3D Dot Game Heroes
Pixel tart.
There's far more to the kingdom of Dotnia than it first seems; you're free to wander around at will from the beginning, and exploration always yields rewards. Villages hide side-quests, sub-stories and even tower-defence mini-games. There's nothing to guide you towards secret shields, swords and life segments except your own curiosity, and you often come across something exciting for your efforts.
3D Dot also has a terrifyingly full-featured character editor that lets you create anything you could possibly imagine out of little pixel squares, too. I'll admit to being too frightened by the requisite attention to detail to make one myself, but there's already a little set of cute alternatives (a zombie! A car!) available as DLC. There's sure to be a flood of copyright-infringing creations as soon as publisher From makes it possible to download characters from its website.
Speaking of DLC, there was a New Year update that instantly made the game vastly more playable by adding a hard-disk install and halving the four-second load times between practically every screen. It still spends a bit too much time loading (clearly the visual style is more hardware-intensive than it looks), but all the load screens are cute recreations of Japanese NES game boxes, so it's at least easy on the eyes.
If you're going to rip off Zelda, you have to either pretend that's not what you're doing at all through clever subterfuge, or do it very, very well, like Okami. 3D Dot manages neither, but it avoids the problem altogether by being so blatantly obvious about its inspiration that it's impossible to begrudge it.
The dungeon design could be better - it's good, but repetitive and unnecessarily punishing, and though it's in keeping with the retro feel, it would be nice if there were any difference at all in their interior design. Played an hour or so at a time, 3D Dot is charming, but any longer and the retro shtick begins to grate.
Atlus is bringing 3D Dot Game Heroes to the US in May, and the translation is going to be absolutely crucial to how it's viewed. A generous helping of humour could save it from itself - if it makes enough jokes about its own inspirations, it'll come across as clever rather than just derivative.
The Japanese script has occasional flashes of humour and flippancy - one spell, for instance, used to reveal hidden embossed patterns on flat surfaces, is called Parallax Map - but at other times it comes across as confusingly earnest, and it's patronisingly obvious about hints. Admittedly, it can be hard to pick up on subtleties in your fourth language, but a sharp, openly self-referential script would make the game feel more intelligent.
3D Dot Game Heroes is a one-trick pony, but it does its one trick very well. Anyone with any nostalgic affection for the era of its inspiration - or for classic Zelda - will find it hard to resist. You could see it either as a loving tribute or a complete rip-off, but even if it is a rip-off, it's a very likeable one. If it were a bit more imaginative and a bit funnier, a bit more openly satirical, it might be brilliant. It's a comfortable and visually stunning trip down memory lane rather than anything more ambitious.
3D Dot Game Heroes is out now in Japan, and you don't need brilliant Japanese to play it - much of the game is self-explanatory. However, a US version is due out later this year.