14 DAY TRIAL // A brand new Dragon Quest game, titled Dragon Quest Heroes, is coming to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 platforms in 2015, after a hiatus of more than 10 years.
Square Enix's Yuji Horii and Koei Tecmo's Kou Shibuasawa have presented the new entry in the Dragon Quest franchise today, during Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Asia's press conference event, hosted as a preparation for the upcoming Tokyo Game Show.
You might have already guessed what the bad news is by now. Unfortunately, Dragon Quest Heroes is not what everyone expected, another entry in the consecrated role-playing game franchise, but instead a brawler from Dynasty Warriors developer Omega Force, skinned with Dragon Quest-related characters and events, just like the recently released (in Japan) Wii U exclusive Hyrule Warriors.
This means that the Dragon Quest world is basically overlaid on the massive mission-based brawling structure of Dynasty Warriors. This isn't necessarily all that bad, and if the game manages to capture the story and characters of the popular role-playing game series, the spin-off hack and slash might turn out to be pretty popular.
The last proper Dragon Quest game to hit Sony hardware was Dragon Quest 8, back in 2004. Since then, the series made the jump to Nintendo devices, with Dragon Quest 9 popping up on the Nintendo DS and Dragon Quest 10 bringing its massively multiplayer online ways to the Wii home console, and never making it outside of Japan.
The duo has also unveiled a trailer for the upcoming video game, showcasing some gameplay alongside pre-rendered cinematics. A group of heroes are shown fighting against a giant cyclops, countless faceless enemies themed in the classic Dragon Quest manner, and some slimes and dragons also show up for the party.
Dragon Quest Heroes is currently scheduled for a pretty vague spring 2015 release window, headed for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. The game will be launched in Japan, and for the time being, the western release of the title has not been confirmed.
Sony intends to also release a special edition of the PlayStation 4 device to celebrate the launch of Dragon Quest Heroes, titled the Metal Slime edition, and featuring slime characters imprinted on the silver body and DualShock 4 controller, to be bundled with Omega Force's hack-and-slash video game.
With Persona 5, Dragon Quest Heroes, Disgaea, Senran Kagura, Resident Evil, God Eater and many other such titles headed to Sony's platforms, the PlayStation 4 seems to be pretty well positioned to win over the Japanese audience, who so far has been pretty reserved in adopting it.
