Look, I know this is yet another spinoff of a popular RPG series that I happen to like more than the mainline games, I know that. But hear me out this one, okay? Rocket Slime is a perfect game. Like genuinely faultless, it's a masterclass in blending together two disparate gameplay styles, making them both equally fun and engaging, and having them both feed into each other. It's so incredibly well thought-out on every level and I'm very excited to talk about it.
Rocket Slime is a entry in the Dragon Quest series that feels like it was concieved in the same vein as SMT's Jack Bros games, a big genre shift focused entirely on giving the series' enemies a time to shine. This type of game tends to be common within big RPGs series since they tend to have a lot of strong enemy designs, and Dragon Quest is no exception. The Slimes in particular are some of, if not the most iconic RPG enemies of all time. Unlike Jack Bros, though, Rocket Slime is only one entry in an entire trilogy of really solid adventure games. Rocket Slime is unfortunately the only one to come out in the US, but unlike in, say, the Starfy games, I still think it's the best and most balanced game anyway. Speaking of Starfy, Rocket Slime was actually developed by TOSE who I've already raved about in my Game & Watch Gallery post. Once again, they continue to be the kings of underrated gems.
Rocket Slime's set-up is fairly basic, it's practically the same story as its predecessor. The Platypunks invade the Slime village Boingburg and kidnap all 100 slimes within it. As Rocket, the only slime who wasn't kidnapped, you have to head out and rebuild the town. Rocket Slime does, however, introduce a Meta Knight-esque anti-hero named Slival to make things a bit more interesting, but the actual narrative still isn't really the focus here. Instead, the real appeal of the story is in just how charmingly it is all delivered. Rocket Slime is an incredibly light-hearted game, filled with goofy pieces of dialogue and self-aware jabs at the RPG genre not unlike the Mario & Luigi games. There's also just so many cute details that aid in that charm factor, with my favorite being that every enemy has a Platypunk tail to show they're a part of the gang.
Rocket Slime is a game that's split up into two distinct gameplay styles, though they both have the same simple controls. You can move around and sling yourself to gain distance, attack enemies, and pick up pretty much anything from objects to enemies. The first style is like a Zelda-esque adventure game. You explore a variety of locations for all the hidden Slimes, often solving puzzles involving carrying stuff around, all culminating in a fun boss fight at the end. The adventure side of Rocket Slime is an absolute blast, there's a ton of fun level gimmicks that keep things fresh and the basic exploration for all the lost Slimes is incredibly satisfying. It helps that by finding more Slimes, you'll be able to rebuild and unlock more parts of the town, so you have a real incentive to go out of your way to find everyone you can. The combat is also surprisingly fun. It may seem simple at first since your only real attack is slinging yourself at them, but eventually you realize you can also throw objects at enemies including the enemies themselves. By the end of the game, some of the more hectic fights will have you frantically scrounging around the area for stuff you can use as projectiles, it's great fun.
Early on in Rocket Slime, you uncover a giant Slime tank and you soon discover that the Platypunk gang has tanks of their own, introducing the second main gameplay style of Rocket Slime. Every once in a while, you'll meet a gang member who has a Slime in captivity and the only way to rescue them is to take them on in a tank battle. All of a sudden, Rocket Slime has turned into a real-time strategy game where you have to load objects into cannons and launch them at the other tank to take down its defenses before storming in yourself to destroy its heart. There's a surprising amount of depth here, both in terms of the massive variety of projectiles you can use, but also in terms of all the options you have. As you rescue Slimes, you'll get a good amount of potential AI allies you can pick from each with their own unique skills, and you can give these allies unique objectives on the fly. There's a lot of strategy that goes into blocking your enemy's projectiles while also clearing the way for your most powerful projectiles, and you can even load yourself into the cannon, shoot yourself into the other enemy's tank, and sabotage them from within. These tank battles are ridiculously fun and as great as the adventure stuff is, I'd argue that these are the best parts of Rocket Slime.
