Sand Land Review

I’ll readily admit that Sand Land‘s demo left me with conflicted thoughts. While the demo, performance problems aside, gave a good indication of the game’s open-world setup, traversal and combat, it did so without context, leaving the demo feeling like a checklist of the tedious bits of open-world games. What I was doing and why makes all the difference in an open world, semi-RPG. And the context behind creating all of these sand dunes in a tank is absolutely king.

It also makes all the difference between the Sand Land’s demo and the final game. While the action RPG side of things takes the bulk of your cake playtime, it’s the story that gives the game its copious amount of heart.

Based on the late Akira Toriyama’s twelve-chapter manga of the same name, Sand Land throws you into the precocious and playfully naughty shoes of Beelzebub, son of Lucifer and the Fiend Prince extraordinaire whose only inclination is to commit fiendish acts such as stealing comics and playing video games all day long.

Thanks to humanities continued spiral down a self-serving symphony of destruction, the inhabitants of Sand Land are plagued by a drought and water sells for a premium. When Sheriff Rao approaches the demons for help to find a Legendary Spring to save everyone, Beelzebub, Thief and Ann join him for an epic journey that will reveal long-buried conspiracies, provoke a war and open wounds that time has yet to heal.

It goes without saying that the best parts of Sand Land are its story and characters. In traditional Toriyama fashion, the story mixes humour, heart, tragedy and a timely environmental message into its themes without coming across as too preachy or too heavy-handed. While Beelzebub makes for a fun and likeable lead, it’s Rao who does most of the show-stealing as a man trying to come to grips with a dark past. The Bulk of the Game’s characters have suffered some misfortune or other, whether it’s the drought destroying their livelihood or a second-arc tyrant using hate and intolerance as an excuse for war.

No matter the darkness on display, Sand Land’s story is incredibly fun and, yes, hopeful. But mostly, it’s just fun and helps to alleviate some of Sand Land’s shortcomings. The open-world design and scattered resources and collectables take second fiddle to the game’s campaign, so much so that, had this aspect of the game been stripped down, it would have no negative impact on Sand Land at all.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is open-world exploration and lots and lots of combat. Thankfully Sand Land isn’t as littered with open world guff. While there are resources to collect, chests containing parts to find and enemies to smack around, it’s all stripped back considerably compared to most open-world games. In fact, apart from visiting areas on the map to open up the game’s many fast travel points, you could get through most of Sand Land without ever visiting the other optional locations.

It certainly doesn’t hurt either that the game’s fast travel points are very generous and, unless you need to hit a checkpoint for a story bit, can be used at just about any time and anywhere in the game. It helps to cut down on the journeying from point A to B when all you want to do is complete a side quest or continue the story.

Combat is the game’s second saving grace. While you can run around as Beelzebub pummelling enemies with your fists and special moves, it’s the game’s vehicle combat that truly shines. A variety of Toriyama’s iconic designed vehicles are yours to command, from a tank to a battle-bot and each can be outfitted with a variety of offensive and defensive weapons and stat boosting parts. All of which, like the vehicles themselves, can be upgraded, crafted and swiped out at will, vehicle level depending.

Vehicles are the core mechanic around which Sand Land has been designed, from using a motorcycle to zoom across the dunes or a hovercar to cross quicksand. And once you gain your first offensive vehicle, you’ll never want to jump into melee combat unless a story sequence requires it.

The game’s vehicles are gorgeously rendered and animated and their attacks have wonderful weight behind them, whether you’re shelling an enemy and feeling the recoil in your tank, or mowing down army grunts with an 8mm machine gun. Don’t worry though kids, it’s made abundantly clear from the beginning that our heroes are only knocking people out!

Combat in the game is never anything but satisfying, but you will have to pay attention to upgrading your vehicles if you want to make a dent in the game’s fun and interesting boss fights. A little bit of exploration will net you enough materials to perform upgrades, though occasionally you will come across the need to craft some of the rarer components.

Your companions come with their own skill trees which have both passive and aggressive abilities. Rao can fight with his own tank in battle while Thief can pilfer enemy components. While I never made as much use of them as I could have, it was nice to have them around for more than just info dumping.

This brings us to the game’s side quests and base building. While a lot of the side quests are the usual fetch or kill quests, most of them are built to net you vehicle blueprints or people to help rebuild the town of Spino, which will serve as your base throughout the campaign. And when you’re needing some downtime, Beelzebub has his own room for you to customise with décor.

Sand Land’s biggest issue is its repetitiveness, unfortunately. The most obvious is the overuse of the same dialogue lines while travelling ad infinitum. By the time I’d completed the first act, which covers the original manga, I’d heard the same conversations a dozen times if not more. More variety here would have been nice or, perhaps, more downtime between the sound clips being played.

The game’s second act, which was created specifically for the game along with Toriyama’s input, suffers from the same pacing issues that the start of the first act had, most notably in making you travel long distances back and forth the new Forest Land area before been able to fast travel between the main locations. It left me with a feeling of being here and done which crippled the momentum that the first act closed on.

Finally, there’s repetition in certain areas of exploration. While it means that the world design remains consistent, the lost ruins you can explore begin to look and feel too much the same by the fourth ruin I’d explored. The major offenders were the main campaign dungeons which have you exploring the same generic looking military base locations or crashed ships with their large, crate filled rooms for far too long and one time too many.

Thankfully they culminate in fun boss fights but they really bring the momentum down while looking decidedly uninspired.

Despite these issues, Sand Land is still a fun and charming game bolstered by a great story, endearing characters and fantastic vehicle combat. With great visuals that capture the feel of the manga and its recent anime adaptation, some wonderful mech designs and impressive nearly instantaneous loading, Sand Land will be a great addition to your anime action RPG library.

Sand Land Trailer

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