PALGN writes: "After recieving delay after delay since its initial 'Wii launch 2006' date, we almost thought that Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (AKA the longest name they could possibly think of for a Dragon Quest game) might never get released over here, which would have been a real shame. The Dragon Quest series has generally been known for having incredibly deep and time consuming RPGs over the years, and is ridiculously popular in Japan. Since Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King was released worldwide a few years ago, the popularity of the franchise has spread, and since then we have seen lots of love for the series on Nintendo consoles, including two Nintendo DS titles already released and more planned for the future. The issue with Dragon Quest appearing on these more 'user-friendly' consoles is that the games themselves seem to have been made much more casual by nature - DQS: TMQATTOM is a victim of this, and while not a bad game by any means, it's far from the Dragon Quest that we know and love.
To put things in perspective, you need to understand the incredibly linear fashion in which the game works. The entire thing is from the first-person perspective, which goes against traditional RPGs straight away which are usually from the third person, or, use fixed camera angles. You only use the Wii remote (sorry, no nunchuk action here folks!), with the D-pad acting as your point of view depending on which direction you press, and the B button being held down to actually move. The rest of the experience is point and click when you're moving throughout the world, aiming at things with a cursor and pressing A to interact with doors and objects, talk to people or search barrels and bushes for items. It's simple, but moving around in this way does feel kind of laboured after having to do it continously, and pressing the D-pad to actually choose your direction is awkward at the best of times."
