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REVIEW: Dillon's Rolling Western (3DS DL)
13 years ago
DILLON'S ROLLING WESTERN (3DS DL)
Genre: Action/Tower Defense
Developer: Vanpool
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
Played for: 25 hours
Hello everyone! And welcome to my new review! E3 is very close as I'm writing this as we're merely 18 days away from the very much anticipated Nintendo conference wich will finally unveil most of the secrets of the Wii U! But today I'm not here to talk about that, but to review a game, as I usually do ;D
This time I reviewed yet another new Nintendo IP (just specifying for people who sat that Nintendo never tries to make new IPs :P), a downloadable title for Nintendo 3DS called Dillon's Rolling Western. The game is a very peculiar and challenging hybrid of action gameplay, touch controls, strategy and tower defense elements.
The main character of the game is Dillon, a silent armadillo who's quite the fighter thanks to his claws and quick-rolling abilities, taking a few tips from Sonic the Hedgehog. Him, with his squirrel sidekick travel through the west to gather money, calling themselves Rangers and defending the villages from the attacks of creepy rock monsters who seem to love eating up the main source of food of the West, some cute pigs who also look like those soft, white japanese food I can't name at the moment XD ahem, anyway, let's see in detail what this game offers!
GRAPHICS
the game certainly holds up well for being a downloadable title. While not being a masterpiece or a wonder of polygonal models, the game shows a slightly cel-shaded, giving a toony feeling to the entire game, wich fits the art style quite well, as well as the over-the-top animations of the main character who moves like a red blur over the landscapes of the game areas and slashes through rocky enemies in a flashy style.
So overall, the game looks good and quite pleasant to the eyes and, while the areas of the game certainly are "basic" in looks and detail, the thing didn't seem to bother me, especially for the fast-paced and quick-thinking action...this isn't one of those games where you stop to look at a pretty scenario for sure :P.
I must say though that I liked the design of the monsters...there are quite a lot of varieties of them and most levels of the game offer at least one or two new monsters to look out from and despite the silly concept of them being rocks on little legs for the most part, they somehow managed to gush out quite a few interesting ones...when the appearance of certain monsters send a shiver down your spine you certainly know that someone has done a good job at designing them XD
GAMEPLAY
Like I mentioned before, the game is a hybrid of an action game and a tower defense one. The target of the player is to defend each village (level) of the game for three days from the Grocks, the rocky enemies I mentioned, who aim toward swarming the villages and eat all of the poor food pigs in there. Each day Dillon has a certain amount of calm time to grow accostumed to the area, explore it, find secrets (included heart pieces in chests, with a nice nod to the Zelda series), gather material to sell or reinforce the village doors with and decide how to spend money available to buy useful items or equip the available towers with weapons or make them sturdier.
Once the sky turns red the village closes its doors, making the player unable to enter, putting him all alone against the attacks of the Grocks. Believe me, this fact alone makes you all anxious XD ahem, anyway, like I said, after the doors close Dillon will have to prevent the Grocks from entering the village, with the support of reinforced doors and towers as well as his own abilities. each time a Grock enters in the village it eats a certain amount of Grocks, so if they go down to 0 it's game over :P
This is repeated for three days for each village. At the end of each day the player is given a result screen wich also tells him how much mony he gaind depending by different factors of how the battle went. There are also side quests to complete wich are another income of money, though if failed, the commissioners will ask for a little refund.
The gameplay itself blends really well the action parts with the more strategic parts, as the player will have to choose wisely how to use his money, if to buy more powerful equipment or strenghten the towers, as well as how to strenghten as different weapons have different effectiveness and range and espcially later in the game it'll be impossible to defend the village without a wise support of the towers. everytime Dillon walks or rolls up to an enemy he'll be transporded in a small fighting area, in wich he'll hav to get rid of the enemies through quite clever touch controls wich will need a growing skill as well as a quick-thinking on wich move to use as all of them have different pros and cons.
I must say that it's really fun, managing the towers and the incomes, selling stuff, preparing for the battle, knowing the fight field...it's all a nice build up until the very climatic battles as more than once you'll think you planned everything perfectly only to hav the Grocks exploit a flaw in your plan or take you by surpris with an unexpected kind of enemy or strategy. Lik I said, strategy and action blnd perfectly, but players should also be warned that this game is quite punishing and doesn't waste time telling everything to the player who'll have to find out by himself with experince how to fight more properly, somtime even being quite unfair, wich may turn off playrs who don't lik that kind of challenge.
