Initial release date: April 25, 2024
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S
Developer: ILCA
Mode: Single-player video game
License: proprietary license
Publisher: BNE LLC
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
The teaser that revealed how much of Sand Land will be vehicle-based is perhaps what most concerned me about picking it up. I was tired of being a car driver during the game. This is an RPG with action! I wanted to be slicing away with my sword, punching idiots, and earning experience points! I didn’t want to be beeping and beeping my way through a desert in a little vehicle while unlocking a fresh set of headlights. When I saw a tank, the fear persisted. This is gon’ be boring and slow, or like shooting pellets at enemy aircraft. I knew I was going to have a blast when I got into the car for the first time, met Rao, and drove out of the demon village. With the ideal balance of arcade-style fighting, modifiable cars, and cartoonish Akira Toriyama artwork, everything began to click into place. I was hooked on Sand Land.
I am reviewing Sand Land from the viewpoint of someone who is not familiar with the original material because I have never read the manga or seen the anime version. Remember that. In Sand Land, we assume the role of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. wishing his father would give him more time to play video games, lounging in the sweltering sun, and hanging out with his demon buddies. After one of the demons notices a human truck speeding across the desert and warns Beelzebub, they are abruptly fleeing. They travel home after heisting enough water for his demon friends and taking over the automobile, only to be stopped by a little child who is thirsty. Reluctantly, the child who is obsessed with being a terrifying fiend, known as the prince of devils, gives the boy some water. Our hesitant hero, Beelzebub, is an amazing person.
A local sheriff named Rao approaches the demon settlement and asks for help. You see, he thinks that somewhere in this dry desert lies a hidden oasis, and he needs the assistance of a few demons to find it. When Sand Land first opens, it has a sizable desert, a clear objective, and a protagonist who seems uninterested. Despite Beelzebub’s very childlike behaviors and rationale, Rao is determined and still respects and admires him. The two have a great chemistry, and as their ambitions start to collide, the situation of the Sand Land residents gets increasingly intriguing. Nevertheless, I much more enjoy the exchanges between Belz and Thief, his demon friend. The three meet a lady who considers herself a mechanic while robbing a tank, and they go toward Spino’s abandoned town.
For me, Sand Land truly opened up in Spino. When you arrive, the settlement is largely deserted but for a few children, the mayor of the town, and a lone peddler. Ann, the mechanic, resides in the functional garage and provides her services for maintaining your bots. Ahh, bots, Sand Land’s mainstay. Although some of the bots’ navigational strategies overlap, each one of the many varieties of bots in the game serves a unique purpose. Additionally, it seemed as though I was only now, after playing the game for more than 20 hours, finally unlocking the battle gear. Though I enjoyed almost all of my bots, I’m a little tank boy, so during conflicts I would alternate between the battle armor and the tank.
Four main components make up a vehicle: an engine, suspension, a secondary weapon, and a main weapon. All you need is the parts to assemble those items, or you can find them elsewhere. I can guarantee you that parts will be found. Gathering treasure chests seems to be Sand Land’s main objective. All around the planet, including inside caves, strewn about bandit camps, and inside army buildings, are treasure chests. When I entered and plundered every single chest, the map beside the army base stated 0/1, and I had no idea why. After that, I realized why it was declared complete. There is loot in Sand Land. There are craftsmen nearby who will take your raw materials and turn them into crafted materials because loot doesn’t always translate into craftable materials either. I was initially put off by this, but things don’t really need that many components. There were just three items I needed to upgrade on my motorcycle in order to increase its speed for racing. To make things easy to grasp, Sand Land keeps a lot of things straightforward.
Belz controls like a typical action RPG protagonist when he’s not in a bot. A distinct set of consumables designed just for Belz, basic combinations, and several skills that can be enhanced upon leveling up. In order to aid Belz both inside and outside of vehicles, Rao, Thief, and eventually Ann gain their own skill trees. The most appealing feature of Thief is its capacity to absorb resource points and release nearby resources, which may be activated while driving. Resource farming became much quicker and simpler as a result. On rare occasions when Belz isn’t in a bot, Sand Land tinkers with the camera angle. There are often maze-like sections where you can sneak around army bases and see Belz from above, or there may be a lot of boxes stacked up and the camera will pan in to give you a close-up, nearly first-person view of what’s going on. Similarly, in story missions, Belz will traverse a platformer part from the side as the camera adopts a 2.5D angle reminiscent of Nier Automata. Very cool.
You’ll eventually get a few bots and want to go out and discover the world. The main goal of side quests is to get people into Spino. It’s fascinating to watch how gradually and gradually Spino changes as you finish side missions. Newcomers arrive, new acquaintances assign you tasks and provide additional services, and before long, your main hub will have everything you could possibly require. Bot creation, customization, and upgrades become enjoyable tasks. Then it’s time to take in everything this land of sand has to offer, explore your surroundings, and cross some items off your map.
