Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below feels like a Dragon Quest game trying to be a Dynasty Warriors title. The result is a Dynasty Warriors spin-off that's quite unlike any other on the market. Some things may upset DW purists, but it's one of the most accessible and playable games in the DW series history.

Dragon Quest Heroes opens in the land of Alba, which is a charming kingdom where humans and monsters live in peace. This lasts until a cloud of darkness sweeps over the land and drives the monsters into an uncontrollable rampage. The king, along with his guards Luceus and Aurora, set out to find the source of the darkness and save the land. Along the way, they encounter visitors from other worlds, all of whom have come to their land to find the source of the evil that also threatens their worlds. Together, the unlikely band of heroes must defend the World Tree Yggdrasil before it succumbs to the terrifying darkness.

Dragon Quest Heroes is a lighthearted JRPG with a plot that's dominated by cheerful characters who are fighting a straightforward evil. The writing is charming and enjoyable, due in no small part of the quality localization that gives each character loads of personality. The variety of accents in the translation of the DS games is accurately represented here. Of course, as with all Dragon Quest titles, there are hilarious puns aplenty in the names of attacks, enemies and locations.

On the surface, the core controls feel very similar to anyone who's familiar with the DW franchise, although a Simple mode is also available. You have four characters available at once, and all members of your party fight together instead of splitting up and going to different locations. Three of the characters are AI-controlled while the fourth is player-controlled, and you can swap the active character to take advantage of their strengths to take on swarms of enemies. The game isn't over when you lose a character, but they remain knocked out unless you use an Yggdrasil Leaf.

One of the biggest changes to the DW formula is the removal of the series' traditional musou/special attacks. Every character has up to four magic spells available, with three attack spells and one utility spell. The attack spells can range from powerful single-target attacks to huge area-of-effect spells, and utility spells can include damage, buffs, debuffs, healing and teleportation. Most of the spells don't have long periods of invulnerability, and instead of using a special meter, they use an RPG-style MP system. Every attack requires MP to use, and you can spam attacks for as long as you have MP, which replenishes as you perform regular attacks.

It's an interesting twist because it changes how you approach combat. Rather than saving your special attack to clear out large waves of enemies, you're now constantly swapping between abilities and characters. It helps that elemental strengths and weaknesses are also at play, so lightning attacks are very strong against mechanical enemies. Learning how to capitalize on the abilities is key to succeeding in combat.

In addition to regular attacks and magic spells, every character also has access to a High Tension mode, which is similar to the powered-up modes in recent DW titles. You fill it up by utilizing larger combos, and once you hit the max, you can press a button to send your character into a temporary super mode in which they're invincible, deal more damage, and have infinite MP. By waiting for the super mode to run out, you activate a coup-de-grace attack, which is similar to musou attacks in that it's very powerful, has a cool cinematic and clears the field of enemies.

The level and stage structure of Dragon Quest Heroes is also hugely different from DW titles. The game is basically structured as if you're going on an epic adventure, so you go through a linear plot that contains stages that can't be revisited or replayed. There are no towns to explore, and everything that doesn't involve combat is done on your airship, which serves as a floating town. You can access weapon ships, a church and crafting right from the comfort of your floating home, and there are side-quests, which can unlock costumes or equipment.

Gone are base capture and base defenses, and instead, stages tend to be structured in one of three ways: clear all enemies from a stage, protect a specific object, or defeat a boss monster. Levels are small but tend to have more features. Many stages involve Nightmaws, which are portals that constantly regurgitate a stream of enemies. Nightmaws tend to go hand-in-hand with stages where you must defend a specific object, so it's about balancing expeditions to kill the Nightmaws while keeping your defense object safe.