Another flaw that really annoyed me is how, in order to unlock the next level you have to get a certain amount of total rating stars that you usually get at the end of each village level. This is something I always disliked in games, since just a few times this trick was used in clever and fair ways (Super Mario 64 and Gex 3D are prime examples of those clever ways). despite that though I pushed through as, despite the very hard challenge, especially in the second half of the game, I found it VERY satisficatory to survive such hard challenges and get to defend my village, despite the fallen towers and the losses of food.
It certainly isn't for gamers who don't like to panic, since the game gets to be quite cruel, even if not to epic levels...it's just hard and challenging to experience, but if the gam clicks it does click awesomely as I know there are players who love this kind of experience and who don't want a walk in the park. Just be ready to freak out when Grocks take you off-guard :P
STORY
the story is pretty much barebones, told through very few cutscenes and many dialogues, though it's interesting at the very least and leads to a quite surprising and fun conclusion, wich also seems to reward the player in telling him how he accomplished the hard challenge of finishing the game. Of course, gtting a 100% is even harder :P
SOUNDTRACK
As you may expect the music of the game is quite funky and western-styled and, being a nintendo game, even if the tracks aren't many they stay in your head, especially Dillon's main theme and the overworld theme. While not super-amazing musics, they certainly are of the catchy kind...here's an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C3ehN9DYb0
FINAL RATING
Overall the game was a very nice surprise...it isn't as repetitive as one may think, it's very long for being a downloadable (like it says above I cleared it in 25 hours), wich also justifies its slightly expensive price (10 dollars/euros) and is packed with action as well as strategic thinking. It also introduces a very nice character...despite being silent Dillon communicates through his actions, his silent, collected and cool behaviour and awesome fighting style fitting the good old west hero.
The game presents a very hard challenge wich may feel almost too unforgiving to some, but for peopl who love action games and tower defense games...give this game a chance as it totally deserves it. All in all I give this game a...
8.5/10
fully deserved and hoping it fixes its flaws for a possible sequel...if it comes...or will it ? ;3
Genre: Action/Tower Defense
Developer: Vanpool
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
Played for: 25 hours
Hello everyone! And welcome to my new review! E3 is very close as I'm writing this as we're merely 18 days away from the very much anticipated Nintendo conference wich will finally unveil most of the secrets of the Wii U! But today I'm not here to talk about that, but to review a game, as I usually do ;D
This time I reviewed yet another new Nintendo IP (just specifying for people who sat that Nintendo never tries to make new IPs :P), a downloadable title for Nintendo 3DS called Dillon's Rolling Western. The game is a very peculiar and challenging hybrid of action gameplay, touch controls, strategy and tower defense elements.
The main character of the game is Dillon, a silent armadillo who's quite the fighter thanks to his claws and quick-rolling abilities, taking a few tips from Sonic the Hedgehog. Him, with his squirrel sidekick travel through the west to gather money, calling themselves Rangers and defending the villages from the attacks of creepy rock monsters who seem to love eating up the main source of food of the West, some cute pigs who also look like those soft, white japanese food I can't name at the moment XD ahem, anyway, let's see in detail what this game offers!
GRAPHICS
the game certainly holds up well for being a downloadable title. While not being a masterpiece or a wonder of polygonal models, the game shows a slightly cel-shaded, giving a toony feeling to the entire game, wich fits the art style quite well, as well as the over-the-top animations of the main character who moves like a red blur over the landscapes of the game areas and slashes through rocky enemies in a flashy style.
So overall, the game looks good and quite pleasant to the eyes and, while the areas of the game certainly are "basic" in looks and detail, the thing didn't seem to bother me, especially for the fast-paced and quick-thinking action...this isn't one of those games where you stop to look at a pretty scenario for sure :P.
I must say though that I liked the design of the monsters...there are quite a lot of varieties of them and most levels of the game offer at least one or two new monsters to look out from and despite the silly concept of them being rocks on little legs for the most part, they somehow managed to gush out quite a few interesting ones...when the appearance of certain monsters send a shiver down your spine you certainly know that someone has done a good job at designing them XD
GAMEPLAY
Like I mentioned before, the game is a hybrid of an action game and a tower defense one. The target of the player is to defend each village (level) of the game for three days from the Grocks, the rocky enemies I mentioned, who aim toward swarming the villages and eat all of the poor food pigs in there. Each day Dillon has a certain amount of calm time to grow accostumed to the area, explore it, find secrets (included heart pieces in chests, with a nice nod to the Zelda series), gather material to sell or reinforce the village doors with and decide how to spend money available to buy useful items or equip the available towers with weapons or make them sturdier.