Regretfully, Sand Land caused me a few problems at this point. You will ultimately find yourself exploring both Sand Land and the corresponding Forest Land, which is dotted with radio towers. The radio towers serve the same purpose in every Ubisoft game ever created: they make the surrounding area of the radio tower visible. You may do this in Sand Land simply by driving around, but the map will also show you where caverns and other hidden attractions are. But once you’ve completed a task, like repairing the radio tower to make it functional again, it merely stays on the map. The number of towers you’ve fixed is indicated by the key you receive in the bottom left corner, however the icon is blank and without a checkmark. When you’re playing a story mission and passing by things that appear on the map but lack the resources or time to finish, things can become a little confused.
It’s a little annoying because I find it really enjoyable to explore Sand Land thanks to the bots. When you use the leap bot, you can mount tall walls that would normally make it difficult for other bots to move fast through an area. Regretfully, there are a lot of invisible walls in the game, so even if you use your jump bot to navigate a mountainous terrain, there’s no guarantee that the environment will let you pass. It’s a little aggravating to be arbitrarily barred from specific regions in a game that’s all about exploration and navigation. A few events in Sand Land serve as a reminder that the game is a little more low-budget than you may anticipate. While driving, a lot of the voice lines are replayed endlessly. Rao is often preaching about how crucial it is to fight from the higher ground when in an uneven battlefield. Belz will also remark if he chances to observe another visitor, to which Rao would respond by suggesting that we should find a public campsite that is easily accessible for us. How practical!Belz answers. I turn off my TV and spend a few hours in silence. What the heck is going on with the profanity filter when naming your bots in a single-player game?
Nevertheless, I had a great time at Sand Land in spite of these minor complaints. There are racetracks all around the world, and although the racing is limited to time trials and has poor mechanics, competing against the clock in a jump bot or dune buggy can be rather entertaining. It is somewhat of a rarity in the plot that you can occasionally engage in battles in the Battle Arena without the assistance of the bots. The main purpose of the ruins strewn across the terrain is to provide the player with ancient coins, which they can exchange for treasure maps and robot parts from a cat named Lassi. There are available bounty hunts that can earn you extra parts and zeni. These hunts are entertaining diversion from the main plot, particularly when you’re moving.
I had left a lot of territory on both maps undiscovered, even after finishing the tale and accomplishing a lot of the bonus stuff. Even if the plot occasionally felt a little awkward and unsure of itself, I still found it to be rather enjoyable. The message is vehemently anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, veering slightly near the conclusion but essentially remaining true throughout. The treatment of some of the characters bothers me a little bit; the ruler of Sand Land is a huge bone head and the only significant obese character. Likewise, a significant number of camera angles feature the story’s prominent women succumbing to the male gaze. Particularly Rosetta, who has a very big chest and multiple situations in which she trips and falls, giving us a glimpse of her very voluptuous butt.
I don’t want to beat around the bush, but Sand Land was a lot of fun—both the game and the narrative. The plot is interesting and has a lot of interesting and entertaining characters, even though it doesn’t aim too high. In the most respectful sense conceivable, it is unquestionably an Akira Toriyama piece. The gameplay is rapid, fun, and arcade-like. On bots, exploring the world and engaging in combat are both enjoyable. Being able to quickly switch between my machine gun and main tank cannon while reloading my other armament was one of my favorite aspects of being a mobile turret tank. You can alter the vehicles by, for example, launching a swarm of guided missiles or, my personal favorite, setting off a blazing boost on the motorcycle, which damaged and burned everything in its path.
Of course, Sand Land, one of Akira Toryiama’s final truly notable pieces, is breathtakingly beautiful. Sand Land appears cartoonishly dazzling, even though it’s a sizable planet contained within a single biome and possibly one of the less interesting biomes visually. Furthermore, the colors and contrasts get even more remarkable as the game goes on and the landscape is altered. I was also a huge fan of the soundtrack. The soundtrack had a variety of sounds, and I particularly enjoyed the dancing between an ethereal soundscape that greeted the night as shadows rolled across the desert and a strumming acoustic western sound.
The fact that Sand Land has voice acting throughout, not only in the key narrative sequences, is another pleasure to the ears. There is speech between the party and opponents during battles, and side quests have complete voice acting. Barks are audible during boss battles and serve as a small helpful hint if you’re mechanically perplexed. As I already indicated, there are several voice lines that are repeated when investigating, but that’s not the only problem. The group started discussing about the lake and how there appeared to be a set of ruins in the middle when I was down there, having found a set of ruins in the middle of it. As the group was investigating the ruins they were talking about finding, Beelzebub exclaimed, “Let’s go explore it!With only an eye roll in response, Sand Land served as another reminder of just how challenging game production can be.
It’s astonishing that amazing new games are still coming out this year, though this will probably be followed by a significant lack of quality games when today’s layoffs come to an end. Nevertheless, we ought to savor them while they’re here, and Sand Land is among the greatest this year.
Review Overview
Gameplay – 82%
Story – 78%
Aesthetics – 94%
Content – 80%
Accessibility – 80%
Value – 85%
Overall Rating – 84%
Very Good
Summary: With a huge open world that will eat up hours of your time, a classic art style, a plot that is tremendously fun, and endearing characters that you will remember. You should allow Sand Land to leave its stamp on your year, just like it did on mine.