This is made more complex by the fact that enemies in Dragon Quest Heroes are more significant than the usual DW fodder. Each enemy type is based on a classic Dragon Quest enemy and has strengths and weaknesses. For example, Restless Armors have a shield that blocks any attack from the front, and Zombies can inflict poison if they hit you. The AI isn't aggressive, but the mixing and matching of enemies, combined with their wide variety of effects, makes them more dangerous than the usual trash mobs. In addition, mid-boss enemies such as Golem, Hunter-Killer Robot and King Slime are pretty powerful and must be stopped as quickly as possible.

Defeating a foe can cause them to drop a Monster Medal, which allows you to summon the monster to fight for you. Some monsters can only be summoned for a single attack, but others remain and guard the location, so you can create a bulwark against oncoming enemy swarms.

The Monster Medal system is fun but a little frustrating. Beyond the semi-random nature of what you get, the AI on friendly monsters isn't great, so you can't trust them to competently guard a location. They often ignore enemies pounding on the door they're supposed to protect and attack a completely different set of foes.

Boss battles are much more like a traditional JRPG boss fights. Some enemies have weak points you can target, while others can only be defeated in certain ways. They're less gimmicky than similar boss battles in Hyrule Warriors and feel more like traditional boss fights. Some of them can get a little grindy, especially later in the game, but they're generally good additions.

You have traditional RPG leveling, where you get stronger as you gain experience. You can also buy weapons and orbs (armor) from the shop. Customization occurs in two ways: accessories and skill points. Accessories are specialized items you can equip to grant a passive buff, and they can also be created at the local alchemist. The alchemy mechanic tends to get left by the wayside until near the end of the game because rare materials are difficult to find.

You get a certain number of skill points every time you level up and can invest them to learn new attacks, new spells, or to boost your stats. There are a small number of stats, and most involve powering up attacks or spells. You can re-spec at any time, but it costs a lot of money, so you're encouraged to save it for special occasions.

Despite the limited customization, there is great character variety in Dragon Quest Heroes, so I didn't miss the larger casts of typical DW games. The two protagonists are almost identical — although one is a fire elemental and one is ice — but the other characters feel a lot more distinctive. Alena is all about melee attacks, so she performs heavy punch combos, has a brutal charge-up Knuckle Sandwich attack, and can split into three to do more damage. On the other hand, Bianca is a long-range bow fighter who can charge attacks and lock on to foes for screen-clearing attacks. Each character is fun to play and contributes well to a party. Much like a true JRPG, adding some healing or buffing to your party goes a long way.

Dragon Quest Heroes suffers from being intentionally archaic. Many of the game design decisions mimic the style of the classic Dragon Quest games, which is nice from a thematic perspective but annoying from a gameplay perspective. For example, your ingredient bag can only hold a limited number of items. Since you need a variety of items for quests and alchemy, this gets annoying very quickly. It makes sense to capture the feel of Dragon Quest, but I'd rather have a more user-friendly interface and less tedium. The shop interface is also designed to mimic Dragon Quest, which means a lot of unskippable text, especially if you're selling a lot of items. One frustrating quirk is that the button to speed up text is the same as the cancel button, so it's surprisingly easy to cancel a transaction when you're just trying to get through the text quickly.

Dragon Quest Heroes is a fantastic-looking game. The character models are bright, stylish and vividly animated. The cut scenes are mostly high-quality and feature a lot of adorable details. The voice acting is mostly excellent, with accents and voice acting that helps to provide a charming and comical tone. There are a few weak points here and there, but they're mostly shored up by the rest of the strong performances. This is one of the highest quality DW-style games on the market, eclipsing even Hyrule Warriors in terms of visuals and voice work.

Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below is one of the more creative and varied Dynasty Warriors spin-offs on the market. It varies the style and gameplay enough that it feels different from the other titles. It's held back by some archaic gameplay design and the occasionally annoying AI, but it's mostly a delightfully fun experience. Fans of Dragon Quest and/or Dynasty Warriors should find it to be an enjoyable fusion of the two styles, and even newcomers will find it easy to pick up and play. This has been a good year for Warriors-style games, but Dragon Quest Heroes is the best of the lot.

Score: 9.0/10