey stakes get high and you run into a slime gone rogue named Slival who is working for the plob. He's a tough one and determined to defeat and he fights you in his tank alone which is where once again the game rewards you for being an asshole so I would go into his tank smash through the barrier with Hooli and start bullying the crap out of Slival while swatting full of fire at his tank. You can destroy the enemy's tank ammo dispensers which causes fires to show up and overall there's a lot of playing dirty in this game and I really like it a lot because as these tank battles get harder the enemy start throwing stronger and stronger ammo at you. You kind of have to break the rules a little bit to survive. The adventure consists of saving slimes, traversing fun puzzles and finding all the little Easter eggs is never a dull one. You get stronger, find seeds of life to increase health. Obviously you're collecting items along the way to either use his ammo or alchemy and you're saving as many slimes as possible in order to unlock new areas of the town to explore. You're also trying to collect 30 of each monster and some monsters are hard to find are only show up at night time. The game overall is great because it just gets right to the point. No tutorials or long cutscenes the game knows that you're a bouncy blue blob who just wants to go around hit people and figure out things for yourself and the game does a great job of letting players figure out how to play it by experimenting rather than telling you exactly what to do. Sprite work in the game is rich and expressive compared to other games on the DS at the time and the game is just full of secrets to find and a fun story to explore. That's not to mention that when you finish the campaign it involves a very epic finale. The Plobfather has a princess of Boingberg captive and she accidentally unleashes a great evil that takes over the Plobfather Don Clalione who is beyond everything. With the dark one awakened and the world being threatened Rock and the Slival decide to put their rivalry on hold and team up to defeat him. This gives us an epic scene where Rock and the Slival combine their two tanks into one big bad-ass super tank for a huge epic battle in the sky. The final boss isn't easy at all. It's actually extremely difficult and it really relies on you and Slival working together as a team and also being an asshole to the opponent as always. I had to really get go into the enemy tank and fight him off while Slival chipped away at his health. It felt like a real battle. When the Plobfather is defeated and brought back to normal we find out that he only wanted to get the flute in the first place to give to some woman. That's a pretty good excuse for kidnapping an entire city of people and with that really the day is saved for now. However the game is still not over. I know right? There's a rather beefy post game. You can unlock a powerful hero sword by saving every single slime in town and there's even a slime you save named Mori Mori who looks an awful lot like Mori from Dragon Quest 8 complete coincidence I'm sure. Basically he introduces you to an arena mode which lets you tank battle your way to the top against enemy tanks. These battles step up the difficulty in our great incentive to continue developing and collecting better ammo. Eventually when we get to the end of the line we find a true master of tanks and it is none other than Huli. What? So he's got his own tank too huh? Let just say Huli is a tough tank battler. He's got a beefy tank with tons of health some of the strongest ammo in the game and neither of you have teams so my usual tactic of being an asshole to the enemy just won't work here. You can't just go into his tank and fight him while your team launch the ammo because you don't have a team anymore and this is where you really realize just how shitty your own tank is compared to his as the battle can end up resulting in some very creative ways to win. I launched Huli at my own tank and fought him there. He stole some of my high-power ammo and ran back to his tank and this guy's fast as hell. He's truly the toughest boss in the game if you ask me and when you beat him it's so satisfying because of how impossible it was and how dirty he had to play. Screw you Huli. DQ rocket slime accidentally created one of the best real-time action battleship simulators and as a result I'd call it a masterpiece. It's amazing that spin-off that was made for kids could have so much depth when you look into it. It just shows how much care the DQ team put into all the products not just the mainline series. I hope you guys enjoyed his look back at a classic game and I'll see you next time.