Sand Land The Game Review: Coarse But Fine

Sand Land The Game isn't just a video game that is based on an anime series, it's one that garnered a lot of attention thanks to the passing of creator Akira Toriyama. While Toriyama might be best known for the Dragon Ball franchise, the mangaka spread his wings in his anime career with works such as Sand Land. Taking the characters and locales that only could be created by Toriyama himself, Bandai Namco aimed to give fans a beautiful, interactive landscape for gamers, and in that, the video game producers succeeded. 

To start, Sand Land is a world wherein humanity co-exists with a race of demons, as all the living creatures seard for any and all water that they can find. Our main star, and the character that players control in the game, is Beelzebub, the son of Lucifer who finds himself journeying forth, to both save his people and cure his never-ending boredom. Joining Beelzebub on his quest includes the human Sheriff Rao, the human Ann, and the demon Thief as they traverse the desert locale using a variety of vehicles at their disposal. Fighting against human opponents, demons, dinosaurs, and just about any creature that you can think of, the Akira Toriyama world is fit to bursting with creativity.

To start with the positive, this game is absolutely gorgeous and it feels as though it's the best example of a video game so far to capture the beauty and aesthetic of Akira Toriyama's art. The landscape of Sand Land is a giant one that asks a lot of your time to fully complete Beelzebub's story, and luckily, you'll never feel as though that exploration itself is boring. This is a boon considering this game can skyrocket well over one hundred hours of gameplay if you are looking to comb the Earth itself and complete the bounties, resource collecting, and other side quests that populate the desert world. 

Similarly to other Akira Toriyama-designed games such as Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and the video game entries of the Dragon Ball franchise, Sand Land's characters are gorgeous in their simplicity. Every character, hero, enemy, or in-between, is downright dripping with personality and it makes you want to have a discussion with each of them when you hit a new town or find a vendor while blasting across the desert. Boss fights are big and bold thanks to this fact, helping to create some of the more memorable moments of the game. The simplicity of the characters is their strength and discovering new beasts and opponents is always a thrill. 

The humor of the game is also trademark Akira Toriyama, with more than a few moments getting a genuine chuckle. There's just something surreal about Thief stating that he has the "perfect costume" for stealing someone's belongings, slapping on a Santa Claus costume, and then performing his shady dealings in the dead of night. Beelzebub himself is charming in his naivety, where the son of the devil is looking to take down evil-doers simply because he feels that no one should be more evil than him. Toriyama gives us colorful, interesting characters here that are worth speaking to, even if their dialogue isn't exactly thought-provoking. 

Luckily, the traversal also is varied thanks in part to the amount of vehicles that you are given to scour the sands. Beelzebub and his friends have the ability to effortlessly and instantaneously call upon tanks, motorcycles, leaping robots, mech suits, and more when it comes to both fighting and exploring, which is a boon for players here. Players will never feel bored when it comes to swapping out vehicles for any given scenario. On the customization side, Sand Land allows you to fully make each of these vehicles your own, whether that comes to the overall aesthetic and design of a machine or the weapons that help the player blast through any barriers in their way. It's in the vehicles that fans can truly express themselves here and we imagine that there will be plenty of pictures of players' tank designs making their way to the internet in the future.

Unfortunately, when a player is put on foot, that's where the game tends to suffer. Beelzebub's cadre of tricks when it comes to fighting in hand-to-hand combat feels slim as you will routinely feel like button-mashing is all that is needed in dispatching a group of baddies. Beelzebub's attacks seem rather limited, especially considering that he is routinely joined by both Rao and Thief in his exploits. The fact that you can't take control of the demon's allies seems like a missed opportunity and would have added much more variety to combat overall. Many of the upgrades for the characters can be useful, but many feel like window dressing, expanding on the game's already weighty girth. While they do incorporate some interesting mechanics such as some stealth missions in the quest that take players out of a vehicle, the game needed more variety when it came to Beelzebub's encounters sans-vehicles.

While it was mentioned earlier that the environments were gorgeous to take in, there was a serious problem encountered when it came to repetitive dialogue along the way. Rao, Thief, and other allies would routinely spam old lines depending on what you encountered on your journey and it could become grating at times. If you happened to encounter an environment or opponent that would create a new line of dialogue, you would return to the original line from the very beginning, hammering home the repetition.

Sand Land is a gorgeous game that is far larger than you might expect, and it's ultimately worthy of a journey, but there are several factors that are holding it back from being one of the biggest anime games of all time.  

Rating: 3.5 Out Of 5

Sand Land is now available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and PC.