For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Sand Land, developed by ILCA.
From the PSN store page, it was made clear that this is more of a sandbox rather than a demo that follows the story. this was so surprising that i actually included the store page to highlight this. If you play this demo before buying Sand Land, then you'll get some in-game bonuses when you start the game. unfortunately, these bonuses do not apply to games that have already started.
I haven't read nor watched anything about Sand Land before, so one of the draw backs about this demo's approach is that it doesn't introduce anything. i knew that there's sand because of the game's icon and name. but i was a bit surprised by how much of it there was. The characters look familiar because of Akira Toriyama's style. This meant it was clear that two of them weren't human whilst the third was. But with this demo not having any story, it was kinda irrelevant.
As this demo is set sometime into the game, we also miss out on a tutorial(s). what we get is text in a box on the screen. no videos, no practice, just text and maybe a picture. I have played a number of Bandai Namco games and i believe this maybe the case in the final game to. this is a shame as i found the on screen buttons missing a crucial reminder that Triangle is how you dismount the vehicles. A proper tutorial would've also helped remind me that right on the D-Pad brings up the vehicles screen and that most of the enemies in the game should be dealt with by one of your vehicles.
One of the reasons why this video is so long is because of the time it took to understand the controls and what the game expects you to do. i imagine that this becomes apparent naturally when playing the final game. But after my time with the demo i'm actually thinking of going back in my own time to try again some of my mistakes and to see what happens.
The demo does have a few limitations. we're unable to enter the town that's directly next to us. in exploring the map, we also came across invisible boundaries. I also imagine the issue we had with the #Icharbe Ruins is also due to demo limitations. there's no levelling up, no improving skills, and we came across a gap that we just couldn't cross which i imagine is due to those limits.
Exploring was fun. the dessert had a few enemies to tackle, with the humans being the most difficult as they use machines like us. it wasn't all sand dunes, there were canyons, rocky outcrops, and a few ruins.
for a PS4 game, this certainly looked great. it had the look of an anime but it controlled very well like an action game. i imagine the PS5 version might be able to use HDR to take advantage of the beautiful day night cycle as well as better shadows and maybe even ray tracing. But on PS4, Sand Land is more than good looking enough. in some ways, this demo felt too small for this game and i'm genuinely interested in the final retail game.
I do recommend people try out this game. it feels more casual than an RPG, but more involved than some other games made from an anime. Sand Land is a single story, so this has the chance to be a much more complete game. The demo has other benefits as it gives in game items to new saves in the retail game after this demo has been played. I would've liked a bullet point or two of things i could do or even a hint like "try heading east". i just didn't enjoy the open sand box approach, especially when learning how to control the game.