Dragon Quest Next in Line for a Dynasty Warriors Makeover

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Representatives from Square Enix and Tecmo Koei showed off a trailer for their newly announced Dragon Quest spinoff Dragon Quest Heroes during their pre-TGS PlayStation conference in Japan. Currently there is no release date for the Dynasty Warriors-style or “Musou” Action RPG for the West, but it is slated to hit Japan sometime in 2015. Like most Dynasty Warrior games, it will be developed by the Koei Tecmo-owned studio Omega Force.

In Western countries, the name Dragon Quest and to a lesser extent Dynasty Warriors don’t usually ring a bell for most gamers, but they are both huge in Japan even to do this day. The Dragon Quest (or Dragon Warrior as it used to be called) franchise has it’s roots all the way back in 1986 when the first game in the series was released to universal critical acclaim in Japan.

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Square Enix is really giving the franchise a strong push back into the minds of North America as it is slowly re-releases its older games on Android and iOS devices, the latest being Dragon Quest II ported back in June. For long time Dragon Quest fans, or any fan of Square Enix hoping for a new traditional JRPG from them, have been hoping all this news would culminate in a new Dragon Quest game but to no avail. Square Enix’s “one big thing” announcement was this Musou beat-em-up Dragon Quest Heroes.

The Dragon Quest franchise isn’t the only one to get a Dynasty Warriors face-lift lately, either. Hyrule Warriors, coming out in the US on September 26th, is another venture by Omega Force to bring an immensely popular franchise into the Dynasty Warriors style of games.

All of this appears to be a deliberate plan of keeping their genre relevant by Koei Tecmo. While for a short time Dynasty Warrior games were critically acclaimed and sold well the world over, their sales in the West have bottomed out and they continue to slowly decline in Asian markets. Over the past few years calling something like Dynasty Warriors” has been a stinging insult to a video game and the franchise has become a bit of a punch line. There really is not really a ton of innovation that can be done with the already established beat-em-up Action RPG genre, so bringing in some new franchises and slapping them on the already solid mechanics of the Musou-style games is a no brainer for the developers to bring some popularity and good will back to the genre.

Along with Dragon Quest Heroes, there will also be an exclusive PS4 launched. The silver console and controller will come with the franchise’s iconic slime character emblazoned on them. No word on a release date or any special pricing of the limited edition console.

Image Courtesy of Polygon
Image Courtesy of Polygon
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/1/6092321/dragon-quest-heroes-ps4-ps3-musou” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Polygon[/button]

Last Updated on November 27, 2018.

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