Sand Land Video Game Thoughts

I wanted to like this video game based on Sand Land, I watched the anime a few months ago and I enjoyed it, the story of that isn't a masterpiece but it's overall a solid time, this is how I wanted to feel on the game but instead, it felt like one of the biggest sunk cost fallacies I have engaged with in a while. I didn't beat it, I'm going to make this clear but at the same time, I did spend around 17-20 hours with it which is enough time to give me a decent assessment on the game.

The story of the game is not too bad and is moderately engaging featuring decent character interactions and has enough going on themematically to the point where it's not 100% a junk food story and can even make you think from time to time when going on the adventure with these characters. Here is the problem, much of this story is the same as the anime except now, it's a million times more padded to get from plot point to plot point. The first few missions of the game is essentially the same as the first few episodes of the anime however halfway through the game before it can get to the Forest Land sections of the show, there is a massive amount of padding before the story can get there with Belz and the crew needing to secure Aquanium and going on lengthy treks through the open world and going through similar looking dungeon after similar looking dungeon before the Forest Land parts even begin.

I do like that the character of Ann gets introduced early in the story but then I slowly realized that during the non Forest Land sections of the game, she has no presence in the plot can be boiled down to a plot device. When I realized this, all of my hopes that the Sand Land game could've brought its own ideas were dashed away.

The Sand Land game essentially took a 13 episode anime series and padded it out to be a 25-30 hour open world game. You could argue that much of this critcism can apply to Dragon Ball Kakarot but the difference with that game is that DBZ is lengthy story and if you choose to watch Kai that is about 167 episodes where Sand Land is only 13 episodes which furthur puts the existence of this video game adaptation in question.

The gameplay is however is where the game faulters. I can take a licensed game that has mostly a similar story to the story it's based on, I do enjoy some of the Dragon Ball, Naruto and various movie tie in games to name some examples, however Sand Land's gameplay just doesn't do enough of the heavy lifting.

At first, things are okay, the game gives you various gameplay mechanics and ideas all has been done before like stealth, platforming and melee combat, but some aspects that modern gaming has abandoned like vehicular combat is also a gameplay pillar which is one major reason why I played it at all.

This is all fine on paper but there are two major aspects that prevent the game from at the very least being a solid if nothing too amazing experience, the game is unevenly paced in terms of gameplay and narrative and the vechicular combat is too basic to support much of the game.

The vehicle combat never evolves past what you do in the first 5 hours, you fight animals who charge and throw projectiles at you, some robots and enemy vehicles which consist tanks, fodder enemies and jump bots. Much of the enemy types are basically this and the never game never evolves past fighting them. If the devs at the very least added more platforming, fist fighting and stealth more often rather than on occasion, this wouldn't be so bad, sure it isn't the most incredible game design but at least it tells me the devs know that the vehicular combat isn't their strong suit. So much of Sand Land is a one note 3rd person shooter and it wears thin quickly.

The biggest problem with Sand Land and this destroys the game for me is how bloated the open world is. The game has very, very, very large stretches of open areas where all the player does is follow quest markers, this is where much of the game's length comes from, the player going through a large open world where nothing happens besides choosing to do explore or fight enemies but this gets boring quickly since all it really does is pad the long sections where nothing happens in the story. This is pretty much what I'm talking about how they took a 13 episode anime into a game that lasts over 10 hours.

The same in game voice lines also get repeated over and over. The same 5-6 conversations while driving occur multiple times ad naseum which makes traversing the open world all the more tedious.

There is also inconsistent game design how some large falls will make me take damage while others is a death pit where I respawn upon falling into them even though I should be able to make the landing.

Some praise I'll give is that the bosses are decent, and have just enough going on in terms of specticle and attack pattern dodging that they can be a decent highlight to a game that is just dull to play 95% of the time. They are too few and far between.

Overall, if Sand Land was an 8-10 hour game, then maybe it would've been a decent but instead, it's a bloated mess that constantly beats around the bush and has uneven narrative and gameplay pacing.