First published in 2000 by Weekly Shonen Jump, Sand Land is one of Akira Toriyama's works which struggled to catch on in Italy: while we let ourselves be won over by Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, the adventures of Beelzebub, prince of demons, slipped out of our hands, despite the publication of Star Comics in a single volume in 2002 What were 14 episodes in the original will soon return, again published by Star Comics, in a Complete Edition which arrived in Japan on 4 August 2023, with color pages and original sketches. The Sand Land revamp project, however, also involves the anime, because if the OAV arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun in August, it will arrive here in the form of a television series, distributed by Disney+, divided into 20 episodes and enriched with content originals, including discarded clips from the film, and a story that will pick up from the film's ending to tell a new narrative arc. As evidence of the immortality of Toriyama's work, it will soon also be time to welcome Bandai Namco's video game adaptation, out April 24th for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series We were able to try it and now we'll tell you about it.
Discovering the desert
In our 3-hour test Bandai Namco gave us the opportunity to explore what was built in four different modes, through four very specific moments of our adventure. So let's go in order to tell you what we were able to try and observe. The initial part gave us the opportunity not only to come into contact with the main structures and mechanics of Sand Land, but also to find some typical dynamics of the OAV distributed in cinemas in Japan last July: it goes from It's true that anyone who comes to this virgin experience from watching the film, which in Italy has been converted into an animated series divided into two different narrative cycles, will find everything new and fresh. Those who, however, have already had the opportunity to experience with their hands and eyes what Beelzebub is about to experience will also find connections linked to certain characters' clothes. Beyond the narrative expressions, which we will not address in this specific situation, our party is made up of 3 characters: Beelzebub, Rao and Thief, of which only the first will be playable in the combat phase, while the other two will be available with abilities to be activated from time to time.
Beyond this, we had the opportunity to manage Thief in what were the first stages of stealth, whose proposal was initially a bit cheesy, but then able to emerge as the adventure progressed. If initially with Thief we had to recover supplies from a village in which getting around the visual cone of the NPCs was very simple, with Beelzebub we then had to enter a military base using covers, dormitories and also the verticality of the scenarios, including electrical cables, stairs, ceilings and so on, avoiding the movements of opposing soldiers and taking advantage of a check-point system that is very advantageous for us, not at all punitive and ready to facilitate our every little mistake. The exploration of what is a very vast map, capable of separating the open world into two macro-sections, alternates between sessions like the one just described and large expanses of desert, to be tackled with what will be the first vehicles to our disposal, having arrived in what was the second round of gameplay that was proposed to us. The bases of the battle system also belonged to the first, at the beginning based on very scholastic mechanics, from the use of a fast blow to a stronger, but slower one, up to the possibility of alternating them to string together a functional combo for victory against the opponent. We are in the context of an action RPG, so each opponent will have their own health indicator and our hits can be inflicted by pressing the X and B keys (our test was on PC).
Combat and skill trees
Immediately after the first level up we had the opportunity to unlock a Skill Point, so as to be able to analyze our skill tree, not just that of Beelzebub, but also the one entrusted to the rest of our party. The initial ones allow us to unlock new finishers, or skills capable of giving us a timely recovery of the stance, so as to avoid being knocked out due to tiredness, up to the skills of Rao, who can use his tonfas to intercept opponents who approach him to knock them out, or Thief, who with a passive skill has the possibility of obtaining additional objects from defeated enemies. Having fought very little in the more advanced stages of the test, except for a boss battle which we will tell you about shortly, we were unable to verify the reality of the skills unlocked, especially since the battle system did not appear too stratified, on the contrary: the battles have always been very accessible and have never required a particular strategy. The great difficulty became clear when, in the second segment tested, we had to face a huge Kraken, supported however by one of our vehicles. Between missiles and a machine gun, we found that Sand Land puts a lot of heart into the management of the vehicles, also and above all to honor the passion that Akira Toriyama had for all of them.
Let's open an important parenthesis on vehicles, because exploration passes right through here and it's not just about moving from one place to another. In the second phase of our test we had four, all selectable through the capsules derived from the experience of Dragon Ball and Capsule Corp: this system is very useful for being able to use any means in any context and situation, especially in the exploration of a underground dungeon which then led us straight towards the Kraken, to defend the second large area of Sand Land, namely Forest Land. Each vehicle has its own speed, resistance, steering capacity, so as to justify the presence of drift and so on: with some we will have the possibility of making loaded jumps to reach otherwise unattainable heights, so as to justify the verticality of the open too world, to recover objects and treasures. All vehicles can be customized, upgraded, customized from an aesthetic point of view and also for the attack components: because not only will there be fighting, but during the endgame we also tried some racing – perhaps a little clandestine – which have put our choices to the test when modifying the various components of our vehicles.
The vehicles, the heart of the experience
The vehicle ring hosts “only” four of them, but you can go and select the shortcuts by stopping at a bonfire or even in the city workshop. These will be real hubs, as we could always see in the endgame, where the map not only opened up to us in all its components, but also allowed us to understand how much space for action there was within Spino, the main city of our experience: shops, secondary missions, requests to complete, NPCs to talk to, the workshop – as mentioned earlier – and many other stimuli at our disposal, so as to be able to justify even the exploration of a very vast world. We still don't know how full it actually is, because in our raids we could meet some street vendors ready to sell us something, but we are not entirely sure what the power of the three-dimensionality of the scenario could be. A city that we will also be able to find in Forest Land, which certainly represented the novelty of this test: totally different from Sand Land, but above all new even for those who had already approached the work with the OAV. After arriving there we were able to see the modulation work carried out by the development team in creating an environment diametrically opposed to that of the desert, dotting everything with vegetation, rivers, mountains and routes to be tackled with all our vehicles.
We close our hands-on with a couple of key indications for Sand Land fans who wish to find key references to the manga in the videogame transposition: Beelzebub will recharge his health by using water, in full narrative style with the needs of the world to go and face the natural disaster that has transported everyone into a complete desert; during the exploration it will also be possible to refresh ourselves from the bottles made available in the villages, which we can immediately go and steal. By doing so we will regain the energy lost in combat and also the stamina that will drop during the fights and running on foot across the map, an activity not recommended except at the beginning, when we will have to recover a vehicle useful for our needs. The interactions between the various characters were very faithful to us to what is told by the manga and the anime, just as the way that each of them approach the other is very faithful. In three hours we are certainly not able to fully evaluate the narrative fidelity, nor how good the plot will be, which in the meantime has allowed us to appreciate original characters, such as Ann, the mechanics that will allow us to delve into the immense and vast world of vehicle customization.
What remains to be understood is the depth of the battle system, which for now has appeared very scholastic, and how the entire narrative will evolve, especially in the second part, which promises to follow the narrative arc of the television series coming to Disney+ (the first 7 episodes are already available from March 20th, the others will arrive on a weekly basis). Sand Land could be a breath of fresh air in the panorama of tie-ins and that problematic trend of video games inspired by anime or manga, which in Dragon Ball found a good outlet, only to then suffer moments of uncertainty between Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece. April 24th is around the corner and soon we will be able to give you a more complete idea of the video game adaptation of Sand Land.
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