But what's even better than these two halves on their own is how well they work together. It's hard to pull off two entirely different gameplay styles because you could risk making the game disjointed or the player only liking one half of the game, but Rocket Slime makes all the right decisions here. For starters, as I mentioned, the controls are identical. You run around the tank and fiddle with projectiles in the same way that you would run around one of the locations and toss around objects, so despite the vastly different objectives, it feels like you're still being tested on the same exact moveset. But on top of that, both gameplay styles feed into each other in a really satisfying feedback loop. Each area has a bunch of carts that you can load objects and enemies into to bring back to town, and you can use those objects as projectiles or even craft them to make more powerful projectiles. You can also find gold scattered around, often by straight-up killing enemies, that you can use to upgrade your tank. And you need your tank and its ammo to be as strong as possible because you need to be able to consistently win tank battles to save all the Slimes. So now you have this really satisfying back-and-forth between these two gameplay styles. You spend the adventure parts gathering enemies and objects and finding gold that you can then use in the tank battles to save more Slimes which opens up more areas for you to explore which leads to more materials for projectiles and more tank battles to participate it, it's so perfectly calibrated in every way. There's no imbalance here either, Rocket Slime feels like an even 50/50 split between these two gameplay styles, nothing gets the short end of the stick.
On top of all that, Rocket Slime is kind of a massive game with a lot of content that's a joy to do because of how well the UI lays it all out. In addition to the 100 Slimes to save, you get fully detailed logs compiling all of the items, enemies, and crafts in the game. There's health increases, tank upgrades, unlockable minigames within the hub, and even some really challenging side missions for expert players like a postgame tank battle arena that cranks up the difficulty or a museum that gives you statues for collecting a lot of the same enemy. Hell, there's even support for multiplayer tank battles which I haven't experienced myself but sounds like a lot of fun. Rocket Slime on its own is a fairly easy game, but in a similar fashion to a Kirby game, its optional and postgame content offers a lot for the really invested players who want a bit more of a challenge. It all makes for a game that's really easy to sink dozens upon dozens of hours into.
Visually, Rocket Slime isn't really pushing the DS's hardware, it actually uses a lot of the same assets as its prequel on the Game Boy Advance. That being said, its prequel on the GBA already had some of the cleanest, cutest, and most colorful spritework on the console and Rocket Slime is no exception. Every single character is adorably animated and filled with cute details, all the environments are so bright and colorful, and everything feels just a bit more fluid compared to its predecessor. And that's not to say Rocket Slime doesn't use the DS hardware at all, the tank battles serve as a perfect showcase for the DS's second screen since you get both an interior and exterior persepective of your tank. As for the music, it's quite cute. There isn't much music, with the overworld theme playing in most of the major areas, but most of it is so catchy that it never really got old, with Boingburg, Forewood Forest, Tank Battle, and Ducktor Cid being the highlights. The final boss even has a great remix of Dragon Quest's main theme, which really helped it feel all the more epic. Interestingly enough, while Koichi Sugiyama is (unfortunately) known for composing nearly all of the music for every Dragon Quest game, he didn't work on the music for Rocket Slime. He's credited because of course he is, but the Slime Mori Mori series was primarily composed by some of TOSE's own composers, Hidenori Miyanaga, Ryoue Takagi, and Masaya Tsunemoto. Takagi in particular is known for working on the Kirby's Block Ball soundtrack so that's how you know the music in these games is gold.
I hope I was able to explain why I think Rocket Slime is so immaculately and elegantly designed. It manages to fuse Zelda-like adventure gameplay and RTS tank battles together in a way that feels entirely natural and cohesive, with both aspects of the game feeding into each other in a satisfying manner. On top of that, it's just a super polished adventure game with tons of side content and a charming presentation. It's not a game I can find many faults with beyond just minor nitpicks and preferences. Rocket Slime is easy but it has the tough postgame content to make up for that, the music is minimal but all the tracks are still a joy to listen to. Rocket Slime offers an incredibly unique gameplay experience and executes all of it pretty much perfectly, it's as close to a masterpiece as you could get.
No comments:
Post a Comment