Dragon Quest Heroes II

If you played the first Dragon Quest Heroes, know that this sequel improves in just about every single facet. I'm impressed that Koei Tecmo didn't just phone this one in, but made some great changes that really enhance the overall experience.

Developer Omega Force is truly a force to be wrecked with. The Japanese developer has not only continued a franchise, Dynasty Warriors, for 20 years, but they have found ways to bring their hack-n-slash formula to other notable series. Dragon Quest Heroes II fits in perfectly with the other entries in the Dragon Quest series, only with a splash of that musou battle system. Being a huge fan of the Dragon Quest mainline series, I was blown away with the how well this collaboration was executed and could easily call this one of my favorite games of 2017.

Ain't no party like a Heroes party.

Moving away from the more strict mission based structure of the first game, players now get to travel across the lands of the seven kingdoms in-between the smoother than ever large scale battles. As with any musou game, the combat will get repetitive at times, but there is no question that Dragon Quest Heroes 2 is a bigger and better followup to the original that continues to be a love letter to the Dragon Quest fandom.

No summary available

No summary available

When Dragon Quest Heroes launched it was a fresh take on the Musou/Warriors formula, but ultimately we felt a bit underwhelmed. The Musou gameplay can be loads of fun, but when shoehorned into an RPG format felt tired and boring, not as strategic as an actual RPG, not as much chaotic fun to be had as in actual Musou games. Omega Force and Square Enix could’ve easily just whacked out a second game with few, if any, refinements and for the most part, people would’ve been content. But instead, Dragon Quest Heroes II is actually a big improvement on the first and will give disillusioned players a ...

I was expecting some of the on-paper enhancements to impact me more, but Dragon Quest Heroes II isn’t a stark improvement. It is better though, so if you wanted to get in on the first quest and missed out, you may as well skip it and jump in here — you won’t be missing a whole lot.

Dragon Quest Heroes demonstrates that the Dynasty Warriors combat system can work in other universes and even manages to make some exciting improvements to the usual formula. The game's story is likely to leave new players a little bored, but longtime fans of the franchise will have plenty of run-ins with old characters to trigger those nostalgic feels. Either way, there is a lot of fun to be had with this one.

Not meant for me - but that didn't stop me enjoying it!

What stands out to me is how all of the new elements and tweaked versions of older elements combine together to create something that, in many ways, feels less like a Warriors game and more like a proper Action-RPG. It's almost as if the team had ambitions of moving in that direction, but felt unsure about pulling too far from its roots. Who knows if we'll ever see a third game that will go all-in on that approach, but what we've been given here is a decidedly fun, if flawed, Dragon Quest adventure.

Dragon Quest Heroes 2 was reviewed using a retail PS4 code provided by Square-Enix. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics statement here.