Sands of Destruction – NDS – Review

Sands of Destruction has the
tell-tale signs of a traditional JRPG, but begins with a complete twist to the
classic boy-turned-hero story. You are not the savior of the world. You are its
destroyer. The anthropomorphic Ferals are the masters and enslavers of humanity,
but a new threat emerges in the form of an unwitting country-boy, Kyrie. Without
warning, Kyrie was overcome with power and wakes to find his entire village
reduced to sand.

Kyrie destroys everything he loved
and the only angst he can muster was, “Did I really do that?” Writer Masato
Kato may be slipping. He worked on such legendary titles as Chrono Trigger and
Final Fantasy VII, yet he can’t come to grips with the severity of the plot in
Sands of Destruction. I’m still not sure whether Sands was supposed to be a
drama or comedy. One moment a character is being brutally tortured with a whip,
and the next, he’s joking about a beating he’ll receive from his mother when he
returns home.

Shortly after the opening
destruction, Kyrie is saved from execution by the World Annihilation Front. Ten
hours later, or roughly half-way through, I still had no clue as to the origins
of Kyrie’s power, why he would want to destroy the world, or where he was going.
And yet, trekking through gardens to find a rose for a royal cat was somehow
part of that progression. From beginning to end, Sands was a ridiculous stream
of seemingly pointless courier missions meant to funnel you through a gauntlet
of literal mazes.

Without much substance, Sands had to
resort to padding, and a lot of it. You can count on random battles every one to
five seconds in every location outside of a town. Environments that might take
five minutes to navigate in other RPGs are expanded into a full hour. There were
many occasions when I fled from battle after battle in attempts to make some
semblance of headway. I certainly wasn’t hurting for experience points, and a
part of me wonders if fleeing was what ImageEpoch expected players to do.

The combat system is turn-based, but
makes a valiant effort to be original. Each character is allotted Battle Points
at the beginning of a turn. The amount is based on Morale, although determining
how equipment affects Morale was left to trial-and-error. Battle Points are
spent on single, hard-hitting Blows, successive bursts of accurate Flurries, and
magical abilities. Characters are awarded customization points after each
battle, which are used to improve existing attacks and purchase new ones to
create combos.

The customization system was
invigorating on the surface, but falls apart when you realize that Flurries are
the only attacks that matter. Each critical hit yields an extra Battle Point,
and reaching six points unleashes a devastating special attack. In other words,
more Flurries equal more attacks, more critical hits, and a non-stop barrage of
special attacks. After trading out my heavy combatants for more agile,
Flurry-focused characters, even the most daunting bosses crumbled like ash, but
not for lack of trying.

Early bosses, before you have access
to higher-level attacks, are relentlessly unfair. Your character’s turn ends as
soon as a single opponent is slain, but bosses have no such restriction. They
revel in slaughtering each of your characters without pause, sometimes taking
three or four simultaneous turns. There is absolutely no recourse to stop such
an onslaught. You can only re-load and hope that it doesn’t happen again.

Sands of Destruction certainly has
some good concepts. I would love to see the customization system appear in a
future release, albeit with some tweaking. The story was an intriguing
foundation for an epic tale with a cast of interesting characters, of which the
bounty-hunting teddy with an eye-patch, Taupy, could have become an icon. It’s a
shame that these features come together as a meandering journey plagued by
excessive random battles, jumbled narrative, and extremely flawed combat.

Gameplay: 3
Severe flaws in combat and egregious amounts of random battles overshadow
everything.

Graphics: 5
Textures are vibrant and detailed, but 3D maps presented in mainly static 2D
views, leads to characters catching on polygons when walking.

Sound: 5
A great deal of quality voice-acting, but each line was followed by a two-second
pause. Music ranges from atmospheric to quirky tunes befitting slapstick with a
bumbling buffoon.

Difficulty: Medium
Excruciating difficulty whittles down to simplistic as you level.

Concept: 7
With a distinctive twist in the hero’s origin and a unique, though imperfect,
character customization system, Sands of Destruction almost breaks the typical
JRPG mold.

Overall: 4
Far more infuriating than entertaining. RPG fans can find plenty of
alternatives.