Sure, You’re Scary… But I’ve Got A TANK
HIGH The fate of the nefarious Epi.
LOW The narrow roads of Forest Land.
WTF Wait, there’s a Forest Land? Can everyone not just move there?
Akira Toriyama demanded that we not take things too seriously. Yes, his most famous work, Dragon Ball Z, was about martial artists from space who genocide people on the reg, but there were always magic wishing dragons around to fix the worst of it, and how was an audience supposed to be scared of villains named after vegetables and milk products, anyway? There are scary moments, sure, but the goal was always to ensure that everyone was having a good time. So, I think it’s appropriate that Sand Land, likely the last videogame that Toriyama had a significant involvement in, is such a warm and joyous experience.
Starting off in lockstep with the manga it adapts, Sand Land immediately introduces the first of its leads — Beelzebub, the prince of demons — as he robs a shipment of water being transported. After using the encounter to tutorialize chasing and fighting foes, the game pauses to look at the prince’s softer side, as he shares some water with a thirsty human child. Belz (the short form of his name) is remarkably kind-hearted, even for a Toriyama main character, which gives his performative attempts at villainy a huge amount of charm.
Then Rao, the story’s other main character turns up, looking for a guide to the southern end of Sand Land — so-called because the river that ran through it dried up decades earlier. Rao believes that a huge reservoir of water is hidden somewhere deep in the desert wastes, and one tank heist later, the new partners are headed out into a sprawling open world packed with danger and adventure.
Sand Land has almost nothing but strengths, but even in an impressively designed third-person action-RPG experience like this, some elements are going to stand out. Here it’s the incredible work of the developers to make every part of the experience feel just right to the player. Whether Belz is running through ruined temples, flying through a canyon, or taking part in a tense tank battle, Sand Land is largely about using a variety of vehicles to traverse varied terrain and blow up adversaries, and an incredible amount of care has gone into ensuring that nothing gets between the player and what they want to accomplish.
Take, for example, the capsule system borrowed from Dragon Ball lore — the player has five vehicles at their disposal at all times, miniaturized and kept in their inventory. If Belz is zooming along the top of a dune on a motorcycle when a giant scorpion suddenly appears, simply open a menu and select the tank held in reserve, and Belz has swapped rides in a puff of smoke. There are jump bots for climbing mountains, hovercraft for crossing quicksand rivers, and battlesuits for close-up combat.
No matter the vehicle, Sand Land offers a huge map to explore, and the devs want to make sure that the experience never feels overwhelming. That involves stalwart genre elements like radio towers that reveal the map when repaired and ample fast-travel points, but mostly it’s about ensuring that maneuvering through the world is such a pleasure for the senses that it’s worth just picking a direction, speeding off towards it and seeing what happens.
Of course, this is an action RPG so the story counts, which means it’s good that Sand Land does an excellent job of adapting and expanding on the original manga. There’s a bit of a pacing issue a third of the way into the campaign, which is where the source material manga runs out of plot as all of the villains are defeated and the characters’ driving objectives have been accomplished. I cannot stress how much it feels like an ending — but it turns out that once everyone’s problems have been solved, the story is actually just getting started, as the real threat reveals itself.
I’ll admit the script has a little trouble shifting back into gear as the characters travel to Sand Land’s neighboring kingdom, the just-as-obviously-titled ‘Forest Land’, and I’d be lying if I said that the narrow cliffside paths in this second map are well-suited to most of the vehicles, but the story does become gripping so quickly that it’s difficult to complain about the second and third acts. Where the Sand Land map was packed with interesting characters who need assistance via a huge variety of side stories, Forest Land exists only to put the pedal to the metal and launch the player into the third act. Until the post-game, of course, when Forest Land opens up for exploration and turns out to have an interesting cast of characters all its own.
That larger cast is one of Sand Land‘s greatest strengths. Early on, players get access to Spino, a town with a garage they can use as a home base. Starting with just a handful of residents, the player can convince side characters to move to Spino by completing their quests. As the town’s population grows, the player will watch it transform in real time, growing from a few tents amidst a pile scrap to a lush oasis in the desert, full of productive citizens who have have been given a new chance at happiness by the player’s actions.
Sand Land is a magnificent experience. The combat is thrilling, the story is affecting, and the world demands to be explored. More than that, though, it’s incredible how adept it is at everything it tries. Yes, most of the time spent here is third-person vehicle exploration or on-foot brawling, but the developers are never afraid to mix things up, and all of it works just as well as the central mechanics. More than that, though, Sand Land is a deeply sweet game about fighting prejudice and division, and making a more perfect future by working together.
It’s truly tragic that Akira Toriyama has left us, but at least his final game was, perhaps, the best one ever based on his work.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5 and XBO/S/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 60 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed twice.
Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and contains Fantasy Violence, Language. I legit have no idea why this is a Teen game rather than E10. I’m pretty sure only two humans get killed during the entire thing, and only one of those is due to the player’s actions. This is so kid-friendly it’s ridiculous. If there’s and Language harder than ‘damn’, I missed it.
Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled, but incidental sounds like gunfire and enemy alerts are not — luckily there are big onscreen icons to let the player know when an enemy is targeting them, even offering an approximate direction for them to turn to! Subtitles can be resized. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.
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