Once the sky turns red the village closes its doors, making the player unable to enter, putting him all alone against the attacks of the Grocks. Believe me, this fact alone makes you all anxious XD ahem, anyway, like I said, after the doors close Dillon will have to prevent the Grocks from entering the village, with the support of reinforced doors and towers as well as his own abilities. each time a Grock enters in the village it eats a certain amount of Grocks, so if they go down to 0 it's game over :P
This is repeated for three days for each village. At the end of each day the player is given a result screen wich also tells him how much mony he gaind depending by different factors of how the battle went. There are also side quests to complete wich are another income of money, though if failed, the commissioners will ask for a little refund.
The gameplay itself blends really well the action parts with the more strategic parts, as the player will have to choose wisely how to use his money, if to buy more powerful equipment or strenghten the towers, as well as how to strenghten as different weapons have different effectiveness and range and espcially later in the game it'll be impossible to defend the village without a wise support of the towers. everytime Dillon walks or rolls up to an enemy he'll be transporded in a small fighting area, in wich he'll hav to get rid of the enemies through quite clever touch controls wich will need a growing skill as well as a quick-thinking on wich move to use as all of them have different pros and cons.
I must say that it's really fun, managing the towers and the incomes, selling stuff, preparing for the battle, knowing the fight field...it's all a nice build up until the very climatic battles as more than once you'll think you planned everything perfectly only to hav the Grocks exploit a flaw in your plan or take you by surpris with an unexpected kind of enemy or strategy. Lik I said, strategy and action blnd perfectly, but players should also be warned that this game is quite punishing and doesn't waste time telling everything to the player who'll have to find out by himself with experince how to fight more properly, somtime even being quite unfair, wich may turn off playrs who don't lik that kind of challenge.
Another flaw that really annoyed me is how, in order to unlock the next level you have to get a certain amount of total rating stars that you usually get at the end of each village level. This is something I always disliked in games, since just a few times this trick was used in clever and fair ways (Super Mario 64 and Gex 3D are prime examples of those clever ways). despite that though I pushed through as, despite the very hard challenge, especially in the second half of the game, I found it VERY satisficatory to survive such hard challenges and get to defend my village, despite the fallen towers and the losses of food.
It certainly isn't for gamers who don't like to panic, since the game gets to be quite cruel, even if not to epic levels...it's just hard and challenging to experience, but if the gam clicks it does click awesomely as I know there are players who love this kind of experience and who don't want a walk in the park. Just be ready to freak out when Grocks take you off-guard :P
STORY
the story is pretty much barebones, told through very few cutscenes and many dialogues, though it's interesting at the very least and leads to a quite surprising and fun conclusion, wich also seems to reward the player in telling him how he accomplished the hard challenge of finishing the game. Of course, gtting a 100% is even harder :P
SOUNDTRACK
As you may expect the music of the game is quite funky and western-styled and, being a nintendo game, even if the tracks aren't many they stay in your head, especially Dillon's main theme and the overworld theme. While not super-amazing musics, they certainly are of the catchy kind...here's an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C3ehN9DYb0
FINAL RATING
Overall the game was a very nice surprise...it isn't as repetitive as one may think, it's very long for being a downloadable (like it says above I cleared it in 25 hours), wich also justifies its slightly expensive price (10 dollars/euros) and is packed with action as well as strategic thinking. It also introduces a very nice character...despite being silent Dillon communicates through his actions, his silent, collected and cool behaviour and awesome fighting style fitting the good old west hero.
The game presents a very hard challenge wich may feel almost too unforgiving to some, but for peopl who love action games and tower defense games...give this game a chance as it totally deserves it. All in all I give this game a...
8.5/10
fully deserved and hoping it fixes its flaws for a possible sequel...if it comes...or will it ? ;3
Although if they fixed the problems and added a wider variety of enemies, I'd buy a retail version in a heartbeat.
Nintendo really turned up the badass dial with Dillon, though. <3